Does atheism make sense?

[Floatingaxe]

 

If you quoted the Quran anywhere to prove anything at this site, it would be forum suicide.

 

What God says is valid here. You may not like it, but what he has said about those who deny Him is the truth. You've been told. Now you are responsible for knowing it.

What if someone (here or elsewhere) told you about Allah being the one true god? Once you knew, would you be responsible for being a good Muslim to avoid Muslim-Hell?

I'm not saying that you don't believe in scripture, and I understand that the majority of posters here do; that being said, this is the "Outer Circle". This place is specifically a place for the posters to explain their beliefs to non-believers and seekers, and to defend their beliefs from skepticism. That being said, you accept the scripture being true as an assumption that you cannot assert without circular reasoning. Therefore, if I don't make that assumption, I won't consider it a valid conclusion.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but that you are asserting your own beliefs as true to answer a question as to whether or not a different belief system "makes sense".

 

 

Once I knew what? There is no Allah.

 

I accept the POWER of the LIVING word of God to do its work in the hearts of those who read it. After all, that is how all of us came to know Jesus in the first place---by the LIVING POWER of His word. I don't use circular reasoning. In fact, I don't need much reasoning skill. I have Jesus, who has revealed Himself to me by His Spirit. People who are bereft of much reasoning power can still know Christ because He ministers to the spirit of man by His Spirit.

 

Therefore, what God says trumps all, and that can be found in the 66 books of the Bible. It is God that causes us to see what makes sense, and NOT that pitiful part of our brains that misjudges and misfires at any given time.

[Guest]

I wasn't trying to say that quoting scripture is bad or improper, but rather, that it's not compelling to someone who doesn't innately accept it as truth.

 

 

Truth

 

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. John 14:6

 

Compelling

 

So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Romans 10:17

 

Or Eternal Damnation

 

He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. John 12:48

 

Your Choice

 

And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD. Joshua 24:15

[alphaparticle]

 

It sounds like you don't necessary disagree with me too much, about this single issue. And I agree with you, it's necessary to come up with a *plausible* alternative to atheism that gives us some reason to suspect that yeah, if it were true it could have some explanatory power. So the question is if theism is plausible. I'd say prima facie it could have explanatory power over the facts that we've been discussing insofar as we'd understand God to be, by definition, the sort of being who at least could make infinite amounts of physical stuff and order it. If God were to exist then, it doesn't seem out of order to me to suggest that God would have explanatory power over the stuff I'm talking about.

 

In terms of thinking that God's existence is otherwise plausible, I suppose the first thing I'd ask if God's existence is logically possible. If God as a concept entails absurdities that would be a real problem. The second thing is if God's existence would undermine what we know to be true about the world. I don't see how that is. Now that could be, admittedly, because the concept of God is too wide (and if I were an apologist, I would quit shooting myself in the foot like this, but I can't help it), so we may need to ask ourselves if that is the case. I think it is at least going to be partially addressed by the third condition I have in mind. The third I'd ask is how much stuff could be explained by including God into our picture. I want to put aside the question of metaphysical crowding aside (introducing a being from an entirely new metaphysical category! I agree it shouldn't be done lightly) when thinking about the mere plausibility issue, and ask hypothetically, would God's existence explain things that aren't otherwise well explained. Would it explain some things better than the current explanations that we have for them? If we can even get a few big facts in about the world, I think it would be fair, as much as I can be dispassionate about this, to think that God's existence is at least, merely, plausible.

 

I want to thank you for the discussion by the way, I've been enjoying this. I need to organize my thoughts more clearly and I always found debate/discussion a nice way to do that. And, to be completely above board with you, if it weren't for 'religious experiences' I would not be convinced by my line of reasoning that God exists. I suppose all that I'm trying to do is see how well the playing field can be leveled here.

 

I'm curious as to what you mean by God's existence being logically possible. Inductively we can never logically say it is impossible for God to exist, and deductively our logic is only as valid as our axioms, but we can say the same thing for any supernatural being anyone makes up. Absurdities sound like a good parameter, but really when we're dealing with the supernatural we're talking about a place that has completely different rules by necessity, so who's to say anything is logically absurd at all in the supernatural realm - and if it is how would we know? Which gets to the second point, how can we say that God's existence would undermine what we know about this world? You see this often in debates about creationism, you ask a creationist to explain why we observe X if creationism is true, and when there is no natural explanation a "miracle" is invoked. It's absurd if we limit ourselves to the natural, and it may even be absurd according to some beliefs about God's nature, but really invoking the powers of the supernatural means that in principle nothing is off the table, nothing is absurd or ultimately undermines what we know about the world (just our interpretation of the evidence must change). 

