89 thoughts on ““I Can’t Be Sure God Doesn’t Exist””

  1. It’s really quite simple. A genuine atheist is insane, for they are certain they have proved a negative. What most “atheists” are is agnostic. A sensible position, but one you don’t hear from as a rule, for what would be the point of militate Agnosticism? “We aren’t sure and neither are you!”…. So the people we hear from are not actually Atheists, they believe quite strongly, it’s just that they hate God, because, as a rule, their puppy died. It’s why they keep attacking public crosses and similar things, which they wouldn’t do if they didn’t believe. It seems to me that many people have a problem with others having free will too…..

    1. A genuine atheist is insane, for they are certain they have proved a negative.

      Do you think that anyone who says they are certain Zeus doesn’t exist is insane? Do you think that everyone who believes Zeus doesn’t exist is certain that they have proven a negative?

      So the people we hear from are not actually Atheists, they believe quite strongly, it’s just that they hate God, because, as a rule, their puppy died.

      Do you think that anyone who says they don’t believe in Zeus secretly does quite strongly believe in Zeus, but hates him?

      1. Anyone? Well, yes. I am sure there are many insane people who are sure Zeus does not exist. Words have meanings. I think you meant everyone, not anyone, much like some people say Atheist when they mean Agnostic…..

        Well, no, because there is a difference between someone who believes Zeus doesn’t exist, and someone who is certain that Zeus doesn’t exist. Open vs. closed mind.

        Again, anyone is very big, and I am sure that I could find someone to fill your condition. But I think I understand what you are getting at. I would say that if I found someone who didn’t believe in Zeus, who attacked every public item that might be a lighting bolt, because that meant Zeus, who spent every waking hour trying to get mythology classes removed from school because, Zeus, duh!, who tried to empty museums of any sculpture of Zeus, who went into communities that celebrate lightning strikes in memory of Zeus, and tried to end the practice, because he found it offensive? I think we are in Caesar’s Wife territory……

    2. Huh? What happened to the commonsense meaning, “a-theist = someone who is not a theist”? That is, someone who goes through life with neither need nor thought of an old man in the sky who controls everything? The compulsion to attach certainty to atheism is a debating tactic, and a juvenile one at that.

      1. Many atheists know more about Christianity than your average Christian does.

        Supposedly “atheist” means “without god”–they aren’t necessarily convinced that god doesn’t exist, but have no need for god in their lives. Yes, I know that some people think that’s what “agnostic” means.

        1. Most atheists think they know more and go around telling christians what they believe without any regard to what their target actually believes.

          1. You’ve taken a survey? You might be subject to sampling bias–it could be that most atheists keep a low profile unless provoked, you might be seeing only the noisy ones.

          2. “Most atheists think they know more and go around telling christians what they believe ”

            *Most* atheists do this? How do you know Most? or even half?

            A lot of us say nothing because we don’t believe in forcing our opinions on anyone. There’s no reason to say something – we are not trying to sell anything.

            Most atheists think they know more? How do you know that?

        2. Many atheists know more about Christianity than your average Christian does.

          Of all the things Atheists claim, this is by far theost laughable and the epitome of arrogance and folly. The average Christian knows volumes more than the average Athist about Christianity. This is like Sarah Brady telling Jeff Cooper she knows more about the 1911 than he does or William Proxmire claiming he knows more about spaceflight than Von Braun.

          It isn’t simply wrong, it is pure idiocy.

          1. OK, many atheists know more about the bible than your average Christian. Presumably you’re referring to some subjective experience which only a true Christian can experience?

          2. No idea, I haven’t taken a survey. The atheists I talk to know more about the Bible than most Christians I talk to (my brother is an exception–he’s actually read through the bible several times). He’s not that interested in the history of the church, though.

          3. How often do you get into deep theological discussions with your atheist and Christian acquaintances? I’m guessing your sample size is pretty small. How much do you know about the Bible that you can act as a judge about which of your acquaintances knows has a deep knowledge and which doesn’t? From what you said regarding your brother, I’m guessing your knowledge is fairly limited, just reading a book several times is no indication of an understanding of it. I’m not saying your brother is or is not knowledgeable about the Bible or Christianity, only that the number of times a person reads the Bible is a poor metric.

