From Abracadabra to Zombies
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atheism & gods
9 May 2008
What proof do you have that there is no God?
I will admit that evolutionists can make a rather compelling case that the creation happened without a creator. However, that does not constitute proof that a creator couldn't have done it. If you want to believe that the creation happened without a creator, then by all means stick to your guns. However, I would appreciate it if you would stop looking down on people who believe in a God. You don't know that there isn't one.
Sincerely,
xxxxxx
If you post this comment, please don't mention my name.
reply: I don't know that there isn't one god or two gods or two hundred gods, I suppose. Even so, proofs are easy to come by. Getting people to accept them is the hard part.
To begin any such proof, we must begin with clarifying our terms. What do we mean by 'God'? If you mean 'eternal, all-powerful, all-good, invisible being who created the universe out of nothing but an act of will' then I would proceed thusly:
Premise 1. If God exists, then innocents should not suffer the horrendous torments of famines, floods, hurricanes, etc.
Premise 2. Innocents do suffer the horrendous torments etc.
Therefore, God does not exist.
The above proof (by modus tollens) is valid. The second premise is indisputable. You and others will probably quibble over the first premise. Perhaps you will claim that God must have good reasons for allowing innocents to suffer so terribly, even if we don't understand them. Perhaps, but that seems to beg the question. It hardly seems an adequate justification for believing in God. In any case, whatever objection you bring up to my proof will hinge on your extending the meaning of 'God' to include qualities that will seem contradictory to me.
In any case, I don't look down on you because you believe in God. I used to believe in God and used to pity those who did not. Now, I find that the terms 'spirit' and 'god' have no clear cognitive content. They're emotive terms that express hopes, desires, fears, wishes, and other fuzzy feelings.
_____________
12 May 2008
There is enough evidence (Kyron DNA series) [Kyron?] to know there is more to life than what you can see and scientifically study here on earth. It is arrogant to think or fathom that all you see and can study from earth is it. There are invisible influences on the earth and us as humans--ten times more than can be studied with the simple machines here. I would think as smart as you all are you'd know better... Believe what you want. Once you finally go on the other side of the veil and REALLY see how it ALL works you'll really feel stupid. You say, "yeah, prove it"! Well, smarty pants we can't...cause NONE of us are smart enough to comprehend how it all works or can prove it. Stop feeling so small and being so negative and just accept it.
Shelley
reply: Smarty pants? Very charming. Anyway, no, I don't ask you to prove what I will feel like when I "go on the other side of the veil." But I do think it is a non sequitur to recommend accepting a belief in something on the grounds that you can't comprehend it.
You are hoping to live forever, perhaps. What will continue to exist after death? Your soul? What's that? You don't know, but does it makes you feel big instead of small to believe something you don't comprehend? Personally, I would feel stupid if I went around recommending to people that they believe things that neither I nor they could understand.
In any case, the most reasonable belief is that when you die all consciousness and feeling ceases. To believe that your 'spirit' will live on would require that there be some clear sense to the notion of 'spirit.' To say it is a non-bodily being, a kind of mind without a brain existing nowhere in particular and capable of perceiving and feeling joy and pain is to speak unintelligibly. It is to use words in ways that don't make sense. It is not because we can't see spirits that make them incomprehensible entities. We can't see the effects of these invisible creatures. Something which can neither be perceived nor produce perceivable effects is nothing to us.
However, if others believe in spirits it makes it easy for religions to indoctrinate and control people. If others believe in spirits it makes it easy for so-called psychics and mediums to pull the veil over their clients' eyes and pretend to get messages from the dead.
Whatever else I might say about spirits, I have to admit they are good for business if your business involves deceiving others for a living.
___________
13 May 2008
Some of the most painful and unfair suffering that humans can experience is the suffering that is caused by other humans. Don't blame God for that kind of suffering. Just because God isn't preventing it doesn't mean He's causing it.
xxxxxx
reply: If God created everything, then God is ultimately the first cause of everything that is and everything that happens.
