Ask about Atheism

[Jack_Ian]

Not directly related to the current discussion, but I just heard this quotation and thought I'd share it.

[Jedo the Jedi]

[Zag]

[BraveHat]

[BraveHat]

I've had time to reflect on recent discussions in this thread and have tried to parse the basic argument for strong (or positive) atheism. Strong atheists, let me know if this satisfies, or please clarify if it doesn't:

1. The only reason to consider that a god exists is because people seem to believe it does.

2. When people believe things for which there is no objective observable evidence, these things usually turn out to be false.

3. A belief that a god exists is something for which there is no objective observable evidence.

Therefore, the belief that a god exists is probably false.

[extropalopakettle]

I'm finding the first two to be oddly convoluted, in an oddly subtle way.

[BraveHat]

[BraveHat]

One example of 2. might be the Madoff scandal. People believed he had a legitimate system of producing consistently profitable returns. But there was never any objectively observable evidence of that system. Whenever he was asked to explain, he would invoke it's complexity and his reputation as a genius to avoid explaining it. It turned out to be false. Lots of investors stayed away from Madoff because of 2. or something like it.

[Zag]

I think that 'consider' was exactly the right word, BH, and your longer definition is spot on. You probably don't, for instance, even consider the possibility that there are invisible elephant-like aliens that follow everyone around without being detected. There are an infinite number of things that you or I have never even considered.

The existence of your God is something I have considered, only because so many of you believe something more or less the same. (I suspect that it's a lot less than most of you think, but I can't prove that.) I continue to consider it, off and on, though not with very much expectation, anymore.

[BraveHat]

Obviously, as a theist I don't readily agree with the conclusion, though I do think it reasonably follows from the premises. I think there are aspects of the premises that are problematic. But it's important for me to take this topic seriously and I don't want to bother examining the argument if it's a straw man, so I'll give it a while to see if you or other strong atheists find anything disagreeable, incomplete or unclear about it.

[Zag]

[bgg1996]

I'm sure there's more than 1 train of logic atheists can take to the disbelief in god.

The idea of a god barely makes sense to me. The stereotypical god is a being that can do anything, created Earth and the rest of the universe through its own will a few thousand years ago, did miracles in front of its chosen people, got them to write an awesome book about it, and at some point created irrefutable evidence that the Earth was formed not thousands, but billions of years ago, that all of today's species evolved over time from a single bacterial cell, that the Earth is spherical (we have pictures,) that the orbits of the planets are based around the sun instead of Earth, that diseases are caused by pathogens instead of demons, and much more. This god is divine, meaning that they are benevolent and can do no wrong. If you don't believe in this god, you suffer in hell for eternity.

The belief in deities has existed for tens of thousands of years, from the Mother Goddess, worshiped some time from 24,000-22,000 B.C. Since then, many gods have been worshiped, some leaving their mark on history, such as Roman mythology, and some not. The beliefs in most of these deities were contingent on mythologies that are clearly incorrect, for example, Earth resting on a turtle, which we have photographic evidence against, but they still pop up independently of each other. I don't think this is evidence that there is a god, only that it's beneficial for a group of people to be united with religion. I don't find it that strange that a large number of people today are religious, although I wish that number was a lot smaller. I am astounded, however, that intelligent folks buy into it, when there's no evidence for any god, most people who've lived do not believe in this god, and the original belief system involved elements that have been proven false beyond a shadow of a doubt. If you think it's evidence enough that a large number of people believe in something, then a large number of people will end up believing in it for that reason.