          4. Not particularly often. It seems fairly pointless.

            Yes, my sample size is small, it’s usually a complete waste of time, not to mention a potential friendship killer, to bring up religion in a conversation. If the person you’re talking to has the same persuasion as you, mainly you end up agreeing on how stupid the other side is. If not, one side is going to get the other side pretty riled up. Mark Twain said that all religions other than your own look foolish.

            Yes, how many times a person reads the bible is a poor metric, but at least if you’ve read it through you have some familiarity with its warts. Most Christians I’ve talked with have only been familiar with a few bits, and mainly only in the abstract. Somehow the priests don’t point out the inconsistencies, even in the parts they do go over.

          5. Somehow the priests don’t point out the inconsistencies, even in the parts they do go over.

            A lot of what non-christians call inconsistancies are easily explained. My favorite is why does God tell the Israelites to smite their enemise if he tells them not to kill in the ten commandmants? That is one of the classics the militant Atheists who know the Bible better than the Christians like to pull out.

            The truth is there is no inconsistancy there. The Origina Hebrew would translate to ‘murder’ and not ‘kill’. The meaning of the word kill has drifted in the English language since middle english was de rigeur.

            But the militant Atheist takse thats a proof positive that the naive Christians don’t know their own Bible was well as they do.

            If you think that apparent contradictions in the Bible haven’t been hashed-over and discussed, you are simply not looking in the right place or asking the right people.

          6. Of course they’ve been hashed over and discussed. The two different ancestries for Jesus, the differences in what happened at the tomb, the number of days Jesus walked the earth after he rose (or whether he actually rose), the number of legs a grasshopper has, why it’s ok to cheat and lie to your enemies, just what constitutes a moral person, the false prophecies, the attempts to wedge Jesus into the Jewish prophecies, why the first covenant is no longer valid, why it’s ok to murder or enslave children, why it’s ok to toss your companion to the mob, just what should be considered part of the bible–these have all been discussed and justified for the last couple thousand years. I certainly don’t have any new insight. I just don’t buy the explanations.

          7. The two different ancestries for Jesus

            Maternal and Paternal

            Let me pre-empt your next question:

            why the Father? Whasn’t the conception divine?

            Legal progression of inheritance, he was still Joeseph’s adopted son.

          8. Drat. WordPress ate my comment. No matter.

            Both genealogies are explicitly through Joseph. In one Joseph was the son of Eli, in the other Joseph was the son of Jacob. The genealogies diverge after David, but there is a common pair, Shealtiel and Zerubbabel in both, although the paths from David to Shealtiel and the paths from Zerubbabel to Joseph are different. I suppose it’s possible that these are different Shealtiels and Zerubbabels, that there were a lot of Shealtiels and Zerubbabels at the time.

  2. I’ve never been able to understand the certainty of faith of atheists.

    Replacing “God” with “Santa Claus” or “Zeus” or “Odin” or “Cthulhu” should help to clear things up.

    Few people would consider the statement “There is no Santa Claus” an article of faith. Why would the statement “There is no God” be considered one?

    Similarly, few people would consider the statement “I’m an agnostic with regard to the existence of Santa Claus” a reasonable intellectual position. Why should the statement “I’m an agnostic with regard to the existence of God” be considered one?

    1. Well, for one, the existence of “Santa Claus” is falsifiable: exploration reveals neither workshop nor elves. But if you define “god” as something unfalsifiable, it becomes purely a matter of opinion.

      1. Well, for one, the existence of “Santa Claus” is falsifiable: exploration reveals neither workshop nor elves.

        Nonsense. Santa Claus is a supernatural being of great power. He makes his workshop and elves undetectable to mortal senses.

        But if you define “god” as something unfalsifiable…

        Then the concept is emptied of all meaning. “God” becomes unintelligible. You might as well speak of a “square circle” or “1.4587 kg of outrage”.

        1. Nonsense. Santa Claus is a supernatural being of great power. He makes his workshop and elves undetectable to mortal senses.

          Well, then that particular Santa Claus may indeed exist. I thought you were talking about the one at the north pole with supersonic reindeer.

