Yesterday reader Tyler Riddle had the following to say as part of a comment to Wednesday’s “Am I too Hard on Religion, Part 2“:
Another point to your atheism, I get agnosticism because it’s about not knowing and admitting you don’t know, but it seems that your Atheism requires you to look at what’s most probable and make a decision… in Faith. There is NO scientific way to know that there isn’t a God, and no way to prove scientifically prove that there is. So you must be putting your faith in Atheism… (odd way of saying it). Get what I’m saying?
Tyler, I think I understand what you’re saying, unfortunately you are creating a false dichotomy. I am an agnostic. I’m even a hard agnostic. I don’t know for certain whether or not there is a god and due to the impossibility of absolutely proving the non-existence of anything I don’t think we ever will know for sure.
I’m also a skeptic. I demand evidence before I’ll consider accepting a claim. Since there is no credible evidence for the existence of God, a god or gods, I don’t believe in God, a god, or gods. That makes me an atheist.
Agnostic deals with what you know, atheist deals with what you believe. If you don’t know whether or not there is a god, then it would seem to logically follow that you wouldn’t believe in a being that you don’t know to exist. There are some agnostics who tentatively hold on to a belief in God, but they don’t generally call themselves agnostics, they identify as Christians, Jews, Muslims, pagans, deists, or some other label that fits with the god they believe in. The rest of the agnostics don’t believe in the being they don’t know for sure doesn’t exist, those are the people who identify as or should start identifying as atheists. There are also a few atheists who hold a positive belief that there is no god, but I’m not one of them.
I also don’t believe in homeopathy, big foot, the Tooth Fairy, Santa Clause, clairvoyance, ESP, ghosts, alien abductions, or the little green men that live on the moon. I can’t say that I know with 100% certainty that those things don’t exist or work, but the lack of evidence is so compelling to suggest that homeopathy is dangerous when used as an alternative to real medicine and that adults who believe in the other things are in need of a serious reality check. My opinion on all of these things could be changed by evidence, but none has come to light as of yet, and there’s no reason to think that any will any time soon.
Since we can never know anything with 100% certainty, we are justified in tentatively holding that what is probable is right. By probable, I mean that which is supported by the evidence or lack thereof. However, we are not justified in an unwillingness to modify a position based on the evidence. A great example is the complete lack of credible evidence that there is a god justifies a tentative position that a god or gods does not exist. This is a tentative position which I hold.
There are millions of gods that have been proposed throughout history, many of which are mutually exclusive. You believe in one (or three) of them, but don’t believe in the rest. You’re lack of acknowledgement and worship of Zeus, Thor, Ba’al, Vishnu, and the rest is likely, at least in part, due to a lack of evidence to support belief in them. You can’t know for sure that they aren’t real, but there isn’t enough evidence to suggest they are. As it turns out my atheism towards the triune God of Christianity really isn’t very different than your atheism towards Zeus.
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I'm writing this response to both the
commentary of "Am I too Hard on Religion? – Part 2", and in
response to Dustin's latest post here.
Starting with the commentary of the
previous article, I would say in response to Tyler that you can throw
the bathwater out just fine. The bathwater looks like everything that
makes religion identifiable as religion. While I have a superior
justification for what I say, I will use this following secondary
justification for the sake of brevity. Do you want to believe in god
to be a good person? If a god isn't apparent, then admit that you're
embracing a lie of convenience. Do other people need the concept of a
god to have a functioning society? If a god isn't apparent, then
admit that you're telling them a lie for the sake of utilitarian
appeal. Do you think you need faith in your god? Nobody needs faith
to prove what they have evidence for. Do you have proof that needs no
faith? Present it, and deny the necessity of faith.
Replying to the article, I agree with
almost everything I've read. It's well written, articulate, and
anything I could add would just be analogous. The exception is with
this sentence, "Agnostic deals with what you know, atheist deals
with what you believe." This isn't my understanding of implicit
atheism. To me, implicit atheism is the pure knowledge of more
possibilities existing than probabilities; that everything could be
more than it is. If the inverse of what I just stated were true,
there would be more correct random guesses about the nature of the
universe than false; this would violate bivalent logic. I know that
whatever there is no empirical evidence of is improbable. The
separating factor here is the word empirical; the vast majority of
spiritual individuals do the a-priori thing, in which a non-sequitor
such as improper transposition or a red herring implies awareness for
any gap that they infer an explaination for.
Anyhow, that's just my load of BS. I
hope someone got more than confused or frustrated by reading it.
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Thanks for the comment. What you have pointed out has made me re-read my post and I left a point implied that should have been explicit. You put it well, but to put it in the kind of language in my blog post, the assumption that there is no god is a justified tentative position due to the lack of evidence.
All edit the post to make that more clear.
Thanks.
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Hey no problem. Looks like I half way gimped the meaning with my own typo. It should've been "more possibilities than actualities."
