David Hart’s recent essay on the New Atheists has been receiving a great deal of attention—and criticism. At the risk of piling on, I have to add a complaint of my own. There is one part of his essay where he stretches a congenial concession into a dangerously misleading claim:
Skepticism and atheism are, at least in their highest manifestations, noble, precious, and even necessary traditions, and even the most fervent of believers should acknowledge that both are often inspired by a profound moral alarm at evil and suffering, at the corruption of religious institutions, at psychological terrorism, at injustices either prompted or abetted by religious doctrines, at arid dogmatisms and inane fideisms, and at worldly power wielded in the name of otherworldly goods. In the best kinds of unbelief, there is something of the moral grandeur of the prophets—a deep and admirable abhorrence of those vicious idolatries that enslave minds and justify our worst cruelties.
Even as a fervent believer I can acknowledge that skepticism and atheism can be inspired by the reasons Hart lists. But I fail to understand how that makes them noble, precious, or necessary traditions. Indeed, I wish Christians would recognize just the opposite: We have to abandon the politically correct notion that atheism is intellectually respectable.
Historically speaking, this concession to the greatest lie in the universe is a rather recent development. While there have always been people who deny the existence of a deity, it has not been a prominent view among intellectuals, much less a serious alternative to Christian theism. What previous cultures instinctively understood, and that we in turn have forgotten, is that atheism is a form of (self-imposed) intellectual dysfunction, a lack of epistemic virtue, or—to borrow a term from my Catholic friends—a case of vincible ignorance.
Vincible ignorance is lacking knowledge that is within the individual’s control and for which he is responsible before God. In Romans, St. Paul is clear that atheism is a case of vincible ignorance: “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” Acknowledging the existence of God is just the beginning—we must also recognize several of his divine attributes. Atheists that deny this reality are, as St. Paul said, without excuse. They are vincibly ignorant.
Some people—even some believers—will be scandalized by this claim. Such is the state of our culture that even Christians are offended by the truths expressed in Scripture. We have so thoroughly bought into the notion that atheism is an intellectually respectable position that when we point out the truth (that atheism is a form of intellectual handicap) we are viewed as intolerant. But we Christians do atheists no favor by treating them as if they were simply “differently abled.” By ignoring their epistemic and metaphysical brokenness, we are shirking our Christian duty to truly show love for our neighbor.
Equally shameful is that we share a fair amount of the blame for creating the stumbling block of “new atheism.” We have no qualms about pointing out moral and political failings. Yet when it comes to matters of epistemic and metaphysical truth, we refuse to take a firm, Biblically justified stance. Why is that? Why do we feel we must treat atheism as if it were any more respectable than, say, a belief in the healing power of crystals? Have we completely abandoned the concept of intellectual virtue?
Claiming that everyone is without excuse for refusing to acknowledge the existence of a God isn’t intolerant or an attempt to impose our beliefs on others; it’s a simple statement of fact—and one that we should have the courage to express freely.
(Note: Just so there is not confusion, being vincibly ignorant about God does not mean that atheists are less intelligent—or, for that matter, less moral—than theists. Everyone exhibits vincible ignorance about something. Atheists just do it about the most important things.)
See Also: Vincible Ignorance Revisited
May 13th, 2010 | 9:01 am
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May 13th, 2010 | 9:32 am
“Claiming that everyone is without excuse for refusing to acknowledge the existence of a God isn’t intolerant or an attempt to impose our beliefs on others; it’s a simple statement of fact”
You really need to learn the difference between a fact and a tenet of your particular religion.
May 13th, 2010 | 10:10 am
yeah, Dave’s essay has Andrew and Kevin talking:
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/05/religion-and-death
May 13th, 2010 | 10:17 am
Mr Westley,
I suspect Joe knows the difference. I would extend your statement as follows:
You need to learn the difference between a fact and a tenet of your particular belief system.
Facts are hard to come by. So, inevitably, we make the claim from our beliefs. For example, some atheists claim that only they are rational and they claim that as fact not as intolerance or an attempt to impose their beliefs.
So we’re left with: how do we decide?
May 13th, 2010 | 10:20 am
“You really need to learn the difference between a fact and a tenet of your particular religion.”
If a statement is true then it is a fact (in fact), whether or not it also happens to belong to a particular religious doctrine.
Your assumption that the set of facts necessarily does not include any religious tenets is exactly the kind of self-imposed intellectual handicap that this post is talking about.
May 13th, 2010 | 10:21 am
Principled, yes, noble, atheism and agnosticism challenge believers at the most fundamental level. We are then required to subject our faith to arduous examen, to achieve clear and carefully reasoned understanding, to explain ourselves and our faith to others. Pope Benedict has written that there is faith in doubt; doubt in faith.
May 13th, 2010 | 10:28 am
There are a fair number of things that were once ‘clearly perceived’ that later turned out not to be correct.
May 13th, 2010 | 10:29 am
So we’re left with: how do we decide?
Seeing if the assertions can be reliably reproduced in a controlled setting works pretty well…
May 13th, 2010 | 10:29 am
Brian:
I would posit that “God exists” is not a tenet of Mr. Carter’s religion, but a necessary premise for it even to exist.
May 13th, 2010 | 10:30 am
Perhaps society is (finally) evolving beyond the need for the strictures imposed by religion. I was a Pentecostal minister until I realized there is virtually no essential difference between evangelical Christianity and any other religion in the world … and that they are all fictions.
Thanks to the Internet (and other technology) more people are able to discover they are not alone in their doubts and suspicions about their religion; there is power in numbers and increasing numbers of people are enabled to actually voice their disbelief, honestly and with intellectual integrity, instead of living in silent oppression from the vocal religious power structures.
May 13th, 2010 | 10:47 am
How very sad you believe in bronze age absurdity.
If there were a god of any kind I would pray for your rapture.
But there isn’t so those of us who can differentiate between imagination and reality are forced to tolerate your trivial 10,000 year old cosmological fable.
Religion will be the catalyst of mankinds’ extinction just as it is the extinction of your critical thinking skills.
So very sad… I weep for you and all the credulous people you deceive.
May 13th, 2010 | 10:50 am
I am a Christian, and I don’t know what it means to “perceive” God’s “divine power and nature” in the things that have been made.
I have, since coming to know Him, been unable–in a certain sense that is hard to pin down–been unable to conceive of Him not existing. As a (less than completely competent) Dooyeweerdian, the meaning of meaning–as it were–is found in its dependence on Him. So the question “what would it mean for the world to exist without its Creator” is, for me, less a question that I can answer than it is a question I cannot grasp as having any sense that I can grasp.
So when I see the things that have been made, I see him–but he is, in a sense, prior in my mind to the things that I see. Perhaps I can say that I see God evident in these things, but not from these things.
I don’t know what to make of this. It seems almost as if knowledge if God were to be inferred, deduced, or derived somehow from the Creation. I see God evident in creation in a way that I know not how to explain, but the knowledge is prior. Even now, I don’t know what it is to derive knowledge of God from what was created.
I do think we suppress knowledge of God in unrighteousness, and that blindness to seeing him, as it were, through his creation, may follow. But the sin then would be the former (the suppression) not the latter, yes? The latter might be the epistemic consequence of the sin, but not the sin itself.
I suspect that I am seriously misreading Paul here. I wish simply to be able to read him here in a way that makes sense to me (and that is correct of course! If my reading is incorrect, it is useless. But I need to know how to make sense of the correct reading if it is to help me.)
May 13th, 2010 | 10:53 am
“Seeing if the assertions can be reliably reproduced in a controlled setting works pretty well…”
Now we’re getting somewhere or not. How do you control for the existence or nonexistence of a non-physical entity? Or for the messiness of everyday life? Do facts only exist in a laboratory setting?
Science seems to have no problems with the second difficulty. It freely recognizes that such studies are “softer” than say basic physics. Yet atheists make claims far softer than that and claim theists are wrong for doing the same.
We’re left again with how do we decide?
May 13th, 2010 | 10:58 am
It’s intellectually dishonest to state a metaphysical assumption as a fact. State it as an assumption if you like, but saying it’s a fact is just a rhetorical con game.
May 13th, 2010 | 11:05 am
We’re left again with how do we decide?
Beats me.
It seems to me that the ones making the assertions have the responsibility to set up the testing protocol.
I take the agnostic position and make no claims about the existence or non-existence of God, so I leave it to the theists and atheists to demonstrate the proof of their claims.
May 13th, 2010 | 11:06 am
Brian:
So when you state that there is no God (or gods), are you stating it as an assumption, or a fact?
May 13th, 2010 | 11:16 am
“So when you state that there is no God (or gods), are you stating it as an assumption, or a fact?”
Since I never stated that, your question is dishonest, as it contains a false assumption.
I much prefer honest debates, where people don’t dishonestly state that their particular religious views are facts, and people don’t ask loaded questions. Doesn’t look like I’ll find that here.