 

Could God explain things, certainly, and I would say much of it comes from the fact that the God concept is very wide. I also think the God concept is intertwined with a God of explanation. When I took religion in college we went over the various ideas of where religion came from, and one idea is centered around the "nature worship theory" which states that God is used primarily to explain the world and such ideas were influential in a host of religious traditions including theism and thus Christianity. You also have the "magic theory" which supposes that people explain the world first with magic, then religion, and finally science. I think it would be a caricature of religion and faith to put too much stock in those ideas, but I do think it demonstrates that there is a long-standing relationship with using God as an explanation tool. And whether we like it or not, those ideas helped shape our modern concept of God, so we can't escape from the conclusion that God can explain things as the concept of God (at least one facet anyway) evolved to do just that. 

 

For me I think the main focus can be summed up with, what evidence do we have that God exists? And I think I understand where you are coming from with 'religious experiences'. Without my own I would have abandoned the faith much sooner, and even now some of my experiences force me to be quite reluctant to accept philosophical naturalism. 

 

Yeah, I don't think there is a single shot argument which absolutely nails the case. When it comes to talking about how God is used as a hypothesis historically, I find it odd that the assumption (such as in your class) is that's it's wrong. I could easy as argue that God built us with the instinct to see agency in the world because it *is* actually in the world. How such facts are interpreted is really a matter of the preconceived notions of people approaching them. Someone who wants to defend philosophical naturalism will look at it in such a way as to 'explain away' why most people over the course of history have believed in some kind of deity such as "these people were ignorant of science!". Someone who wants to defend theism will look at that as evidence that there is deity involved with human affairs. Likewise with all the arguments I have, I think they make a decent case for God's existence but I admit they all have flaws and someone would be rational for accepting or rejecting them. Then what?

 

 I asked myself, what would be evidence enough to convince me completely to believe in God? No matter what crazy scenario I could dream up, if I wanted to, i could explain it away. I could say "I refuse to use a God-of-the-gaps explanation" no matter how incredible the circumstances. But in doing that, I would make it impossible for me to believe in God based on *any* conceivable evidence whatsoever. That approach is basically "I have decided that God doesn't exist, nothing will convince me otherwise". And really, I could explain away all of my experiences. The question I have is, why should I do that though? THe only reason would be because I want naturalism to be true, for whatever reason I think it ought to be true, and that's that. But, then I'd lose all sense of doing it because of greater rationality, credibility or whatever else, I'd realize I am merely being biased. I suppose that's why I started this OP in the first place. I see atheism as a choice that is made as a matter of preference, not something that someone is indelibly led to through rational consideration.

 

In the end I cannot credit myself though, because I end up believing in God because I cannot help it. I've tried to turn my back on it several times and have been dragged back in. I am sure you could conceive of easy enough explanations for that from a naturalist perspective, as I could, but I see no reason to. One genuine explanation is that God exists and is communicating with me. My faculties have never systematically failed me before, I see no reason to think they are now. And if God exists,why shouldn't I think He might not try to interact with us in this manner? I can't convince anybody else based on such considerations, but I see no reason why I shouldn't be persuaded.

[Addai]

I agree with the basic OP.   Of course I believe that sort of thing is true of most other people as well (People see things from their subjective standpoint and try to do what makes sense according to that view).

 

 

I do however think much of atheism can be construed as a type of Faith.   For a science there is an awful lot of trust in the unseen (so far its been tough to witness, test or reproduce most of what is described in the various atheistic creation beginning of life hypotheses).   And its interesting the kinds of trust atheists can put in their great theorists even when they seem to be just spit balling.

That kind of blind trust on the surface can look a lot like what believers put in their own clergy.   And now that we are starting to have "atheist churches", "evangelical atheists" etc. I believe this initial hypothesis all the more.