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Well this thing doesn't tell me when I'm being written about or comments responded too… And I'm on my iPod touch, so… I'll keep this brief.
1. Dustin you proved my point. I can never be 100% scientific with God. But as I see the evidence (such as the miracle of life I just witnessed with my girlfriend's sisters baby), I have faith. Guess what. I have that luxury and you don't.
So you can never know any of this for sure. Take it as agnosticism. Or admit you are putting faith in atheism because you can't prove it. Which consequently goes against your scientific empirical evidence only theory.
Apparently you chose the first.
2. Nobody knows what would happen with or with out religion. You never will. Heck we could have died from nuclear winter for all I know.
3. Baby with the bath water comment:
Perhaps I want to believe in a god because I see more historical, evolutionary, and practical evidence in my life. Because those things seem most probable to me, I'd like to consider at least what the person who claimed to be the son of God said. So on and so forth. And those things affect my life, hopefully in a positive way and they give me faith to believe.
I'm not going to try to convince you here because
1. Nobody will convince anyone here.
2. What may be hard evidence to you might not be to me and vice versa.
3. I want to believe. You don't. No use in wasting my words here.
4. I'm tired haha
Goodnight and goodluck!
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Ah, so you'll reply to me and ignore my request for evidence… for the sake of this debate then, the burden of proof for god has still not been fulfilled.
You'd do well to read the definition of implicit atheism; you're making the classic mistake of associating any agnosticism with defining an individual as a pure agnostic. Go, read, and take some time to learn the language of the people you're debating with. Most atheists aware of their atheism are implicit.
Also, do your homework on epistemology a little. The default position is skepticism, not 50/50 chance. By a matter of conjunction of variables, there are as close as you can get to infinitely more possibilities than actualities. Because of this, we can't disprove even the dumbest of ideas absolutely.
As for faith, faith is irrational. You don't need faith to see a child born; it's not a miracle. We can watch life happen during human reproduction, and it's well understood. As far as repeatable, reliable experiments go, you don't get much better. As far as infant mortality goes, countries like this don't get much less infrequent. On the other hand, while some call birth a miracle, nobody has faith that another child will starve to death in a third world nation. Why? Because it's probable, and it's undesirable. People don't need to have faith for what is probable, and faith is an appeal to desire as having faith in horrible things is always seen as disgusting. Two logical fallacies combined define the nature of faith.
What saddens me is that I've probably wasted my time. I can repeat these things to people, but they shut down. They pretend I never said it, pretend I said something else, and let their own cognitive dissonance kick in. A few weeks later the same person I've just spent hours teaching my views of epistemology is back to shouting that all atheists are either agnostics in disguise, or evil social darwinists. This dishonesty has caused me to have a lack of respect for the faithful.
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Dude, can't you see that I don't want to engage you. I'm not trying to "convert you." I have no desire to go step by step on why I believe what I believe, why I believe it, and try to convince you: Especially here.
If I knew you and we could sit down and have conversation, then so be it. In my eyes there is so much evidence, I have viewed it, processed it, and moved on.Faith is irrational. So often is life. When people try to put life inside a test tube like I feel atheistic people do, it's so cold and absolute. Yet I know for a fact, YOU can never know. There are too many holes. And that is my point. Fall on either side of "not knowing" you wish.
Epistemology: yeah I had to look that one up. I'll never study it. I don't care. You know why? It doesn't affect my day to day life.
Take care
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Fair enough buddy, you have to be honest with yourself. I'll tell you, the way I view the world has changed so much since I was in College. My whole outlook has changed. But I'll tell you, I was opposite of you… In some ways, I didn't want to believe, but I couldn't help myself.
You say atheism doesn't take faith. I find that so hard to fathom. I can understand not knowing, but I guess I would always wonder why in the world I was here, and why there isn't more of "us" in the universe…. Anyways. I'm out.
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Tyler, in the future if you don't want to engage someone you should try just leaving it at that. When someone tells me they don't want to debate, but then they respond to me, it's similar like saying "I don't want to be offensive" then kicking a man square in the groin. Am I going to respond to your claims, or to your actions?
My point is that not only do I don't know, but you don't know either. I find asserting any god to be a dishonest, arrogant assertion. The evidence stacks up like trying to prove one of Homer's mythical writings true. If we see no evidence, then the default position is skepticism; it probably isn't there. For any one reality you can name, I can spend the rest of my lifetime naming alternative but non-contradictory nonsense.
As to epistemology, if you want to apply reason to your daily life then knowing something about the subject would be a good idea. Everyone has an opinion related to epistemology; most just don't know what the word means.
Speaking of purpose in life, why do we need to have an objective purpose? Purpose implies intent, and implies consciousness. If there is no consciousness, there is no objective purpose. A purpose may be desirable, and we can give ourselves one, but why live a lie of comfort?