May 13th, 2010 | 11:25 am
JE,
You say, “Seeing if the assertions can be reliably reproduced in a controlled setting works pretty well…”
How many times should it be repeated before we accept it as “correct?” What settings are controlled? How do we deal with unique or unbelievably rare events that are simply unreproducible?
Here’s an assertion (to use your terminology): “I loved my wife yesterday.”
Is this a fact? From this point, how would you go about showing this to be a “fact” scientifically?
May 13th, 2010 | 11:28 am
JE,
You say, “It seems to me that the ones making the assertions have the responsibility to set up the testing protocol.”
According to their personal (and thus subjective) standards of control? Or should they meet your personally subjective standards?
May 13th, 2010 | 11:29 am
Anyone who seriously believes that people can only hold different religious traditions if they are defective / stunted / broken / inferior, is inheriting a very dark legacy and would probably be all too eager to worsen it if given the chance.
May 13th, 2010 | 11:55 am
ME: “How do we decide?”
JE: “Beats me.”
I consider agnosticism over the existence of God an intellectually honest (how presumptuous of me!) starting point. All theists I know (and I only know a tiny fraction) doubt with a fair frequency.
But the question remains. Even agnostics end up choosing a belief system, though God remains way out in the gray areas for them.
How do you decide what to believe about the people around you. Are Israelis jailers? Or are the Palestinians intransigent? Do you like gherkins or dills or both or neither? You can’t get away from the question of belief. You can only make choices. We run out of controlled for facts very quickly.
I have a fair handle on my personal set of beliefs though I continue to struggle with them. I happen to share my beliefs with a large number of other people. At another time in history that would not be so.
May 13th, 2010 | 11:58 am
Last time i checked, nobody had demonstrated what god was and/or whether he truly exists as matter of fact.
Starting with an irrational assumption and then making your own facts based on those assumption while at the same time ignoring the real, repeatedly proven and demonstrated facts only makes you willfully ignorant.
May 13th, 2010 | 12:01 pm
Brian,
Has it occurred to you that Geronimo was using the ubiquitous “you” as in “when one states…”?
And yet you claim he is dishonest or should I say, you believe he is dishonest.
May 13th, 2010 | 12:04 pm
Brian:
“So when you state that there is no God (or gods), are you stating it as an assumption, or a fact?”
Since I never stated that, your question is dishonest, as it contains a false assumption.
You most certainly did. In response to Mr. Carter’s follow-up article, you wrote:
It must really gall you that there are people who genuinely don’t believe in magical beings like gods.
Does this not amount to asserting that belief in a god or gods is to believe in “magical beings”, and that given your pejorative use of “magical”, that this entity or entities do not exist?
Please do not accuse me of dishonesty and then engage in a dodge like this.
Cordially,
GR
May 13th, 2010 | 12:06 pm
You may assert your absurdities as passionately as you wish, but it will not make your god real, nor your beliefs justified.
May 13th, 2010 | 12:09 pm
“Brian,
Has it occurred to you that Geronimo was using the ubiquitous “you” as in “when one states…”?”
Not when he prefixes his question with “Brian:”, as he did.
May 13th, 2010 | 12:17 pm
Ranger, I don’t know, what do you propose?
MM
>How do you decide what to believe about the people around you.
Trial and error, generally…
>Are Israelis jailers? Or are the Palestinians intransigent?
Why not both?
>Do you like gherkins or dills or both or neither?
Neither, but that is merely a statement of personal preference.
May 13th, 2010 | 12:23 pm
Bellicose agnostic
The assumption that “God exists” as a first cause is not an irrational assumption. I would suggest that the assumption that there is no “first cause” is far more irrational.
May 13th, 2010 | 12:37 pm
There is no god. That is it and that is all.
May 13th, 2010 | 12:55 pm
Mike:
I was speaking to Brian. His response was to deny that he had mocked belief in a god or gods, and/or to deny that such mockery was a de facto statement that such belief is foolish, and amounts to stating that a god or gods do not exist.
Then he called me dishonest.
I replied at 12:04pm.
I appreciate the calm and respectful tone of your comments in this thread. That and I now know what a gherkin is.
Cordially,
GR
May 13th, 2010 | 1:01 pm
GeronimoRumplestiltskin, I genuinely don’t believe that magical beings like gods exist. This is NOT the same as stating “there is no God (or gods),” as you wrote.
May 13th, 2010 | 1:34 pm
“I was speaking to Brian. His response was to deny that he had mocked belief in a god or gods, and/or to deny that such mockery was a de facto statement that such belief is foolish,”
Wrong. Now you’re just lying. Here is what you wrote:
“So when you state that there is no God (or gods), are you stating it as an assumption, or a fact?”
And here was my reply to that:
“Since I never stated that, your question is dishonest, as it contains a false assumption.”
You REALLY need to understand the difference between statements like:
1) I don’t believe in gods
2) gods don’t exist
These really are two different statements.
May 13th, 2010 | 1:41 pm
Great argument anongorilla – living up to your pseudonym.
May 13th, 2010 | 2:25 pm
Great Article, Mr Carter!
In todays climate it is all too easy to forget the absurdity of atheism. Thank you for reminding us.
Who, with a conscience in his heart that commands to do right and abstain from wrong, can honestly deny the existince of almighty God?
May 13th, 2010 | 2:33 pm
To all of those leaving comments: I believe you have missed the point Joe Carter was trying to make. Joe Carter is fully aware of his contradictory statements and false assumptions. The ignorance of his statements is willful and intentional with that sole purpose to insult the intelligence of those that garner respect for furthering knowledge. This is an attempt to slow down the progress humans have made in the last 500 years (especially that last 100). All the evidence and truth in the world will not change Joe Carter’s mind for one simple reason, he is afraid of losing his religious beliefs. Joe Carter‘s religious beliefs require him to deny, reject, and fight against evidence and truth when they contradict his belief system. This is why Joe Carter deserves only pity or mockery.
May 13th, 2010 | 2:43 pm
Soulf2 To all of those leaving comments: I believe you have missed the point Joe Carter was trying to make.
Ah, dang it, you figured me out. Now that my ruse is uncovered I may as well admit it: My purpose was to impede the attempts of the so very, very smart atheists (just look at their responses to this thread or the 400+ on David Hart’s article for proof and you’ll see how “bright” they are) to correct all of this theistic nonsense. I’m afraid that if the truth were to come out that there was no conscience, no free will, no reason to trust our noetic equipment, no objective reason for morality, meaning, existence, etc., that progress would proceed unimpeded until we lived in a Utopia. And, really, who wants that?
May 13th, 2010 | 2:55 pm
Brian:
So someone who interprets your pejorative use of “magical” to describe a belief in God as a denial of the existence of God is not “mistaken” (which is debatable) or “misinterpreting you”, but “lying”.
Oh, well. At least you managed to answer my earlier question:
“So when you state that there is no God (or gods), are you stating it as an assumption, or a fact?”
…with…
I genuinely don’t believe that magical beings like gods exist. This is NOT the same as stating “there is no God (or gods),” as you wrote.
So your non-belief in god is not a assertion of objective fact, but of subjective opinion (or, in your terms, assumption). Got it.
Was that so hard?
GR
May 13th, 2010 | 3:15 pm
Oh, hurrah for Soulf2! Yes, we’ve made so much progress these last 100 years, you know, by destroying religious traditions & replacing them with much more useful institutions like communist gulags, drone assassination, & death camps.
Interesting how every religious system puts such foolish restraints on killing others, never eradicating murder & war somehow (almost like there’s something intrinsically wrong with people…), but humanist political philosophies free us up to kill without shame, guilt, or some silly thing called “conscience.”
Yes, let’s hasten that progress, Soulf2. All these rabid believers want to to do is keep us from the gleaming light of atheism that has led so many this last century, the blue nihilist glow of a monstrous insect zapper.
May 13th, 2010 | 3:44 pm
Mr. Carter, I’d say it was ironic for you–who believe human nature can be perfected as long as everybody prays just like you do–to accuse anybody else of being a utopian, but I suspect my use of the word “ironic” would just lead to more griping from you about how smart atheists think they are.
Given your contempt for atheists, it is no surprise that you make no attempt whatsoever to engage with any of their arguments, instead relying on the “it’s just so OBVIOUS!” tactic which, in your defense, Aristotle himself probably used when he was in 3rd grade.
I invite you to leave the “First Things” echo chamber and go find a normal person, then tell them the main thesis of your argument–”Anyone who does not share my religious views is broken and inferior”–and ask them what it reminds them of.
May 13th, 2010 | 3:52 pm
My pleasure, Geronimo. I believe (though I can’t prove) Brian was letting his emotions get the better of him. It’s something I need to work on a lot for myself.
Some of my most fascinating discussions have been with people with different belief systems than I. The more different, the more interesting. I’ve encountered an open and honest full materialist, who did not believe that he believed anything, rather he was fully an automaton. He was also a postdoc at UCLA. I’ve also encountered a full materialist who claimed to believe that words like “choice” did not lose any meaning in the face of full materialism. How we could be automatons and have “choice” mean the same, I’ve never understood. Most materialists I’ve encountered though, just don’t think it all the way through. I can’t say I blame them. I stand in awe of the deficit in my knowledge compared to something that (someone who?) could set the universe on its course.