          1. Well, then that particular Santa Claus may indeed exist.

            So just to be clear…

            You’re on the fence about a Santa Claus who can make his his workshop and elves undetectable to mortal senses but you draw the line at living at the north pole and supersonic reindeer?

          2. “And the supersonic reindeer are physical impossibilities.”

            Oh I don’t know…once evolution brings us reindeer bodies that follow the area rule, and swept back ears, we might be hearing supersonic booms all over the earth on Dec. 24th.

            BTW, apropos of nothing (except it just happened) how come a string of replies to replies suddenly loses the “Reply” hot button?

          3. Just like to point out that supersonic reindeer are -not- “physical impossibilities”.

            If you’d like proof, we need to either find somewhere very far from PETA or a Concorde.

    2. What Titus said. I am actually an agnostic with regard to the existence of Odin, Zeus and Cthulhu. As someone once said, “there are many gods you don’t believe in. I simply disbelieve in one more than you do.”

    3. Because “Santa Claus” is specific, “God” is generic. An atheist, at least in traditional usage, is not merely someone who disbelieves in JHWH, but someone who disbelieves in all possible conceptions of divinity – including those which no human has yet thought up and written down.

      A person who merely says, “I am absolutely certain I have proved the Christians got it wrong, the Greeks got it wrong, the Norse got it wrong, and that Lovecraft was just making it up”, is not an atheist. So long as he is open to the possibility that something divine might be found in the future, he is an agnostic.

      And, being an agnostic, he’s probably more likely to identify as a humanist, environmentalist, socialist, scientist, anarchist, or whatever else it is he does believe in, than the one thing he doesn’t. You generally have to ask specific questions to pin down an agnostic. The ones who go out of their way to tell you they are atheists, as Robert Mitchell points out, are the ones who are quite certain that God (or at least a priest somewhere) killed their puppy and have never gotten over it. Their grievance may be genuine, at least where some priests are concerned, but they usually aren’t very good company.

      1. You generally have to ask specific questions to pin down an agnostic. The ones who go out of their way to tell you they are atheists, as Robert Mitchell points out, are the ones who are quite certain that God (or at least a priest somewhere) killed their puppy and have never gotten over it.

        This puppy-killing-God thing ranks as one of the weirdest arguments for a Christian God, I think. For one thing, why would someone whose puppy died — even someone ignorant of all religions save Christianity — think that the Christian God did it, and not, say, SATAN, as no doubt the innocent indoctrinated would be told to believe? (For that matter, Robert and John, who killed your puppies? Do you believe Satan did it? What is Christian doctrine about puppy-killing?) Why would someone raised in another religious tradition blame the Christian God for their dead puppy?

        So long as he is open to the possibility that something divine might be found in the future, he is an agnostic.

        In the context of science, arguing about open minds vs. closed minds is a sure sign one is dealing with a crank, because cranks love to urge scientists to be more open-minded! In the context of religion, it makes even less sense for Christians to demand open-mindedness. Christianity has a long history of closed-mindedness, unto the point of executing unbelievers.

        And, being an agnostic, he’s probably more likely to identify as a humanist, environmentalist, socialist, scientist, anarchist, or whatever else it is he does believe in, than the one thing he doesn’t.

        Well, I’m not an agnostic, I’m an atheist, because that’s what is taught in my religion. But I don’t feel any obligation to accept your definitions of what I am, nor your apparent descent into decadent Bayesianism.

    4. Simple, you have a bit of bait and switch going on here (I don’t think it’s deliberate). You switch from Atheist (I am Certain there is no God!) to Agnostic(I don’t know if there is a God). Words do have meanings, and we have two different words here because they mean different things…..

      1. You switch from Atheist (I am Certain there is no God!) to Agnostic(I don’t know if there is a God). Words do have meanings, and we have two different words here because they mean different things

        Words have meanings, but I don’t accept your characterization of their meaning. I’ll offer an alternate interpretation which is closer to my experience. An atheist is simply one who is “not a theist”, i.e. someone who has no need or thought about an old man in the sky (OMITS) who controls everything. An agnostic, on the other hand, is someone who wastes a good portion of his or her intellectual energy struggling with the proposition that there is an OMITS who controls everything, only to arrive at the position that the proposition is undecidable.

    5. If god is such a ridiculous ideas, and invention of weakminded idiots, then why do you insist of making a point that He doesn’t exist ?