 

 

I would also note that a decent chunk of the time folks become atheists in the West seems to come from all the stuff in Christianity, the Bible, etc. that they don't like or doesn't make sense to them (And some Christians don't help matters either in this area).    But anyway you end up with them taking atheism as a default because they don't like the problem of Theodicy, they think some stories like Noah's ark are silly and so on rather than they think the atheist position is so awesome to start with.   

 

PS - if not for the legacy of the Scopes Monkey trial etc. I think atheists would be in a weaker position in the U.S.  (Their would be less of a stereotypical image in the media concerning how Christians think.   The trial itself created polarization which caused some churches to treat young earth creationism as a holy dogma or necessary tenent of the Faith)

Edited October 7, 2013 by Addai

[LuftWaffle]

Hi D-9,

I hope you don't mind me joining in. This is a nice discussion.

I'd like to address some of the concerns you've raised.

Inductively we can never logically say it is impossible for God to exist, and deductively our logic is only as valid as our axioms,...

This seems to be a rather reductionist view of deductive logic. I don't think it's a mere matter of our subjective axioms. In fact the very case that "if our axioms are wrong, then logic is wrong" is itself based on a logical axiom (modus ponens).

...but we can say the same thing for any supernatural being anyone makes up.

I don't think this is the case at all.
If one considers the arguments offered on this forum, cumulatively, those arguments together rule out many possible god hypotheses.
The notion that a flying spagetti monster, for instance, is just as valid as the God of the bible given the evidence that Christians provide is simply inaccurate.

Absurdities sound like a good parameter, but really when we're dealing with the supernatural we're talking about a place that has completely different rules by necessity

Why do you think that? I think that God has the power to override the laws of nature, but how does that follow that the supernatural is completely different to everything we know, by necessity?

so who's to say anything is logically absurd at all in the supernatural realm - and if it is how would we know?

Perhaps theoretically this may be the case, but it's certainly not true of the Christian view that the supernatural contains logical absurdities. In fact one of God's many attributes is truth. If logical absurdities are possible in the Christian worldview, then stating God is the truth and the light, is meaningless.
So I think we can count of true things being really true, here on earth and in the supernatural.

You see this often in debates about creationism, you ask a creationist to explain why we observe X if creationism is true, and when there is no natural explanation a "miracle" is invoked.

I see this charge often, but to be honest I seldomly see Christians actually invoke a miracle. You and I have had a number of discussion on that particular topic and in general the creationist point of view is that the mainstream interpretation of the data is incorrect, and not simply a "Goddidit1".

And even is that is the case, I don't think that it follows that since God can override the laws of physics, that this means that He also overrides logic.

It's absurd if we limit ourselves to the natural, and it may even be absurd according to some beliefs about God's nature, but really invoking the powers of the supernatural means that in principle nothing is off the table, nothing is absurd or ultimately undermines what we know about the world (just our interpretation of the evidence must change).

I think history, particularly where the Judeo-Christian worldview is concerned tells a different story. The very fact that reason and science has flourished in the West seems to show that Christianity isn't incompatible with either.

Could God explain things, certainly, and I would say much of it comes from the fact that the God concept is very wide. I also think the God concept is intertwined with a God of explanation. When I took religion in college we went over the various ideas of where religion came from, and one idea is centered around the "nature worship theory" which states that God is used primarily to explain the world and such ideas were influential in a host of religious traditions including theism and thus Christianity. You also have the "magic theory" which supposes that people explain the world first with magic, then religion, and finally science. I think it would be a caricature of religion and faith to put too much stock in those ideas, but I do think it demonstrates that there is a long-standing relationship with using God as an explanation tool. And whether we like it or not, those ideas helped shape our modern concept of God, so we can't escape from the conclusion that God can explain things as the concept of God (at least one facet anyway) evolved to do just that.

I would disagree strongly here as well. In fact the idea that God is a explanatory tool, implies that God is a mere invention and I don't think there's any evidence to back this up. It seems to be an a priori presupposition that God is merely ad hoc, but in order for one to know this for a fact, one would have to know a great deal more about the history of religion than is possible.
As such I have to agree with you that the "God of the gaps" notion is a caricature.

There are two sides to the issue:
1. People believe in God and God happens to explain a great deal about the world.
2. People invented God in order to explain a great deal about the world.

Many sceptics simply assume option 2.