Joe, of course, knows where utopia, as a word, came from. I wonder if soulf2 does?
May 13th, 2010 | 4:55 pm
I apologise to anongorilla, but I could equally say:
Pink elephants live in my back yard. That is it and that is all.
Nonsensical I’m afraid.
May 13th, 2010 | 6:22 pm
TTT,
Evidently, you are unaware of the first premise of Christianity: we are all sinners. That fellow Jesus himself said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” I’m glad you are well, but I have need of this physician.
BTW, I have it on good authority that Joe is familiar with this quote.
May 13th, 2010 | 7:55 pm
“So someone who interprets your pejorative use of “magical” to describe a belief in God as a denial of the existence of God is not “mistaken” (which is debatable) or “misinterpreting you”, but “lying”.”
No, when you lie about statements I’ve made, you’re lying, such as: “His response was to deny that he had mocked belief in a god or gods, and/or to deny that such mockery was a de facto statement that such belief is foolish”
“So your non-belief in god is not a assertion of objective fact, but of subjective opinion (or, in your terms, assumption). Got it.”
Yes, that’s obvious. So why would you conflate them?
May 13th, 2010 | 8:08 pm
Honestly, what is to be accomplished by posts like this? All it does it bring out the nuts.
May 13th, 2010 | 9:02 pm
Gary,
Maybe they want to increase website traffic? More likely Joe just wanted to show the radical inconsistencies of those who claim to be atheists, but are afraid to embrace the logical consequences of such a lack of belief.
Everyone,
Honest Question: I know that PZ Myers used to talk about how it was hard to differentiate a parody fundamentalist from the real thing (Poe’s law). Now, a few years removed from that time, has the trend reversed? I’m honestly not sure when people like anongorilla, Soulf2, bellicose agnostic, etc. comment if they are serious or if they are Christians parodying the close-minded ignorance of many internet infidels? Are atheists as embarassed of these types (who seem more the norm nowadays at Myers and Dawkins’ sites) as we are of the fundamentalist Christians?
May 13th, 2010 | 9:39 pm
My own reaction to this post is too long for a combox, so I’ve posted it here: http://mliccione.blogspot.com/2010/05/why-atheism-can-be-respectable.html
May 13th, 2010 | 10:08 pm
[...] Carter at First Things, The Vincible Ignorance of Atheism: Even as a fervent believer I can acknowledge that skepticism and atheism can be inspired by the [...]
May 13th, 2010 | 10:18 pm
Does this mean that if I start a new religion, that anyone who refuses to believe in it is vincible ignorant?
May 14th, 2010 | 2:45 am
Joe Carter: Clearly, the “New Atheists” have displayed more arrogance, and a lack of philosophical sophistication than we’ve seen in the more respectible atheistic tradition of old. My guess is, that that was, Dr. Hart’s primary position. But also, frankly, as we all know, there IS a profound level of suffering in our world, that seems, from our limited perspective, gratuitous, and horrific. Many atheists, as you know, see this as a moral catastrophe, and, frankly, it’s hard to see where they’re wrong.
Also, although I think that biological evolution is entirely compatable with Christianity, one could reasonably see Darwin’s discovery as evidence for atheism.
It is important to try and empathize with atheists, as Micheal Novak has done in his new book “No one sees God”. I have not read this book yet, but I read a very critical, frankly, rude, review of it in The New Oxford Review, which makes me prone to think it must be a very good book.
Karl Rahner talked about the “Anynomous Christian, which could include many atheists.
Also, as Aquinas pointed out, we cannot know hardly any of God’s traits, (we can know more of what God is not) since God transcends all sensory, indeed, all linguistic, and all human devised concepts. It’s intellectually respectable (as opposed to being true) for one to be an agnostic or an atheist, on this basis. That is, they have not only strong moral standards (as pointed out above, regarding evil), but they also have strong epistimological standards, and cannot believe for intellectual standards. This is much different than your “healing crystals” example.
May 14th, 2010 | 8:46 am
>>Also, as Aquinas pointed out, we cannot know hardly any of God’s traits, (we can know more of what God is not) since God transcends all sensory, indeed, all linguistic, and all human devised concepts. It’s intellectually respectable (as opposed to being true) for one to be an agnostic or an atheist, on this basis. That <<
Actually, I remember that Duns Scotus refuted this argument of Thomas'. A quick lookup on the public internet gives us this. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/duns-scotus/#NatThe
Thomas says we can know God only analogically, and the analogical concepts we use come from the created world. Scotus says if this is so, then the concepts we use to apply to God will be the very same concepts we use to think about creatures, univocally. If these are the only concepts we can have, then we can't think about God, which is false.
May 14th, 2010 | 12:05 pm
There is only one intellectually respectful position on the existence or non-existence of God: it can not be proven either way. If you choose to believe in God, you are doing so, by definition, from a standpoint of faith, not evidence. If you deny the existence of God you also do so without evidence. That is the nature of the beast and the reason that this never-ending squabble is so very silly. Is there a God? I don’t care! I refuse to waste my time debating an argument that ultimately can not be won.
May 14th, 2010 | 12:19 pm
“There is only one intellectually respectful position on the existence or non-existence of God: it can not be proven either way. If you choose to believe in God, you are doing so, by definition, from a standpoint of faith, not evidence. If you deny the existence of God you also do so without evidence.”
Well, let’s give it a try:
Is there a God? If by God one means a supreme being or an absolutely perfect being, then the answer is yes. A supreme being would have no potential for change, as pointed out by Aristotle (among many others), since change implies either a decline from perfection or some kind of improvement on perfection, which is illogical. A supreme being, therefore, could neither decline nor improve in any way.
So:
(1) If there is a God right now, then God has to exist. (If a supreme being exists right now, and cannot decline or pass out of existence, this supreme being necessarily exists.)
(2) If there is not a God right now, then it is impossible for God to exist. (If there is no supreme being right now, then a supreme being cannot come into existence, since coming into existence implies contingency and the potential for further change. If God does not exist now and cannot begin to exist at some time, then it is logically impossible for God to exist, ever.)
(3) Either there is a God right now or there is not a God right now. (Law of Excluded Middle.)
(4) Either God has to exist or it is impossible for God to exist. (From 1, 2, and 3, Copi’s Law of Constructive Dilemma.)
(5) It is not the case that it is impossible for God to exist.
(6) God has to exist. (From 4 and 5, Copi’s Law of Disjunctive Syllogism.)
(7) God exists. (From 6: According to modal logic, if something necessarily exists, then it exists.)
Notice that this also shifts the burden of proof. If someone wants to argue that God does not exist, that person has to disprove premise (5). In other words, the atheist has to prove that the existence of God is not simply unlikely to him or her, but that the existence of God is logically impossible. On the other hand, if God’s existence is not logically impossible, then God’s existence is entailed.
Now I’m not expecting to change many, if any, minds with this. But at least could folks stop saying there’s “no evidence” for God’s existence? What you really mean is that there’s no evidence you agree with, right? Which is not the same thing at all.
May 14th, 2010 | 12:48 pm
“Christian Theism” – So the argument is being made that lack of belief in virgin birth, resurrection, 3=1 god(head), is a form of intellectual dysfunction?
The most charitable interpretation I can see here is that until the historical David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, the argument-from-design really did have some power.
Hume’s Dialogues utterly devastated the argument-from-design (for the Christian worldview), and a century later we had an empirical theory that could explain the appearance of design without invoking a designer.
Yet, a century and a half after Darwin, and nearly 3 centuries after Hume, belief in the (Christian) god on rationalist grounds simply showcases stupidity or ignorance. Most Christian believers understand that their belief is an act of *faith* precisely because reason simply doesn’t get you to sky-gods, arch-angels, demons, and a man-child-god-zombie. It just doesn’t.
Joe Carter is either dumb, ignorant, or supremely arrogant. Take your pick.
May 14th, 2010 | 12:55 pm
A-Bax Joe Carter is either dumb, ignorant, or supremely arrogant. Take your pick.
Do we have to pick only one?
Also, anyone who thinks that Hume “devastated the argument-from-design” probably doesn’t understand the argument from design.
May 14th, 2010 | 1:01 pm
Craig,
Ah! Fun with words. I can use the exact same ‘logic’ to prove that there is an enormous eggplant named Gertrude secretly stealing your dental floss at night. The root of the problem is number five. You can’t just declare that it is impossible for God not to exist. This is the whole argument, isn’t it? It may well be that it is impossible for God to exist. You don’t know this and neither do I or anyone else. As I said, “silly.”
May 14th, 2010 | 1:07 pm
From Joe Carter: “Also, anyone who thinks that Hume “devastated the argument-from-design” probably doesn’t understand the argument from design.”
One of the most rewarding philosophical moments I’ve had occurred when I understand Aquinas’s so-called “argument from design” wasn’t really an argument from “design” at all, but rather an argument from teleology.