      I have never seen someone being obnoxious about Santa to little kids just trying to enjoy X-mas … but if Santa and god are the same, then atheist are silly.

      1. “I have never seen someone being obnoxious about Santa to little kids just trying to enjoy X-mas…”

        Never spent time in the Bronx?

        😉

      2. If god is such a ridiculous ideas, and invention of weakminded idiots, then why do you insist of making a point that He doesn’t exist ?

        Because, historically, weak-minded idiots have constituted the vast majority of humanity, and have burned those who don’t believe in OMITS at the stake. At this particular point in history, now that the risk of being burned at the stake has receded somewhat, it seems opportune to remind weak-minded idiots that they are wrong, lest we risk back-sliding.

  3. I am actually an agnostic with regard to the existence of Odin, Zeus and Cthulhu.

    What is your position with respect to Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, etc?

    1. What is your position with respect to Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, etc?

      Santa Claus definitely exists and his existence can be proven in a court of law, as I can call millions of witnesses who will testify that they have met him personally. In contrast, the existence of Julius Caesar, King Henry VIII, and George Washington is just heresay.

      The Easter Bunny is very unlikely to exist, unless it’s a monotreme, because mammals generally don’t lay eggs.

      The tooth fairy probably does exist, as I’ve had personal though indirect interactions with her.

      This Friday night, amazingly enough, I actually encountered the blanket fairy. I was helping lead a bunch of geology students on a caving trip and we were camped out in 27F degree weather. After much drinking (geology is mostly drinking) I flopped into my cheap tent and crawled into my $5 Marlboro sleeping bag, which wasn’t rated for that kind of cold. Then my tent’s zipper jammed and I laid back looking at the stars thinking “This is really, really going to be bad.”

      Out of nowhere a gorgeous blonde co-ed geologist appeared and gave me a thick wool blanket, saying her father had given it to her when she was a child.

      In the morning I realized that she must’ve been the blanket fairy, because if she’d been a flesh-and-blood blonde co-ed geology student it would’ve made more sense to keep me warm by climbing into my sleeping bag and spooning with me, whereas an ephemeral being wouldn’t add body heat that way and would instead hand out blankets.

  4. What is your position with respect to Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, etc?

    I don’t believe that any of them exist. But my position remains that I cannot prove a negative. I don’t think that’s an “unreasonable” intellectual position, but your mileage may vary.

    1. I don’t believe that any of them exist.

      This is precisely the position of the atheist with respect to God.

      But my position remains that I cannot prove a negative. I don’t think that’s an “unreasonable” intellectual position, but your mileage may vary.

      “I don’t believe vampires exist” is a perfectly reasonable intellectual position.

      “I am an agnostic with respect to the existence of vampires” is not a reasonable intellectual position.

      1. “I do not believe that X exists.”

        “I believe that X does not exist.”

        You do understand, don’t you, that these are not logically equivalent statements?

        One is the absence of a belief. The other is a belief, and a logically unsupportable one.

        The former is agnosticism. The latter is atheism (as most people define it).

      2. “I don’t believe vampires exist” is a perfectly reasonable intellectual position.

        If you limit your definition of vampires to an entity that sucks the blood of others, then I’d say they do exist.

        If you read the “Twilight” series, then you could not hold a reasonable intellectual position.

        1. And shockingly, we’re finding out that -zombies- do, sort of, exist. In the insect realm at least. Colony Collapse Disorder in bees is thought to be in part a parasite that convinces the bees to rest somewhere other than the main hive. And there are a couple different types of ‘zombie ants’.

      3. Ah, no. That is the position of an Agnostic. An Agnostic has wiggle room, an Atheist does not. Much like FTL, really. An Agnostic does not believe that FTL is possible, but he keeps his eyes open, because he has been wrong before.

        Ah, no. “I am an agnostic with respect to the existence of Vampires” is the reasonable intellectual position. A sensible person tries to keep an open mind, so that History does not make a fool of him. Much like the scientist, Lord Kelvin, who calculated the age of the Earth, but got it wrong because of the radiation at the core, unknown at the time. But he saved his reputation because he left the possibility of an unknown element changing his equations open. He was not an Atheist, he was not Certain…..