For me I think the main focus can be summed up with, what evidence do we have that God exists?

What do you mean by evidence?

And I think I understand where you are coming from with 'religious experiences'. Without my own I would have abandoned the faith much sooner, and even now some of my experiences force me to be quite reluctant to accept philosophical naturalism.

I agree with you.
I personally belief that philosophical natural simply has too many illusions. If philosophical naturalism is true then many of the most important things in life, that we see and feel and experience are mere illusions.

In fact my fundamental problem with atheism, is that it simply has way too many illusions.

[FreeThinker91]

alphaparticle said:

 One genuine explanation is that God exists and is communicating with me. My faculties have never systematically failed me before, I see no reason to think they are now. And if God exists,why shouldn't I think He might not try to interact with us in this manner? I can't convince anybody else based on such considerations, but I see no reason why I shouldn't be persuaded.

 

What should we make of Muslims, Hindus, Zoroastrians and other theists that say exactly what you have said?

Edited October 17, 2013 by FreeThinker91

[enoob57]

alphaparticle said:

 One genuine explanation is that God exists and is communicating with me. My faculties have never systematically failed me before, I see no reason to think they are now. And if God exists,why shouldn't I think He might not try to interact with us in this manner? I can't convince anybody else based on such considerations, but I see no reason why I shouldn't be persuaded.

 

What should we make of Muslims, Hindus, Zoroastrians and other theists that say exactly what you have said?

Gal 5:22-25

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,

23 Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

24 And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.

 

[25 If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. KJV {Notice the perfect logic here -if we are then be- (if not then see)]

 

Find this fruit, above, in the people that claim to have God in them here and you find His Children...

Lies require no source; you can without rules say anything... however truth must by logic precede

lie! God Claims through His Word His eternal exist and claims to be truth thus satan, God's created

being, had no resource but to use that which had no source and began lie.    Love, Steven

[alphaparticle]

alphaparticle said:

 One genuine explanation is that God exists and is communicating with me. My faculties have never systematically failed me before, I see no reason to think they are now. And if God exists,why shouldn't I think He might not try to interact with us in this manner? I can't convince anybody else based on such considerations, but I see no reason why I shouldn't be persuaded.

 

What should we make of Muslims, Hindus, Zoroastrians and other theists that say exactly what you have said?

Free,

 

There are two responses to this. The first is, I am only rational in doing what I have described so long as there aren't obvious defeaters for what I believe. I am not aware of any obvious defeaters, I think I have done due diligence that way. It may be possible to run defeaters against these other faiths. Not only are there no obvious defeaters (that can't be reasonably dealt with!) but there are also positive reasons for thinking that Christian claims, *in particular*, are true. Specifically I have in mind arguments for the resurrection of Jesus, which if is historical almost certainly means that Christianity is true.

 

But I would end by saying, that others have religious experiences and come to conclusions I disagree with doesn't seem to be a burning concern. People disagree over objective matters all of the time. There's even disagreement in mathematics, a deductive discipline, so what am I supposed to gather from the fact that people disagree with me over this?

[alphaparticle]

 

 

Maybe a good question to ask here is....why is it "unreasonable to claim that everything exists for no reason"?  (and by "reason" I mean for any specific metaphysical, philosophical reason)

 

Because we implicitly assume there is a reason for every other state of affairs or events, so why are we putting this particular one in a special exempt class?

 

We do?  When I see a rock, I don't ask, "Why the rock?"  The rock "just is".  I can explain how it was formed and such, but asking "why" never really occurs to me (and I haven't heard anyone else ask that about rocks either).  When I get the license plate for my car, I don't ponder "Why did I get this exact number?"

 

For me, the issue comes down to the following: What differentiates a universe created by God from one that "just is"?  

 

If the answer comes back, "The one created by God is ordered and the one that just is, isn't", that begs the obvious question: Why can't a universe that "just is" be ordered?  Why is that a necessary property of universes that exist on their own?

 

The universe in principle *can* be 'just ordered' as a brute fact.. I haven't denied that at all. In fact allowing that possibility has been a large part of the discussion in the thread.

[alphaparticle]

Alpha,

 

So if it's agreed that "order" is not an exclusive property of a created universe, how then do we differentiate between a universe that "just is" and one that is created?

That is irrelevant to the informal arguments I have presented in this thread.