From A-Bax: “Most Christian believers understand that their belief is an act of *faith* precisely because reason simply doesn’t get you to sky-gods, arch-angels, demons, and a man-child-god-zombie. It just doesn’t.”
“It just doesn’t” is such a strong response to the post immediately preceding yours, I am forced to surrender.
May 14th, 2010 | 1:13 pm
From John Johnson: “Ah! Fun with words. I can use the exact same ‘logic’ to prove that there is an enormous eggplant named Gertrude secretly stealing your dental floss at night.”
No, you can’t use the exact same logic. An eggplant, or any other being with extension, would be contingent. The argument only applies to a Being who is non-contingent and has no extension in time or space, who would thus be changeless. (This is what Dawkins misses with his “Flying Spaghetti Monster” idea, as well.) No matter what else one calls this Being, the idea is that of a Supreme Being–not “a god,” but God.
“It may well be that it is impossible for God to exist.”
Yes, this was my point: that the atheist has to prove this. Otherwise, the existence of this Supreme Being is entailed by the laws of logic, which we cannot simply dismiss at will.
May 14th, 2010 | 1:43 pm
Craig,
You are the one who has decided that God has the quality of non-contingency. The onus is still on the theist to prove that God is not immune to regress. You have failed to do this. Your argument relies on an assumption; on a definition of God that is convenient to your position. I am perfectly willing to accept the possibility of God. I am equally willing to accept the opposite. What troubles me is that a person like you (who obviously has fine mind) is a little weak on the humility spectrum. Your argument is interesting, but not infallible. I understand your desire to believe in God. I have the same desire, but I do not exercise it out of humility. No human has the answer to this question. Proof of God? Really? You might want to think about that a bit. No disrespect intended.
May 14th, 2010 | 2:21 pm
Dear John Johnson: I agree with you on the “weak on the humility” point; anytime we start talking about God, it is probably best to add at the end, “Of course, I could be wrong.” I think I was just ticked off at the tone of some of the other posts on this thread.
But I disagree on the “definition” point. I don’t think my definition of God is simply “convenient to [my] position”; it is the view of God as a perfect Supreme Being that I wish to defend. If someone says, “Well, God might not be perfect” or “God might be contingent in nature”–well, you wouldn’t get any argument from me, since I wouldn’t be interested in defending the existence of a being like that. It is the Supreme Being we’re discussing.
At any rate, I’ve had my say. Thank you for the argument. My main point, anyway, was given in the previous post: that when people say, “There’s no evidence” for God’s existence, they are wrong. Usually they mean there’s no evidence they accept, but there is evidence. My little argument is just one piece of the picture; there’s more out there.
May 14th, 2010 | 2:48 pm
The reason why the religious community has been utterly befuddled by the rise of atheism is because it was believed that science could not determine there was no real moral difference between believers and non-believers, that attrocities done in the name of those faiths (as opposed to just by their adherrents) would never gain such focus, and not many would be bothered by the absence of these deities in the wake of such realities. The apologists of many faiths are as vehement as you, sir, and no less informed. Your conflicting spirits and mutual impotency have cancelled you out. We have stepped in and we are not going away.
May 14th, 2010 | 3:49 pm
Brian:
You continue to accuse me of lying. Let’s review:
1. You state in this thread “It’s intellectually dishonest to state a metaphysical assumption as a fact. State it as an assumption if you like, but saying it’s a fact is just a rhetorical con game.”, and in the other thread “It must really gall you [Mr. Carter] that there are people who genuinely don’t believe in magical beings like gods.”
2. I ask you “when you state that there is no God (or gods), are you stating it as an assumption, or a fact?”
3. You reply “Since I never stated that, your question is dishonest, as it contains a false assumption”.
4. I reply “Does this not amount to asserting that belief in a god or gods is to believe in “magical beings”, and that given your pejorative use of “magical”, that this entity or entities do not exist?”
5. In a comment to Michael, I report that your answer (#3) amounted to a denial that you had stated that God does not exist.
6. In the first of two consecutive replies, you finally answer my initial question with “I genuinely don’t believe that magical beings like gods exist. This is NOT the same as stating “there is no God (or gods),” as you wrote.”, i.e. you were stating the non-existence of God (or gods) as your subjective opinion.
7. In you second reply, you go off the rails. You call me a liar, and ignoring my reply that you had indeed asserted the non-existence of God (#4), you now identify as your objection to my question (#2) as being that I had made the false assumption that you were stating something as a fact when you were only stating your opinion.
#7 is ludicrous: You state that I had assumed in my question (#2) that your statement was made as a statement of fact, when in reality it was whether your assertion of the non-existence of god (“magical beings like gods”) was an opinion or a fact was the very question I was asking!
Therefore, my interpretation (#4) of your response (#3) – as a denial that you had asserted (either as an opinion or fact, which is what I was inquiring about) that a god (or gods) does not exist – was a reasonable one. An accusation by you that I had misinterpreted your use of “magical” as pejorative would have been reasonable. However, in light of the above, your objection (#7) is not reasonable, and neither is your accusation of any lie on my part.
Perhaps in the future you will have more to contribute here than to repeat “I don’t believe in magical gods” over and over and to make careless and erroneous accusations.
But I doubt it.
Have a good weekend, y’all…..
GR
May 14th, 2010 | 3:52 pm
Craig Payne: Do you accept Anselm’s argument as sound reasoning?
If you so, I have a perfect, supreme island to sell you. You might not be able to find any empirical evidence that this island exists, but I assure you, I’ve built it’s existence into my definition of it.
May 14th, 2010 | 3:55 pm
Even Kant had more humility than Carter, Payne, and the other child-like wishful thinkers who insist, INSIST, that Santa Claus is real.
Carter and Payne: Prove to me that Santa Claus doesn’t exist.
May 14th, 2010 | 4:04 pm
These discussions inevitably turn into overheated shouting. The anonymity and distance and detachment of the internet is well suited to the dilettante-atheist’s temperament. There is something tragic about their restlessness, their forever wanting to evangelize the world to the Bad News to which they have so doubtlessly arrived ahead of us, us who are still stuck in the “Bronze Age.”
But before the inevitable deluge of mini-Summa sessions, Mr. Carter and Mr. Hart were discussing an excellent topic: to what degree are ultimately indefensible intellectual traditions yet valuable to philosophical inquiry? Hart makes the point that the ancillary effects of a robust atheism can be salutary (against the excesses of disordered religiosity), while Carter appears to think the benefits are not worth the damage.
We all give respect to ultimately indefensible and fundamentally ungrounded arguments every day. To function we have to. Allowing room for disagreement is not the same as saying we have “thoroughly bought into the notion that atheism is an intellectually respectable position.” There is nothing to gain from throwing up our hands and exclaiming: Well, if my interlocutor can’t even get the most basic metaphysical fact right, what’s the use of even talking to him? Everything forward will be an error!
Baby steps. You don’t funnel a man unlimited water straight out of the desert. You don’t invite a man to stare directly into the sun after emerging from a darkened room. I pity atheists their handicap. But like many “differently abled” people, they can forget their hindrances — indeed, not even acknowledge them as such — and go on to contribute. Yes, it is a shame that to begin the day they must give up the possibility of a thorough intellectual consistency, but that is a fact of human nature in daily life. We do not prove the existence nor debate the form & function of a spoon each morning before we use it on our cereal.
In return for the many blessings that honest atheists bestow on us, the greatest gift we can give back is the counsel of humility — and we do that first through example. By aggressively inveighing against their faith (before we even engage them in particular discussion!) as not just beyond illegitimate but as not even worthy of our respect, we are demonstrating the opposite of humility.
And if we are Christian, we shouldn’t expect blessings in return anyway. Those blessings are gravy. If the atheists turn out to be vituperative, condescending, or less than honest, then that is a good opportunity to demonstrate the secular power of a second divine gift, namely patience. Likening their faith — for it is a faith — to the healing power of crystals is a page out of the worst atheists’ playbook, and we are better than that.
Your advice is a prescription for isolation of the parties through the establishment of a continuum of “respect.” What would remain then is brute force domination, for we have the better of the argument. But if we do have the truth then we should let our nearly self-evident argument speak plainly, and further, we must have faith that those with ears will hear. I’m a Catholic, so I can’t find the appropriate scripture & verse from Paul, but I’m sure he has said something to that effect. (Bail me out, Evangelical brother!)
Some atheists will approach the disagreement with skepticism and honesty, and some are attention seekers and exhibitionists with intellectual Tourette syndrome, saying the most shocking thing that passes through their brain pan. Is there any profit engaging solipsists and sociopaths about their self-generated and self-contained errors? Those differences are not remedied by debate. The scales must first fall from their eyes, and as we confess, that is beyond our power.
Argumentation and philosophizing are the final stages among peers with mutual respect. For that happy day to arrive we must bend our efforts towards building a genuine respect. And that’s where our not-so-secret weapon — given in Matthew 5:39 — does its greatest work.
May 14th, 2010 | 4:09 pm
“If you so, I have a perfect, supreme island to sell you.”