      4. This is silly. I do not believe in Santa Claus because that question has been explained to full satisfaction. My parents left the presents under the tree, took the bite out of the cookie, and sipped the hot chocolate we children left out. We found the presents in the attack two weeks before Christmas. I have no need for the Santa Claus hypothesis.

        There are too many unknowns about nature to rule out the existence of a God or an advanced race of progenitors or what have you to any level of certainty.

  5. We will all rue the days we wasted discussing this tedious point when the upcoming NBC wars destroy humanity and we still don’t have sustainable redoubts in space. So it helps some people feel more secure to live their life within a narrative story that gives them a feeling of purpose. Big deal.

  6. “I do not believe that X exists.”

    “I believe that X does not exist.”

    You do understand, don’t you, that these are not logically equivalent statements?

    One is the absence of a belief. The other is a belief, and a logically unsupportable one.

    The former is agnosticism. The latter is atheism (as most people define it).

    So, again, just to be clear…

    You think statements like…

    “I believe that vampires do not exist.”

    “I believe that Rand Simberg is not a serial killer.”

    “I believe that Rand Simberg is not married to Lady Gaga.”

    “I believe that Rand Simberg is not a Marxist.”

    “I believe that Rand Simberg will not vote for Barrack Obama.”

    …are logically unsupportable?

    Whereas statements like…

    “I do not believe that vampires exists.”

    “I do not believe that Rand Simberg is a serial killer.”

    “I do not believe that Rand Simberg is married to Lady Gaga.”

    “I do not believe that Rand Simberg is a Marxist.”

    “I do not believe that Rand Simberg will vote for Barrack Obama.”

    …are?

    Is that your position?

  7. The question is whether you think that the arbitrary should have any place in a rational discussion. Do you start with evidence and reach conclusions based upon that evidence, or do you start with arbitrary, and in this case fantastical or nonsensical, conclusions and then start hunting for evidence to give a veneer to the thing you are trying to suppose? The question isn’t about what people believe, it is about the c

  8. Yes, as a matter of fact, it is, on a purely logical basis. You cannot prove that I’m not a serial killer or a Marxist, but I’m glad you believe it (assuming you do). The Lady Gaga thing is quite unlikely, for a number of reasons, but it would be difficult to prove it to an existential certainty.

  9. Yes, as a matter of fact, it is, on a purely logical basis. You cannot prove that I’m not a serial killer or a Marxist, but I’m glad you believe it (assuming you do). The Lady Gaga thing is quite unlikely, for a number of reasons, but it would be difficult to prove it to an existential certainty.

    I think I see the disconnect here. You’re confusing proof with reasonable intellectual position.

    The statement…

    “I believe that Rand Simberg is not a serial killer.”

    is a perfectly reasonable intellectual position. It is not equivalent to the claim..

    “I can prove that Rand Simberg is not serial killer.”

    Similarly…

    “I believe that God does not exist.”

    although, a perfectly reasonable intellectual position, is not equivalent to…

    “I can prove that God does not exist.”

      1. This gets pretty silly pretty fast. I’m pretty sure there aren’t nondetectable dragons living in my garage, to say it takes faith to believe that seems to be stretching the definition of faith outside the point where the concept is useful.

        1. How do you know there isn’t a dragon in your garage?

          Empirical evidence?

          Empiricism assumes we live in a law-like universe. But the lawlike nature of the universe is an assumption that cannot be proven empirically. A Christian can point to Tomistic theology and say the law-like nature of the universe follows logically from the nature of God, which is known through faith. An atheist can believe in a law-like universe only through an independent leap of faith. Either way, all knowledge depends on faith.

          1. How do I know that the universe won’t destroy itself the next time I blink? I could imagine it–after all, there was a TV show where a lady could cause strange things to happen by blinking. Is it faith that I blink anyway, without worrying too much about bizarre things happening?

          2. “Is it faith that I blink anyway, without worrying too much about bizarre things happening?”

            No it’s playing the odds, knowing your limitations(with regard to destroying the world), and also knowing that if your next blink did destroy the world, there’s not much you can do about it. Unless you’d like to kill yourself before your next blink.