It seems reasonable to believe that the deaths and destruction from the recent typhoon in Myanmar, the earthquake in China, the tornadoes in the U.S., the volcano in Chile, etc. are natural processes that are not part of any grand design by an omnipotent spirit. It also seems reasonable to believe that the young man I read about in the newspaper this morning who allegedly murdered his ex-girlfriend and her prom date was not part of an intelligent design by an omnipotent, all-good spirit.
It's possible (i.e., we can conceive it without contradiction) that there is a being who designed, created, and controls everything in the universe. It's also possible that this being is an invisible teapot with consciousness and extraordinary powers to will things into and out of existence. The teapot may be orbiting one of the moons of Jupiter. You can't prove the teapot doesn't exist but that's not a very good reason for thinking that it does.
(Of course, I am building on Bertrand Russell's famous china teapot analogy:
Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.
A rather humorous commentary on Russell's teapot can be found here.
_____________
I disagree with the premise that the existence of suffering proves the non-existence of God. I don't know where you got that idea, but you didn't get it from the bible. Nowhere in the bible does God make the claim that he would provide humans a life without suffering. As a matter of fact, there are parts of the bible where God claims that if you follow him you will have more suffering in this life, not less.
You say "If God created everything, then God is ultimately the first cause of everything that is and everything that happens." I don't agree with that either. You've probably had children. That means that you are the first cause of those children. That doesn't make you responsible for the actions of those children when they grow up to be adults. Just because God gives you freedom of choice doesn't mean that God is responsible for the choices you make.
In any event, I am delighted that you responded to my emails. Also, I have a high regard for your site. I believe that the vast majority of things you debunk need to be debunked...even when it steps on my toes or touches my nerves.
xxxxxx
reply: As I noted above, not accepting my proof will hinge on your extending the meaning of 'God' to include qualities that will seem contradictory to me. The god of the bible is a being whose creators endowed him with many properties that, if taken literally, do not harmonize with the idea of an eternal, omnipotent, all-Good creator. He is powerful being with many human attributes, a character in a set of stories. In that sense, he's no different than Zeus or Thor or Shiva. We know that the god of the Bible destroys innocents and causes enormous pain and suffering when he gets angry. That depiction of a god is why many do not take the stories literally or, if they do, reject them as the propaganda of a small tribe of shepherds.
I'm not really the first cause of my children but I will admit that I am a causal link in a very long series of intersecting causes that led to their existence. A first cause is the one that begins it all. It's a concept that is philosophically troublesome because it requires us to conceive of something that has no cause. Such a thing would have to have existed forever, which is a difficult thing to conceive. Or, it caused itself to come into being, which is difficult to conceive. Or, it came out of nothing, which is even more difficult to conceive.
God may not be responsible for the choices we make, but God is responsible for creating beings with desires and defective brains that influence choices. God is responsible for creating the environments that kill us and limit our choices. We may be responsible for many of the choices we make but if a god created us and the world we live in, then that god is responsible for whatever happens.
In any case, God is supposed to be omniscient and omnipotent and thus would know before creating anything all the evil that would follow. Knowing the consequences of your actions and being able to control them but then acting anyway makes you responsible. Of course, the god of the bible is neither omniscient nor omnipotent, and he certainly isn't all-good, so I guess I'm barking up the wrong tree.
____________
14 May 2008
If you don't want to believe in God, you don't have to. Just don't force me to share your non-belief.
xxxxxx
reply: How could I force you or anyone else to share my rejection of your theistic beliefs? Almost everyone in power in the U.S. these days is a theist and many of them would like to force all of us to accept their theistic beliefs and their notions of what they consider to be moral and immoral. The real threat to freedom of belief in this country is coming from the theists, but that's how it's been since 1776.
Those of us who think your theistic beliefs are wrong aren't asking you to give them up. We're asking you to leave us alone. Keep your symbols, sacred texts, and superstitious practices out of our schools, our stadiums, and public buildings. We won't disrupt your religious services and you shouldn't disrupt our educational and civil proceedings. Follow whatever rules of morality you see fit (as long as they are lawful) but don't try to force the rest of us to think and act as you do.
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