Um, Gaunilo already suggested the perfect island analogy and Anselm rebutted it. I’m not a major fan of the ontological argument, but you should at least attack it based on objections not addressed by Anselm himself.
May 14th, 2010 | 4:56 pm
Anselm didn’t rebut jack. His argument cooks the books, and it took Kant to show the wishful thinkers that “existence is not a predicate”.
The ontological argument is a joke – and Carter & Payne’s thinking seems akin to it.
I still haven’t seen proof of the non-existence of: Santa Claus, Xenu, Allah, Thor, Zeus, etc., etc. Until Carter proves that the millions of Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, Hindus etc. are wrong in their supernatural claims, his own supernatural belief set is just one among many unfalsifiable claims about the world that no one has any reason to take seriously.
Carter – how do you objectively assess the truth-content of the bible vs. the Koran? (….crickets….)
The fundamental problem with Carter’s position is that there are multiple religions, each with very specific, counterintuitive, weird claims that have no bearing on what can truly be known about the world.
It’s not “atheism” vs. “theism”. That’s a straw man. No one is a “theist”. The claims are always waaaay more specific than that (yes, even for Deists). It’s unbelief vs. 1-100 flavors of Christianity, 1-50 flavors of Islam, 1-10000 flavors of Hindu and so on.
Carter asserts, without evidence and disdainfully, that his belief set is correct, seemingly on the circular basis of a bronze-age book and wishful thinking. It is not worth taking seriously.
I’m done. Good luck with the sky-god who never answers you, your intercessionary prayer which works as well as a placebo, and your incoherent “theology”, and the remnants of the blood-sacrifice, bronze-age barbarism that you base you moral code on.
Start practicing Leviticus and Numbers brosephs. If you don’t stone adulterers, you’re a bunch of cowards who disrespect your invisible master. Hop to it!
May 14th, 2010 | 7:12 pm
Dear A-Bax: I agree with Kant that “existence is not a predicate.” My argument revolved around the idea of a perfect Being’s possessing the predicate of “necessary existence”–which IS a predicate.
You wrote that “the ontological argument is a joke.” In that case, it should be easy for you to point to the logical flaw in premises 1 through 6, which lead to the conclusion that “God exists.”
Until you point to the logical flaw, your posts are simply name-calling. But it should be easy. Everyone knows atheists are the logical ones.
May 14th, 2010 | 7:15 pm
Regarding the “perfect island” argument: Please see my earlier response to the “eggplant” argument. It still applies.
Unless, of course, you want to rebut it. It should be easy. Everyone knows atheists are the…
May 14th, 2010 | 7:47 pm
You know, my last comments were just plain taunting. As a Christian, I repent and apologize. Not to excuse myself, but I just get so tired of the name-calling.
May 14th, 2010 | 9:08 pm
If you cannot prove that something does not exist, how is being militant that it doesn’t exist noble??
May 14th, 2010 | 9:21 pm
GeronimoRumplestiltskin writes:
“You continue to accuse me of lying.”
Because you lied.
May 14th, 2010 | 10:38 pm
Hate to interrupt the circle jerk here, but what we need is a political consensus that can tackle the economic issues that threaten us. We can deal with this later.
May 14th, 2010 | 10:39 pm
Atheism is our natural state; we are born that way. Religion needs to be taught and continuously reinforced. By men.
May 14th, 2010 | 10:46 pm
The greatest modern geniuses produced by mankind seem to agree that there is something behind the Universe. However, the concept of a benign, grey-bearded old man looking out for every individual, as well as every sparrow, certainly is in the realm of “The Future of an Illusion”. However, it must be acknowledged that Christianity, in particular, has served the Western World throughout modern history. Ultimately, it was Christian faith which inspired the Europeans to beat-back the Eastern and Mid-Eastern barbarians and inspired the early Americans!
May 14th, 2010 | 10:54 pm
Why does it matter whether someone believes in a deity or not? Why does it matter which one they believe in? Let’s face it, it was once intellectually popular to “know” the earth was flat. We now understand the world to be an oblate spheroid. Until we reach a new stage of consciousness and understanding this debate will rage on ad infinitum.
What matters today is whether or not you believe and the things you do with that faith or lack thereof.
Personally, I feel more comfortable as an atheist. As a child I was exposed to religion that was threatening and made me feel very self conscious. I would question ideas in sunday school and everyone thought I was an idiot for asking. I don’t believe my mind is wired for the acceptance of that sort of sub-conscious relationship.
May 14th, 2010 | 11:08 pm
If Ray (a previous poster) were truly a Pentecostal minister, as he claims, he would have been born again and filled with the Holy Sprit as I am. Being born again and Spirit filled, you would know the true God, Almighty God, as your Father. If you turned you back on God, one has to wonder if you truly ever knew God, or if you went into sin as God’s Word describes.
For those of us who are really Christians (not in name only, but real Christians) people who are trapped in atheism, agnosticism, and other religions are truly perplexing. It is like knowing a person, then having others come along and say that person doesn’t exist. What would you say to that person? What if someone told you Kansas City doesn’t exist? What would you think? Such is the predicament of those who are born again, Spirit filled Christians. We shake our heads at the atheists, agnostics, and those who are of other such religions. Those people have a religion. We Christians have a relationship with the true God, Almighty God. All they have are theories and philosophy. We have real knowledge and experience.
May 14th, 2010 | 11:13 pm
PK’s comment is spot-on: “Your assumption that the set of facts necessarily does not include any religious tenets is exactly the kind of self-imposed intellectual handicap that this post is talking about.”
I have been dithering about whether to write an apologetics book; I think this just turned the corner for me.
JE’s comment, “Seeing if the assertions can be reliably reproduced in a controlled setting works pretty well…” reveals scientistic thinking, which is inherently flawed.
Scientism posits that science-based knowing is the only valid way of knowing. This is demonstrably false. History is not science, but it is a valid way of knowing. Philosophy is not science, but it is a valid way of knowing. Aesthetics is not science, but it is a valid way of knowing.
Ray’s comment, “I was a Pentecostal minister until I realized there is virtually no essential difference between evangelical Christianity and any other religion in the world … and that they are all fictions.” is particularly sad in the deep ignorance that it reveals. Evangelical Christianity is *fundamentally* different from all world religions both philosophically and empirically.
Philosophically, all world religions except Christianity are Man reaching up to God. Only Christianity has God reaching down to Man. Empirically, all world religions except Christianity are based on *ideas*. Only Christianity is based on an *event*: The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. If it did not happen, Game Over.
Christianity, alone among the world’s religions, has a Null Hypothesis. It’s falsifiable. Just produce the body.
I think I need to go work on that book…
May 14th, 2010 | 11:24 pm
weew’s comment, “Atheism is our natural state; we are born that way.” is demonstrably false.
Atheist aboriginals have never been observed. None. Never. Anthropologists define “human” (genus = homo) burials by whether there is evidence of belief in an afterlife (red ocher, medicinal plants, tools, etc.)
Scientists have recently found that when people “connect with the supernatural” – whether that is via prayer, meditation, or whatever means, that the same area of the brain “lights up.”
We seem to be hardwired to worship.
May 14th, 2010 | 11:37 pm
“Historically speaking, this concession to the greatest lie in the universe is a rather recent development.”
If we’re talking about the history of our “universe,” then belief in god is a “rather recent development” as well.
May 14th, 2010 | 11:40 pm
As an agnostic, I hardly find it intellectually respectable for anyone to claim as fact that God exists or does not exist. Beliefs and facts are two entirely different animals.
May 14th, 2010 | 11:48 pm
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
- Thomas Jefferson
May 15th, 2010 | 12:12 am
Mr. Carter states, “Vincible ignorance is lacking knowledge that is within the individual’s control and for which he is responsible before God. In Romans, St. Paul is clear that atheism is a case of vincible ignorance: “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”
St. Paul, a Jew living at the end of the Second Jewish Temple period, was more likely simply repeating a truth claim consistent with his Jewish world view – a Bronze Age belief that is at best, sincerely believed, but ultimately something held by faith. An opinion.
To me, it is profoundly condescending to suggest someone is mentally deficient because they do not conclude a divine agent is responsible for something perceived by ones senses, using ones rational mind.
This idea of “vincible ignorance” is a fallacy, and quite easy to expose. Simply argue the opposite. “Vincible ignorance is lacking knowledge that is within the individual’s control for which he is responsible before Himself (not God).” The atheist might accuse the theist of the same mental deficiency!
I think it is more reasonable to give the deliberate atheist the benefit of the doubt. The more one understands how the universe works physically, at the subatomic particle level (and smaller), and how immense the known universe appears (if the speed of light, the measuring stick, is constant), it is reasonable (I think) for a rational person to conclude – if St. Paul’s truth claim is true, that this Divine Cause is infinitely beyond our ability to accurately comprehend. And in fact, this is what the Sages of St. Paul’s day believed. Other Jewish oral traditions and midrashic writings of the period use the name “Ein Sof”, for this definition of God. For in reality, God is utterly incomprehensible except when and where this God openly reveals Himself (sorry about the masculine form, as it just doesn’t’ translate).