          3. Wha? You have it backwards — the data collected via empiricism leads one to conclude and behave as if the universe were lawful because there are no practical sane alternatives. If you suddenly decided, without any evidence, that gravity would reverse itself tomorrow and acted on that knowledge, you’d be insane.

            Further, the “leap of faith” you claim the atheist make is called induction, and it’s really not such a big leap for reasons I just mentioned — most folks do so without being aware of it, regardless of their faith.

          4. the data collected via empiricism leads one to conclude and behave as if the universe were lawful because there are no practical sane alternatives.

            Why do you assume the universe must arrange itself in such a way as to provide you with a practical alternative? Are you so important that the universe must configure itself for your convenience? This is still a leap of faith.

            Further, the “leap of faith” you claim the atheist make is called induction

            No, faith is not induction. And you can’t prove induction by induction.

            most folks do so without being aware of it, regardless of their faith.

            There’s a difference between knowing something and assuming it without thinking. Most people assumed man would never walk on the Moon.

          5. If you assume that something is going to happen just because it has happened 50 billion times in a row and never not happened, that’s faith?

            Faith is a pretty useless concept, then.

          6. Why do you assume the universe must arrange itself in such a way as to provide you with a practical alternative?

            That…doesn’t even make any sense. Let’s put it this way — the cliff you leap off of does not care if you believe you can flap your arms and fly. The empirical world is ineluctable. I’m not sure why you’re having trouble grasping this concept. Are you, by chance, new to our universe?

          7. Either way, all knowledge depends on faith./i>

            I don’t believe that. In fact, I don’t just not believe it’s true, I affirmatively believe it’s not true.

            Yours is a species of dorm-room solipsism, and unworthy of further elaboration. According to my good friend Bluto Blutarksy, it’s just an act of faith to believe that there was a play entitled “Hamlet” written around 1600 by a playwright using the name “Shakespeare”. It’s an act of faith to believe that water is a neutral molecule comprising two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen. It’s an act of faith to believe that the sun is a main sequence star like many other stars in our galaxy. It’s an act of faith to believe that the director of the Godfather movies was Francis Ford Coppola. Therefore, it is an act of faith to believe that Bluto’s “Fs” in Literature, Chemistry, Astronomy, and yes, even Film Studies is any less worthy than an “A”. Because all knowledge is fruitless.

            It’s this kind of obscurantist BS that earns “believers” the scorn that they so richly deserve.

        2. If you assume that something is going to happen just because it has happened 50 billion times in a row and never not happened, that’s faith?

          No, that’s empiricism. The article of faith is the belief that we live in a universe with laws that can be determined empirically.

          No amount of empirical evidence can prove we live in a law-like universe because empirical evidence *assumes* a law-like universe. That would be a circular argument, which is a logical fallacy.

          It’s interesting how vehemently some people want to deny having articles of faith despite empirical evidence to the contrary. It’s almost of is their lack of faith is an article of faith. 🙂

          1. The article of faith is the belief that we live in a universe with laws that can be determined empirically.

            This is not faith at all — it is an assumption. It is, of course, the assumption underlying science. And we have found that it works pretty well. Better, in fact, than superstition, which seems to be your predominant thought pattern.

            History is full of saints who died horrific deaths rather than deny their faith. I doubt you would find many scientists willing to be burned at the stake in defense of their assumptions. Galileo wasn’t willing.

  10. The question is whether you think that the arbitrary should have any place in a rational discussion. Do you start with evidence and reach conclusions based upon that evidence, or do you start with arbitrary, and in this case fantastical or nonsensical, conclusions and then start hunting for evidence to give a veneer to the thing you are trying to suppose? The question isn’t about what people believe, it is about truth status and evidence-based truth claims are ultimately either true or false. Cognition being a function of working from evidence, arbitrary claims are neither true nor false, but intellectual vacuousness, the pretense of engaging in thought without the basic requirement of cognition. Theists are utterly incapable of explaining what they are talking about and my next statement applies equally well to them and to Dr. Dawkins, when they say their is a “God” and he says he cannot say with certainty that there is not I can say with certainty that I have no idea what they are talking about and neither does anyone else. The problem with Dawkins statement is that they’ve made a vacuous statement and he has mistakenly assumed that it must therefore be worthy of rational consideration. Beyond establishing the arbitrary nature of such a claim it deserves exactly zero consideration.