Although many of those who've made discoveries have been religious, none of the discoveries have lent any evidence to the existence of god. In fact, religion has opposed scientific discoveries that disagreed with its belief system, such as the solar-centric view of the solar system, impeding progress because experimental data disagreed with the dogma of the religion. After this belief has been accepted, the religion isn't held as false, it's just changed with the new discovery in mind Ad Hoc. Even though the bible states that God creates man out of dirt, many Christians today believe in evolution, because it's been proven true beyond reasonable doubt. Religion has evolved over time to lose everything that's been proven false, but somehow kept the belief in God, Souls, and the Afterlife. I don't believe in any of those things. The idea of a soul is basically the conscience, except that after death, the soul will leave the body and go to heaven or hell and live there in peace/torture. Humans evolved slowly over time from what one would call animals. Each one was only very slightly different than their parents, but over time, the differences accumulated into speciation. Humans having souls would imply that there was a first "human" who had a soul when his parents did not. Or at least that there is an extremely fine line between a human and human-like animal, one having a soul, one not. After all, you can't somewhat have a soul, and somewhat go to heaven, and somewhat have an afterlife. Even if you said that all living things (including plants and bacteria) have souls, we all evolved from a collection of stuff that could make more of itself. Saying that one has a soul when your parents do not, even if there's basically no difference between you and your parents goes against the concept of a soul, that there is a fundamental difference between those that have them and those that do not. To go to an afterlife implies a specific time when "you" die, but even if doctors pronounce you dead, skin cells will continue to live on. You could try to make a meaningful distinction between living and dead, but it's always going to be an arbitrary line. It also implies that there's a "you" that's more "you" than any other past or future "you." If when you die senile your senile soul goes to heaven senile, then if you want a good afterlife, you should attempt to die youthful. If it's a past version of you that has the soul, do you have the memories of what happened after that? More importantly, which past version is it that has it? 20-years old? 21? 20 years, 2 months, 14 days, 7 hours, 14 minutes old? Is that version of you more you than you are you? Or do all your selves get an afterlife, down to when you were a baby? In that case, when do you get your soul? Conception or birth? If birth, then your fetus could've easily been cut out beforehand via Caesarian Section and you could've lived a normal life. Does that mean people born via Caesarian Section don't have souls? Or do you get your soul the moment your center of mass leaves your mother's uterus? If conception, then why give a soul to a mindless zygote? How can they have a meaningful heaven or hell, without emotions? Having a moral code to which everyone must be judged is also annoying. It implies that there's a universal, quantifiable morality to every decision. I'd go on, but I'm too tired by now, and my writing ability's degraded to the point of rambling.
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[Jedo the Jedi]

That's quite a caricature of the Church, bgg. People who believe in the Christian God are idiots because the forerunners of this belief once believed the Earth was flat? That would make everybody idiots because in that time everybody believed the Earth was flat because they didn't have any way to know better. Come on, dude.

[BraveHat]

[bgg1996]

[Jedo the Jedi]

[extropalopakettle]

[extropalopakettle]

[extropalopakettle]

In case that wasn't clear,

Strong Atheism: Existence of a god is highly unlikely.

Weak Atheism 1: I don't believe there exists a god, though I can't conclude a god's existence to be highly unlikely.

Weak Atheism 2: I don't believe there exists a god, or an FSM, or undetectable flying leprechauns, etc... , though I can't conclude the existence of any of those to be highly unlikely.

Weak Atheism 2 might be taken as a sarcastic way of putting Strong Atheism, but to me it's just putting Weak Atheism 1 in proper rational context.

[Jedo the Jedi]

Weak atheism in general seems to be more agnostic.
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[extropalopakettle]

[Jedo the Jedi]

I'm not the one making the argument, but it seems to me that strong atheism would entail active disbelief as opposed to a position of apathy. As this sort of strong atheist, you might still concede the (very minimal) possibility that you are wrong, but you do not consider that enough to change your (dis)belief.
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[extropalopakettle]

I guess I'm trying to get my head around what real difference it makes. What does it matter if I say:
- There are no flying leprechauns.
- There is no evidence for flying leprechauns, and I consider their existence to be highly unlikely.
- There is no evidence for flying leprechauns, so maybe they exist, maybe they don't, I don't know.

Do people live differently depending on which of the above beliefs they hold, based on the same information? Or are they just different ways of saying the same thing?