And for one person to say another person is mentally defective because he or she does not perceive a truly incomprehensible God – well, I find that offensive and unhelpful.
May 15th, 2010 | 1:17 am
Craig Payne…that was excellent. I was reading the posts, thinking “Wow, there sure are alot of folks out there who think highly of their own thoughts”…then Wham! there was your post. Wonderful.
As for that evidence that the atheists don’t agree with, the historical fact of the ressurection of Jesus Christ is foremost. All these folks who think they are so educated refuse to accept the documented truth of that Easter 2,000 years ago. Since it is fact, any honest person who starts with that fact and searches for the truth of God’s existence will invariably end realizing that Jesus Christ is God.
May 15th, 2010 | 1:17 am
Corrie is just plain wrong about her belief that we aren’t born atheists… Corrie, surely you can understand that you are born pretty much as a clean slate if you will. A new, fresh brain that’s been learning from much earlier than when you were born, but essentially a new hard drive with the base operating system in place, but no data to speak of.
Religion and this belief in gods is a learned trait. It’s a cultural meme that infects at an early age in life but rest assured. You learn it from your parents or you learn it from the culture around you but you LEARN it.
Talking about aboriginal atheists just makes no sense whatsoever…
The fact is that if not for your parents inculcating you in its teachings, like my parents did with me, you likely wouldn’t DEVELOP a proclivity to worship. Plenty of children of atheists go on in life never being the “worshippy” sort, and there are plenty of children of atheists who went on to become believers. What that child experiences in life is what most determines what kind of mind develops (religious/irreligious sort).
May 15th, 2010 | 1:46 am
Two words: Pascal’s Wager.
May 15th, 2010 | 1:53 am
FeralCat,
“It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
- Thomas Jefferson”
True enough, but to have some blind, fanatical moron call me “ignorant” pisses me off, something fierce. The argument, “I believe this passionately, so anyone who doesn’t is ignorant,” goes very well with, “Allahu Akbar!” (Kaboom!)
May 15th, 2010 | 1:57 am
Anyone who thinks they are able to address the existence of an omnipotent and omniscient through logical or intellectual reasoning is grossly deluded. The power of logic is extremely limited, to the point that even in something as elementary as mathematics, there are true statements that have NEITHER logical proofs NOR disproofs.
None of your definitions are precise, and none of your evidence is compelling. This goes for atheists and believers alike. How dare any of you pretend you have the slightest clue where we come from?
That’s not to say being an atheist or believer is wrong. One need not form one’s beliefs on pure logic alone; intuition or even personal life experiences can inform one’s views. And it’s ok to profess those views, so long as one doesn’t delude himself into thinking they are based on logical deduction. But for crying out loud, you all really need to get some humility about your ability to understand the universe.
May 15th, 2010 | 2:03 am
SaurKraut Corrie is just plain wrong about her belief that we aren’t born atheists…
No offense, but you appear to misunderstand what the word “atheist” actually means. Your “lack of belief” criteria is leading you to make illogical conclusions. Claiming that any human with a lack of belief in God is an atheist is like saying that since all dogs have hair, any animal with hair is a dog.”
An atheist is someone who is developmentally capable of forming a belief in God but has not or chooses not to do so.
Religion and this belief in gods is a learned trait
Not necessarily. Belief in God could be (as I believe it is) a properly basic belief.
To claim a belief is properly basic means that it is not based either on propositional evidence or on another belief. While 2+2 = 4 would be a basic belief, 22 x 22 = 484 is considered a nonbasic belief since it is based on a “foundation” of other beliefs (namely lower level arithmetic).
Other examples of basic beliefs would be “perceptual beliefs” (I see a dog.), “memory beliefs” (I took out the garbage yesterday.), and beliefs about someone else’s mental states (I may believe my wife is mad because I’m spending too much time responding to comments on this blog.). All of these experiences are the grounds for the beliefs, but they are not evidence for the beliefs themselves.
I mention this in order to lay the groundwork for a claim made by Reformed epistemologists: The theist’s belief that “God exists” is a properly basic belief.
To clarify further, let’s look at a basic belief that atheists and theists have in common. (This line of argument isn’t essential to the claim that “God exists” is a basic belief but I think it will aid in clarifying the point.) One basic belief held by all rational people is the belief in eternal existence. The two variation are that “some are eternal” or “all is eternal” (to claim that “none is eternal” is to make the illogical claim that existence came out of non-existence).
Hinduism is an example of a basic belief that “all is eternal.” Theism and atheism, on the other hand, fall into the “some is eternal” category. Theists believe that a Being labeled “God” possesses eternal existence. Atheists, on the other hand, consider impersonal “matter” to be the only thing that exists eternally.
A rational atheist would agree that matter has, in one form or another, always existed. She would have no “evidence” for this belief yet she doesn’t need any. It is a properly basic belief. In much the same way, theists believe that an eternal Being has always existed. Neither the atheist nor the theist can be considered to be possessing an irrational or improper belief. One or the other may be wrong, of course, but that doesn’t mean they are irrational for holding such views.
Naturally, this is a but a brief explanation of a complicated philosophical argument. We also have to be careful not to read too much into this claim. This is not an “argument for the existence of God.” For while theists are justified in having a belief in God, that does not necessarily mean that he actually does, in fact, exist. What this does show, however, is that the claim “God exists” requires neither evidence nor outside justification in order to be considered rational.
All of this is a long-winded way of pointing out that religious beliefs can be properly basic, and therefore are not dependent on being taught by someone else.
Another obvious point is that your claim suffers from an infinite regress. If the default state is atheism and religious belief has to be taught, then who taught it to the first religious person?
May 15th, 2010 | 2:46 am
I suppose that I have read about 1/2 of the posts on this board, and I doubt if anyone will spend the time to read all the way down to mine.
However, being a Christian, I find that there is a verse of Scripture that defines the atheist/agnostic position in an uncanny way, and having read many comments from the atheists/agnostics about furthering knowledge, proof, understanding, etc…all of their thinking can be summed up with II Timothy 3:7. This verse says that the people living in the last days are “Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
For all of their thinking, for all of their science, for all of their rational logic, for all of their wisdom – their eyes are blinded and they cannot see. They continue to learn but have passed over the truth.
May 15th, 2010 | 3:11 am
The scriptures say “The fool says in his heart ‘There is no God.’” I have many doubts about whether I’ve ever truly heard God’s voice or seen Him provide for me in some specific manner. I could be fooling myself, misinterpreting thoughts or events as a way to justify my belief system. But at the same time, I am extremely doubtful that our existence came about by accident. The “simplest” life form contains very complex “programming”, entailing tens of thousands of processes. As scientists learn more about how life form structures and functions and about the necessary delicate conditions to sustain life, the more absurd is the idea of an accidental existence. The biggest leap of all in terms of evolution is for inert matter to become living matter. The naturalist, acknowledging the complexity of life but refusing to acknowledge the possibility of a metaphysical cause, grasps at straws and buys into the idea that there are infinite number of universes (on what basis I don’t know other than it gives them some way to explain away the necessity of God) and we just happen to be in the right one for life to have come about and be sustained. It seems that our choices boil down to which absurdity are we willing to place our faith in, the absurdity of accidental life or a Being outside of the space-time continuum who created our universe and began life.
May 15th, 2010 | 3:45 am
Joe? I don’t know where to begin but let’s start at the end.
This last sentence is the most inane one you ask but the clear answer is that the first person made it up.
Just as each of the major religions has gone through schisms since their inceptions, or in other words evolved… Just as life arose only once on this planet and then EVOLVED into what we see today… The belief in god also went through an evolution of sorts. You sound like a decently informed person but you might investigate the timeline of gods that we either used to believe in, or currently still do. Contrast that with the age of the civilizations that we know grew to prominence throughout history and you can clearly see a parallel in how people worshiped this/these gods we imagined, key word there… imagined. Stone age and before it was anything to explain the unknowable which morphed into a pagan personal god for each person, to polytheistic in nature, and then back down to one but now one for all, and damn the torpedoes we’ll convert ‘em all!
Problem is, we’re just a bunch of apes, aping each others behaviors, especially in the stone age and before. God just grew, or evolved from there, into what we know of it today.
The problem with gods, is that they divide us. Most of us feel that this idea of god, and the afterlife he has in “store” for us dependent on what we do in life/etc… It’s something that everyone feels strongly about. Too strongly as evidenced by the recent surge in Islamic terrorism…
Joe, no matter what mental gymnastics you go through when trying to logically prove the existence of god, or how much you try to reason god out of existence, it can’t be done. The only other “evidence” we have for a god or gods is anecdotal in nature. It is based in differently aged cultures appearances on the planet. All ancient societies had their own concepts of god, and in all of them they had their own religions. Some religions were able to dominate better than others.
I understand exactly what the term atheist means. I’m actually a deist of sorts but I consider myself an atheist for the following reason.
I know what the definitions are but ask yourself this question.