    1. “Do you start with evidence and reach conclusions based upon that evidence, or do you start with arbitrary, and in this case fantastical or nonsensical, conclusions and then start hunting for evidence to give a veneer to the thing you are trying to suppose?”

      Some people start with an observation and try to explain it. This includes theists.

      Your two-choice layout is oversimplified.

  11. I, personally, have decided that I’m an apatheist. It’s not that I have a strong opinion about the existence of God, I just can’t imagine a dispositive answer to that question making a bit of difference to me in any way. The debate about the existence of God is only interesting to the degree that other people find it interesting and allow it to affect their behaviour.

  12. So all I have to do to keep an agnostic busy is make up something, tell him that I made it up and that it isn’t true, and then goad him into defending his lack of belief that it is true? And he will really think it’s reasonable to reserve judgement about the truth of something he has been told was made up, just because he can’t prove a negative? Wow, what fun!

  13. I’m agnostic in that I think our feeble meat heads aren’t capable of even discerning an existence of god or not even whether he/she/it is sitting next to you on the bus. What’s that saying? “Any sufficiently advanced being would give the appearance of being a deity”. Well it could just as well transcend itself that there is a god but that he/she/it isn’t capable of actually existing in our universe. But perhaps there is a universe that god can exist and he/she/it routinely walks by reading a newspaper and looks up for a bit with a quick nod and says ,”morning…”. Although it’s unlikely such a universe would need sidewalks, let alone newspapers. But we personify things to make them familiar enough to effectively communicate a transient thought into a tangible abstract. A component to which our meat heads can identify and reproduce into gutteral sounds that others understand. Which leaves me being agnostic because anything so remote to our existence may just as well not even exist for all intent and purpose. Looks at clock, oh look hockey almost on.

  14. I’m quite sure vampires exist. The zoo where I worked had two pairs in the small mammal department.

    Does hunger exist? Pain? Happiness? I’d say yes, but you can it prove it by the same process you’d use to prove a bat exists.

    Jim’s problem is he’s trying to draw analogy between two things that are not analogous. Vampires are purely physical beings. God, by most commonly accepted definitions, is not. Consider the Biblical definition, “God is love.” That is not remotely analogous to those other things Jim mentions. Not even to Greek gods like Zeus, who were simply powerful superheroes who lived on a nearby mountain.

  15. I consider myself an atheist in that I believe that God can not exist, where I define God as infallible, the set of all sets. I think therefore I am, and I am not God (if I was God then I would by definition have to know about it) therefore God can not exist. About all lesser infallible gods (the christian god, Santa Claus, tooth fairy, etc.) I am agnostic. I can not prove a negative unless my very existence (which I can be certain of) is an exception to it.

    If I was “insane” and thought that I was God, then maybe the existence of an infallible God would be possible… This raises an interesting point, what if god is being fooled by his own little Descartes evil demon? How can a god know that it knows everything?

    Not that the higher levels of religion is ignorant of this – it is in god we trust, not in god we have faith. Faith is for the masses, trust is for those higher ups who know that a god is necessarily fallible, though hopefully far less so than people, and worthy of trust.

    Living in a world of probability in no way prevents one from making decisions. A gambler does not have to believe that every play they make is the right one, they can just play the odds. Some gods obviously have far better odds of existing than other ones…

    I have also often seen otherwise intelligent people take a pulse width modulation approach to belief, gambling on beliefs, so to speak, and changing them when required. Believing in gravity, for example, mostly works, and is far more cognitively efficient than a fuzzier definition. For example, say you have 8 bits of memory, one could either store 8 black and white pixels, or one 8 bit grey scale pixel, the first option has far greater resolution, the latter far greater truth. A person can store and process far more information in black and white than they can in color. Such people can be very smart, incredible memories, very good at logic, but annoying as all hell – everything they think is based on assumptions they are necessarily unaware of). This is I think one of the main reasons people believe, reducing the world to simple ones and zeros uses far less processing power and memory. Beliefs can often be right enough for this to be worth the trade off with degree of truth value.

  16. That should have been: About all lesser *fallible* gods (the christian god, Santa Claus, tooth fairy, etc.) I am agnostic.