And does it matter whether I think of the above question about beliefs in terms of belief in flying leprechauns, or a god? It seems to me this is more about the differences between stating "X is false", "X is highly unlikely to be true" and "I have no evidence toward any likelihood X is true, nor false, so I don't know".

Now, if X is "the coin I just tossed in the well landed heads", I'd go with the latter of the three. But there's a difference there. I'm just worried that discussing this about god versus discussing it about flying leprechauns might be dragging in some implicit assumptions that ought to be made explicit. If there are no such implicit assumptions, let's talk about flying leprechauns.

[Jedo the Jedi]

I think those statements (or attitudes of belief) would make a difference not in how the person lives but in how likely they are to be "converted" to another way of thinking.
- Person 1 probably would not change even if flying leprechauns appeared in front of her. (She would find another explanation. Hallucination, for example.)
- Person 2 is more likely to change their opinion because they at least admit there is a very small probability. Significant evidence to the contrary could be swaying.
- Person 3 would be the easiest to convert because they are pretty apathetic.

I think there are some nuances there which are important, though not necessarily in day-to-day living. All probably live without much thought for imaginary, flying leprechauns unless some adherent to the leprechauns pesters them about it. (Person 3 might think about them occasionally, but not any more than they would think about the FSM.)

I can't say whether BraveHat has some implicit assumption behind this argument.
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[BraveHat]

[BraveHat]

The relevant difference between strong atheism and weak atheism to society is the judgment incited about believers. A strong atheist must view the believer as probably living under a delusion. whereas a weak atheist doesn't necessarily have to think that. This affects relationships.

[extropalopakettle]

[BraveHat]

I think I just realized a major distinction that I haven't been making which might clarify a whole lot. As I said, I don't think it's possible to make a case for the unlikelihood of a god existing and neither do I think it possible for the undetectable leprechaun. However, I'm willing to think there may be a case for the unlikelihood of human belief in a god being grounded in truth.

What's the difference between a god existing and a human belief in god being grounded in truth? The latter implies the former, but the former doesn't imply the latter.

Suppose I see a locked suitcase left in the road and I try to unlock it but can't. I'm so curious to find out what's inside that I lie to a locksmith and tell him it's my father's and I lost the combo. He opens it up and we discover it actually does belong to my father. The suitcase was my father's and the locksmith believed it was my father's, but his belief was not grounded in the truth. It was grounded in the content of what I told him, which was true only by coincidence.

So I shelve god's existence among the undetectable leprechauns, flying spaghetti monsters, and celestial teapots as having no way to make a case for it's unlikelihood, but there may be a case for the unlikeliness of human belief in a god to be grounded in truth, and that may be the reasoning behind strong atheism.

[BraveHat]

[bgg1996]

[extro...*]

Hmmm ... that got me here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem#The_Cow_in_the_Field
and the section after it, Knowledge as justified true belief ...

I think you're saying strong atheists merely dismiss religious belief as not being justified true belief ... that if true, it's a coincidence.

But I think the Occam's Razor thing comes into play too. Assume the least that you need to in order to explain what's observed.

I'm still having a hard time grasping the significant distinction between weak and strong atheism. If the weak atheist is saying god might or might not exist, just like the FSM might or might not, my gut instinct tells me that's like saying god doesn't exist. It sounds like, of amazing things without a shred of evidence for or against, some say "maybe, maybe not", while others say "not", but with little real difference between the two. I don't think strong atheists believe they have proof of non-existence of a god. I think strong atheists would listen to purported new evidence of a god.

[Jedo the Jedi]

[BraveHat]

[bgg1996]

[Zag]

[extropalopakettle]

[Jedo the Jedi]

Zag, that statement was specifically referring to the fact that most Christians do not persist in the belief that the Earth is flat...

[extropalopakettle]

[Jedo the Jedi]

Thankfully it's not the crux of my argument. Besides, most analogies do break down at some point.
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[extropalopakettle]