Why does atheism mean a lack of belief in a god when we have other words like amoral, atypical, agnostic, defined as follows…
amoral means without morals
atypical means without typical(ness)
agnostic means without knowledge
Why does atheism mean lack of belief in god when it clearly follows the same spelling methodology as these other words?
In other words, to me, atheism means without theism.
That being said…
From dictionary.com
theism means the belief in one god as the creator and ruler of the universe, WITHOUT rejection of revelation (distinguished from deism).
deism means belief in the existence of a god on the evidence of reason and nature only, WITH rejection of supernatural revelation (distinguished from theism).
So while a deist believes in the existence of a god, he DOESN’T believe in the existence of THEISTIC gods, thus making him an atheist.
I know you’ll likely disagree, but there is my justification for why I’m an atheist.
I believe in a god, I just don’t believe in theistic gods.
May 15th, 2010 | 4:14 am
I got news for you. We (new atheists) aren’t going away. We are building communities, support networks and charities. In other words, we’re taking the only things religion has to offer a free society and doing it better.
I found this article amusing. The author writes as though he has either never known an atheist or did such a poor job of examining their points that he utterly misunderstood why they don’t believe.
May 15th, 2010 | 5:13 am
To all the atheists out there: Since you believe that the logic of science and mathematics explain everything and look down at people who recognize that faith must be the answer to some questions – answer me this:
Who made 2+2=4?
I’ll wait while your head explodes.
POP!
Religion tries to answer the WHO and WHY of creation while science tries to answer the HOW of creation.
Truth=Science AND Religion working together.
It is best if each discipline stays within its area of expertise.
May 15th, 2010 | 5:21 am
The problem with atheists is not that they fail to be Christians, but that they claim to be irreligious when their own beliefs are every bit as faith based as those of any Christian (or any other religion for that matter.)
Atheism is a religion whose adherents pretend is not a religion. They cannot even be honest about what it is that they believe, and why they believe it.
They claim to know the answers to questions that cannot be answered. Many then go on to pretend that they arrived at their conclusions through the exercise of logic and reason. They are intellectually dishonest.
Many other so-called atheists aren’t really atheists at all, but anti-Christians. They hate Christianity and profess a belief in atheism as a cover for their own base bigotry. Whether there is or is not a God or Gods of any kind is of little concern to them. They profess atheism not because it is what they believe, but because it provides a platform from which they can attack Christians.
So in short atheists are comprised of people who have religious views they pretend are not faith-based and people whose religious conclusions run a distant second to their hatred of Christianity. Haters and Liars in other words.
May 15th, 2010 | 7:02 am
To call anyone’s belief system into question and to devalue it is a sickening position to hold. It is a closed, diseased mind that would shut out the thoughts of anyone JUST because they disagree with you.
Rethink the comments by actually putting your brain into thinking mode, and then we can have a rational discussion. Better idea; consult your fairy tale in the sky and see what “He” says. I’m sure “He” will admonish you for being small minded and petty.
May 15th, 2010 | 7:32 am
Mr.Carter, I have but two things to say:
“Do unto others what you would have them do to you.”
After you have studied this phrase – thoroughly – and reactivated your brain, you will be able to make a post on this subject without making an utter fool of yourself.
May 15th, 2010 | 8:01 am
…This article doesn’t even deserve intellectual attention. I think reading it has made it ever the more obvious that, those who hold Faith as their guide have no ability to use Reason, which is often the case.
Arguments about God’s existence cannot be won since any subjective argument is pointless. If you view things objectively, there is no god. If you start getting into a debate with someone who claims that God is everywhere and in everything, you end up realizing that you cannot argue with an individual who doesn’t believe in Reason.
All of these comments are utterly a waste of time. And this post doesn’t even deserve this attention.
May 15th, 2010 | 8:59 am
God exists, whether or not we choose to believe in Him, or then, full of pride, believe in the only other choice: ourselves as god by studying only and always at “itsaboutme.com.”
Fortunately for believers, He certainly believes in us.
May 15th, 2010 | 9:02 am
Once again we see the angry non-believers spending all their energy fighting a God that they are certain doesn’t exist! And they call this being intellectual.
May 15th, 2010 | 9:33 am
I would agree with the author that athiests have no standing to bring their argument to the table. Belief in G_d has been around for hundreds of thousands of years in over 90% of nearly every population. Therefore, the athiestic position should have about as much standing as arguing in favor of the existene of UFOs.
Political correctness and dilution of scriptural truth has given them a megaphone with disproportionate power relative to the small standing of the argument.
As for the metaphysical, no one has yet proved that consciousness itself is not a metaphysical entity subsisting in a material world. Therefore its disingenuous to call metaphysical arguments intellectually dishonest.
May 15th, 2010 | 10:14 am
He has invisible friends and he calls us intellectually defunct???!!! Really???!!! He has no facts to support his belief system and he lambastes others that need no such superfluous baggage in their lives. What a intellectual fraud.
May 15th, 2010 | 10:37 am
Assuming there is more than one deity that is considered to be omniscient, omnipotent, and perfect. What logical device can determine which of these gods is real, and which are not?
May 15th, 2010 | 10:44 am
boys…boys…settle down. Please consider one thing before writing off the idea of there being a God. ok…two. 1. God loves you and made himself known to man in Jesus, and he is the only way to know God. (creation is evidence of God but not God himself) 2. Your level of repulsion to this statement is evidence of the level of success that Satan is having in keeping you from knowing your Creator.
Just thought I’d throw that in the mix of all the great thinkers here…
If you’re serious about what you believe, either way.. then Jesus is the place to really start investigating. If that sounds ludicrous to you, then its even more crucial that you do just that.
May 15th, 2010 | 10:54 am
“Acknowledging the existence of God is just the beginning—we must also recognize several of his divine attributes. Atheists that deny this reality are, as St. Paul said, without excuse.”
As are, presumably, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, Taoists, etc.
Missing in this article is any actual argument, though. To state that something is “reality” implies there is a logical argument or body of evidence to justify the underlying claim. Let’s see the substance.
May 15th, 2010 | 11:20 am
The existence of God is evidenced by His creation. Where did all this stuff come from? Believing that something came from nothing is absurd and atheists should know it. If something could come from nothing, I’d be afraid to drive to work for fear that a brick wall would “suddenly appear” from nothing right in front of my car. Enough time, the exact conditions and impossibly long odds are the atheist Holy Trinity.
May 15th, 2010 | 12:35 pm
“We (new atheists) aren’t going away. We are building communities, support networks and charities.”
@Steven Olsen:
Interesting. Name five (with links to their contact information). Include at least two charities.
May 15th, 2010 | 12:47 pm
Faith is a gift, not a conclusion. And all this discussion reminds me of the author who said that if fools could fly, it would be overcast at all times.
May 15th, 2010 | 1:17 pm
It’s so amazingly simple the way you tell it. It’s amazing no one thought of these arguments before.
May 15th, 2010 | 1:19 pm
We often hear that the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. This is wrong.
Assuming God and Satan exist and all that jazz, the greatest trick the Devil could possibly pull would be in convincing people that his voice was God’s.
So, if you believe in God and Satan, then when god “wants” you to do something, how do you know it’s god telling you and not the devil?
Belief in god is a result of one contemplating one’s own existence, and more importantly ones own mortality.
Contemplation of one’s mortality can addle even the clearest of thinkers. It’s a bit like religion in that way. In fact, it IS religion, and by that I mean that the fear of death gives a lot of oomph to the God hypothesis.
Ever since we learned of our pending mortality — the most unfortunate consequence of evolving a larger brain — we have done our best to mitigate its doleful message. Much of the greatest works in philosophy, religion, art, and music either exist to bewail our mortality or to argue that a spiritual continuity permits us to accept the physical decline, and eventual decay of our bodies. As the lyrics of Bach’s Jesu meine Freude insists: “But ye are not in the flesh, but in the spirit.”
Stephen J Gould, Urchin in the Storm.
You want to believe in a god, fine, believe in one, but never let that god tell you, or influence you to do something that you wouldn’t normally do
The only position in regards to a religion that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism
I often hear questions like this:
Since atheism doesn’t have any sense of absolute morality, would it not then be an irrational leap of faith, something which atheist themselves so harshly condemn, for an atheist to decide between right and wrong?
Absolute morality? The absolute morality that a religious person might profess would include things like what? Stoning people for adultery? Death for apostasy? Punishment for breaking the sabbath? Death for homosexuals? These are all things which are religiously based absolute morality… I don’t think I WANT an absolute morality. I think I want a morality that is thought out, reasoned, argued, discussed, and based upon I would almost say, intelligent design.
Can we not design our society which has the sort of morality, the sort of society that WE, meaning all of us, want to live in? If you actually look at the moralities which are accepted among modern people, among 21st century people. We don’t believe in slavery any more, we believe in equality for women, we believe in being gentle and kind to animals… These are all things which are ENTIRELY recent. They have very little basis in biblical or koranic scripture. They are things that have developed over historical time through a consensus of reasoning, sober discussion, argument, legal theory, political and moral philosophy. These do NOT come from religion.