  17. If you assume that something is going to happen just because it has happened 50 billion times in a row and never not happened, that’s faith?

    No, that’s empiricism. But empiricism is only valid in a law like universe — which cannot be proven empirically.

    It’s no coincidence that the scientific method originated in a Judeo-Christian culture. Gods such as Zeus did not establish laws, they governed by whim.

  18. I’m not at all convinced of that. Any sort of intervening god seems like it would be bad for scientific method (look at Islam for an example), and it wasn’t until after the reformation that it took hold (and then in the countries farthest from Rome). Some of the Greeks had a pretty good start on the scientific method (the Epicureans come to mind), these assumed that the Gods didn’t interfere with the lives of humans, and that all events had “natural” causes.

  19. Bbeard – Faith in the laws of science?

    I’m not sure who originally said this – Sagan, I think. “I have faith in Newton’s laws of motion, and I can prove it. In a certain museum, there is a really big pendulum being used to demonstrate the Foucalt experiment. I am quite willing to set this pendulum going, originally touching my nose, and stay there while it swings out and back. If I’m wrong, I get a 500-pound pendulum bob in the face.

    How many religionists are willing to take that sort of risk for their faith?”

    1. Faith in the laws of science?

      I think it’s counterproductive to try to frame scientific epistemology in Christian terms.

      From what I have observed, Christians tend to distinguish religious and non-religious thought processes in terms of “faith”, without realizing that even some mainstream religions do not have a central role for “faith”. Since “faith” is the focal point of Christianity, some Christians think that coercing scientists into admitting that the scientific method is faith-based is the first step in a syllogism which will return scientists to the fold of the Church. It’s not gonna happen.

  20. I’m not sure how they can. I have faith that if I eat a cheeseburger I’ll go to hell? Pretty much the only way you can demonstrate the validity of most varieties of Christianity is to wait until the world ends and see what happens next.

  21. Truth and understanding should be the goal where ever it leads. We all have a certain amount of observational bias as the old song lyrics say, “a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”

    SDB, now long awol, had a blog post regarding Noah’s genetic children that was faith shaking if you were a christian. You couldn’t ignore it if truth mattered. I had to do more research to find that SDB had left out some of the story. Otherwise, I would have had to abandon my faith. Honesty requires us to abandon faith at times (like the intrinsic value of gold.)

    If you believe in truth you just can’t ignore the fine tuning of many universal constants and the implication. Any one of them could be off by an amount so small it’s hard to conceive and this universe would not exist with us in it. Taken together you must conclude that random does not describe where we live or abandon any presumption of reason. TOE may provide an answer some day, but that would certainly qualify as an article of faith.

    Usually, scientist like to avoid infinities, but in this case many would like to postulate infinite mass and energy rather than accept the possibility of a creator. That’s what the multiverse is, infinite energy. I think Occam might have something interesting to say here.

    The bible acknowledges that people will have doubts today but promises that one day those doubts will be gone. Today the only real evidence we have of a creator is the thing created. We are told that it’s unreasonable to look at the creation and not see the creators hand. Those finely tuned constants alone are pretty solid proof, but they are just a small part of the proof which people disregard.

    Then again, only math has proofs. Science is all about disproof.

  22. Yeah, weak anthropic principal with a bit of god of the gaps thrown in; it may be evidence for a creator, it may be the way the universe (or part of it) has to be, we just don’t know.

    Which is pretty much where this thread started, wasn’t it? We can’t prove that there was a creator or that there wasn’t.

    1. The thing that is seldom mentioned regarding the anthropic principal, weak or strong, is that it requires a multiverse. It simply doesn’t apply to the universe we know to exist.

      we just don’t know [today]

      But we do have a promise that one day we all will. Hasn’t happened yet. May never happen. Makes me think that science and religion have that at least in common. Both make promises.

  23. Yes, if the constants are arbitrary then the weak anthropic principal would require a bunch of universes (or variations across one universe) and we would by necessity be living in one of the ones in which the constants allowed the formation of intelligent life. I’m not sure that that is seldom mentioned, it seems kind of implicit in the argument. It’s not very satisfying–it doesn’t have any predictive abilities that I can see.

    I’m not sure what you mean by science making promises.

Comments are closed.