Now, to the extent you can FIND good bits in religious scripture, you have to cherry pick… You search your way through the bible or the koran, and you find the OCCASIONAL verse that is an acceptable profession of morality, and we say , “LOOK AT THAT, THATS RELIGION!” and you leave out all the horrible bits and you’ll say, “oh, we don’t believe that anymore, that was from another age and a different context. We’ve grown out of it”.
Well of COURSE we’ve grown out of it! We’ve grown out of it because of secular, moral philosophy and rational discussion.
May 15th, 2010 | 1:25 pm
“Interesting. Name five (with links to their contact information). Include at least two charities.”
What, Desi Erasmus? Suddenly you are asking for real evidence? Why not just take what Steven Olsen has written on blind faith?
May 15th, 2010 | 1:28 pm
Why can’t those who believe – believe
and those who don’t, simply go their way ?
We shouldn’t argue, question, or insult – but let each do his or her thing ! And, instead of creating a furor if you see something or hear something religious – and it bothers you – just don’t look and don’t listen !
May 15th, 2010 | 1:53 pm
Raccman
May 15th, 2010 | 1:28 pm
Why can’t those who believe – believe
and those who don’t, simply go their way ?
We shouldn’t argue, question, or insult – but let each do his or her thing ! And, instead of creating a furor if you see something or hear something religious – and it bothers you – just don’t look and don’t listen !
Raccman,
That sentiment is all well and good but unfortunately, in the REAL world, the only world we KNOW exists, people’s beliefs have consequences…
Sure, Christianity is a religion of peace but it’s adherents are JUST as susceptible to crazy actions as the Islamist is. They both hold a belief in a god for which we have very little, if any, evidence. Yet some of them choose to take things to the extreme now don’t they?
As I say, people’s beliefs have consequences, and this topic of gods and an afterlife elicits the most extreme of actions BECAUSE of the belief.
If you believed cyanide was a good thing to drink, I’d try to talk you out of it (I’d try anyway) but the consequence of thinking it was good to drink has a bad end result doesn’t it?
Same thing applies with this belief in god. If not for the believe in god, we wouldn’t have Islamic nutters blowing themselves, and others, up. We wouldn’t have Christian extremists blowing up abortion clinics, etc.
Yes, there will ALWAYS be crazies in life, for a myriad of reasons, but we work with these people to try to dispel their destructive beliefs don’t we?
The root cause of the religious war we find ourselves in with Islam is a belief in a god. We KNOW we’re right, and they KNOW they’re right but what if the third option that we’re all WRONG was the right answer?
Just think about it a second. The VERY same logic and reason that you use to come to the conclusion that your religion is right is the VERY same that they use to profess a belief in their religious texts. Yes, they’re too fundamentalist about it but…
Theists often call atheists arrogant but pull the log from your own eye before seeking to pull the splinter from your neighbors. You call everyone else’s religion wrong and misguided, don’t you? How arrogant is that to dismiss the beliefs of others.
The reality is that ALL religious people’s beliefs are wrong, and it will be our undoing as a species one day.
May 15th, 2010 | 2:29 pm
so….um… what I said before.
May 15th, 2010 | 2:43 pm
Rationalist Anthem
May 15th, 2010 | 2:54 pm
darevj
May 15th, 2010 | 2:29 pm
so….um… what I said before.
————————————————-
What you said before was wishful thinking Darevj.
Jesus may have been a good man, if he even truly existed, but just because he espoused good morals or ethics doesn’t in and of itself prove the veracity of the claims that he was the son of god. There have been countless people throughout history who have laid claim to being divinely begotten.
First hand testimony of his life doesn’t prove that he was the son of god, all it proves is that someone laid claim to it. The subsequent claims that he arose from the tomb are also just that… claims. There is absolutely no proof whatsoever that he even existed other than made up stories, the first of which wasn’t written down until decades after Jesus supposed passing.
No other archeological records of his existence ever proved he was crucified, no Roman records or other Jewish texts of the day.
All of your faith is in what others have told you about the man of Jesus, and what others told them, on back in time to the days of his supposed existence.
May 15th, 2010 | 3:40 pm
I’ve known a number of atheists and agnostics in my lifetime. The agnostics, were, by and large, fairly even-keeled people who had questions about how God could exist, and still let people do terrible things. Reasonable- rational- and not particularly wrongheaded thinking. The atheists, however, all seem to be primarily just angry. Angry at the world, angry at other people, and above all else- angry at God. It’s not so much that they don’t believe in him, as that they aren’t on speaking terms with him.
May 15th, 2010 | 4:47 pm
Ornithophobe
May 15th, 2010 | 3:40 pm
Ornithophobe the pop psychologist… ;-) Nice try, but this is just an example of deflection. It doesn’t answer any of the questions or comments I or any other person wants to know the answers to.
The reason I and other atheists are speaking up more and more is that as I said to Raccman… People’s beliefs have consequences. That’s the motivation for myself and others speaking up now. It’s that now that these religious nutters are causing such a ruckus around the world, in Europe, Asia, anywhere that they border another religion, they’re killing and terrorizing people.
One of these days they’re gonna drop the big bomb (nuke/biological) on some unsuspecting city and then what do we do?
May 15th, 2010 | 5:42 pm
SauerKraut:
I have truly enjoyed your observations and comments on this thread. Hopefully, rational thinking will continue to prevail. When you consider that if you could travel at the speed of light, it would take you one hundred thousand years just to cross the Milky Way, how could an entity have existed 14 billion years ago to create the unimaginable billions of galaxies that constitute the universe? And by the way, how did that entity come into existence?
May 15th, 2010 | 5:55 pm
I’ve read a lot of people here writing that logical arguments for God’s existence can’t be right. Still waiting for the refutation of the one I presented. Shouldn’t be that hard, should it?
May 15th, 2010 | 6:58 pm
“This last sentence is the most inane one you ask but the clear answer is that the first person made it up.”
Why? And How?
If the default is atheism, how would this “made up” God have gotten beyond day one. If everyone then in existence’s, first tendency is disbelief, what could he/she have done or said to make a lifetime of disbelief change?
May 15th, 2010 | 7:27 pm
Let me find your comment and we’ll see what needs deconstructing… if anything
May 15th, 2010 | 7:28 pm
I consider myself agnostic. As to the question of the the existence of a god, I think the only intellectually honest answer a person can give is “I don’t know”.
To believe there is or is not a god both require faith, as neither can be proven.
Faith is belief without proof, but the acceptance that you technically do not actually know is what separates belief from delusion.
I view this as the first indicator of whether a person is even remotely credible in arguing the point one way or the other. If, in one way or another, make a claim that a god does or does not exist, then they have already failed to make their case.
May 15th, 2010 | 8:04 pm
Craig Payne,
Hmm…
“A supreme being would have no potential for change”
Didn’t the god of the bible change quite a bit from the old to the new testament? Doesn’t he read as a jealous, capricious, malevolent god in the old, and a loving, caring, forgiving god in the new? I call that quite a bit of change.
About the rest of your argument… One word, sophistry.
Your William Lane Craig’ish argument is JUST the kind of word game meant to bowl people over with auditory and mental overload. It’s the glorious hocus pocus argument. I could argue in the classical sense throwing names of fallacies and logical blunders around but what’s the point?
I’ll say the same to you that I said to Joe Carter above… No matter what mental gymnastics you go through when trying to logically prove the existence of god, or how much you try to reason god out of existence, it can’t be done. The only other “evidence” we have for a god or gods is anecdotal in nature thus leaving us with theistic gods, or gods with names. It is based in differently aged cultures appearances on the planet. All ancient societies had their own concepts of god, and in all of them they had their own religions. Some religions were able to dominate better than others is all.
I assume you’re christian, but I didn’t read all your comments because I was trying to find the main one to look at with your “beefy” argument, but the reality is that Christianity is kind of a meshing of Greek and Jewish religious philosophies. You surely also know of all the stories that are more ancient to Jesus story that echo a LOT of the same plot line as Jesus life story. Like Horus for example? There are a lot of prophets of gods from all over the world who were said to be born of a virgin, Horus himself was raised from teh dead (arose after dieing due to his divinity).
The point Craig is that no matter how right your argument is for the existence of god, you have a LONG way to go to prove the claims of Christianity, Islam, Hindu, or other religions that are still practiced to this day.
On that note, something to note… The Jain religion is one that has roots going back 5-6000 years and the Chinese culture stretches that far back as well. What to say about all these other religions that came before the one true religion of Christianity?
So just so you know, I’m actually a lot like David Hume in his philosophies… I can see a god as a possibility, but that’s as far as I’m willing to go, unless and until this god makes himself known to us all, all at the same time… Just say hi I say.
Anyway, I’m a “deistic-atheist” because while a deist might believe in a god or gods, he/she DOESN’T believe in THEISTIC gods. Like David Hume I can see it as a possibility but that’s as far as I’ll go. When I say a god doesn’t exist, I mean a god with a name.