Hawkingfan

I can see why you need clarification on terms we use, as you seem to not understand the term "atheism". To most atheist's here, it means a LACK of belief in a god. You also do not understand where the burden of proof lies. It lies with the theist because he is the one who is making an assertion that, in order to believe it, requires faith in something beyond normal, everyday, human experience. It is like saying that you can walk on water without giving me evidence. If I told you I lacked the belief that you could walk on water, it is NOT up to me to prove why I lack that belief. It is up to YOU to prove that you can walk on water, period. It would be perfectly rational for me to believe that you do not walk on water, because of what I know of you and what I know about the properties of water.
As to what "evidence" do we possess that atheism is true, the better question to ask is: "Why do you lack a belief in my claim that there is a god?" This is a very simple question to answer. Because he cannot be seen, heard, felt, tasted, or smelled. Because your claims cannot be supported by physical or mental evidence. Because your claims cannot pass any scientific tests. Because god cannot be proved by scientific abstraction. Because there are perfectly logical, alternative explanations to your claims. God's "existence" contradicts things that we KNOW to be true (the laws of physics).

bd-from-kg

Hawkingfan, Kuyper, et al:

Actually the case for positive disbelief in God is very strong – much stronger than the case for positive disbelief in most things (like the Loch Ness monster or alien visitors) that have been alleged to exist, but for which there is little evidence. (And the case for positive disbelief in such things is easily strong enough to be decisive.)

To illustrate, let’s suppose that a friend claims that the house next door, which is vacant, has been bought by a family of five – a couple in their mid-thirties with two girls and a boy, with lots of other details, none out of the ordinary. Now I had no a priori reason to believe any of this. But he’s never been known to make up stuff like this and it’s completely plausible: many of the homes around here are occupied by families of this general description, there’s nothing unusual about them, and a normal family buying a vacant house is not exactly front-page news. Since it all fits comfortably with what I know about “the way the world works” I accept the story readily.

But suppose that the house is not vacant, but has been occupied for years by a family whom I have very strong reasons to believe had no intention of leaving. Their selling their house would not fit in very well with what I know about the way the world works, so I’d be skeptical. But I probably wouldn’t disbelieve my friend; I’d just want more proof before believing him.

Now what if the family is said to consist of ten-foot giants, or talking giraffes, or aliens from Arcturus? These are getting progressively further from anything I’ve experienced or have heard of anyone else experiencing, so I’ll be more skeptical of each claim in turn. In fact, I’ll be more than skeptical; I’ll flat-out disbelieve such tall tales, and justifiably so. I’ll demand very strong proof indeed that I have new neighbors who are ten feet tall, or that there even are giraffes that talk or aliens from Arcturus, much less that they own the house next door.

The principle involved here is a familiar one: the further a claim is removed from ordinary experience, the more evidence we will demand before believing it. And if a claim is outside all human experience, we will demand very powerful proof indeed, and in the meantime we will be justified in positively disbelieving it.

Well, an omnipotent being is infinitely beyond all human experience. So is an omniscient being. So is an omnibenevolent being. And so on. So any one of God’s alleged attributes are sufficient to justify an almost insurmountable level of disbelief; the evidence required to justify belief in a being with any of these attributes, much less all of them, is almost impossible to imagine. At any rate, such evidence has certainly not been produced.

This is the basic argument for positive or "strong" atheism. Since the kind of evidence that would be required to justify belief (or even a suspension of disbelief) in God is obviously not forthcoming if we apply ordinary evidentiary standards, the only possible approach that can be taken by intelligent theists (who understand all this) is that the ordinary evidentiary standards do not apply to theistic claims. Which is precisely what Kenny (and Plantinga, and other intelligent theists) do argue. But this is itself an extraordinary claim, and the burden of proof is on them.

Selsaral

Fanastic, bd-from-kg. Thanks for your excellent comments.

Kuyper asks 'what evidence do you posses that atheism is true'. I'd like to expand on bd-from-kg's comments on why an atheist would be an atheist. There are many reasons actually, but I'd like to highlight the few that stand out in my own mind.

Firstly, taking a big-picture look at the human condition shows we are religious creatures. We have a long and colorful history of believing with incredible conviction any number of beliefs, many of which we would now consider ridiculous. We now call many of those religions 'folklore' or 'myths' or 'wacky cults'. But it is clear that human beings are by nature religious. This means that even without any amount of supernatural phenomena to reinforce our beliefs we believe with incredible conviction in these things. Even if you are a christian, and even if the christian god were real, people all around the world believe in their own religion with the exact same tenacity and intensity, and feel the exact same feelings that a christian would feel. And the reasons for our religious nature are obvious and varied. Psychological conditions can produce the sensation of hearing voices in your mind. Starvation and physical stress can produce strange sensations. Strange chemicals and drugs can produce strange sensations. We are naturally curious creatures that like to explain things, and we are surrounded by a strange world that we have trouble explaining. We dream and we think. If you've studied human consciousness and the nature of our cognition you would see how strange and complicated our consciousness really is, how the hemispheres of our brain communicate, how our senses work, how we percieve things, how our language is closely interconnected with our consciousness, how our memory works, and how our mental faculties develop as children.

Based on this, I am forced to conclude that even without the existence of supernatural phenomena, human beings would still be religious, and be just as convinced of the truth of their beliefs. Looking at religions like scientology, bigfootism, john edwardsism, lochnessism, analprobism, I can see that people easily believe in truely ridiculous things, and become just as thoroughly convinced of it as a christian is of their god. And this produces a fundamental and truely justified skepticism on my part. We are not impartial observers, and our perceptions don't exist in a vaccum, they are heavily modified by the complex nature of our consciousness. We are gullible creatures, and one of the most important aspects of our childhood development is how gullible we are and how easily and quickly we absorb concepts. As a child I was convinced Santa Claus was real. I was told he was, and I believed it. People tend to distrust the assertations of the mentally ill, such as schizophrenics. I am not saying religious people are insane, I am saying the nature of human beings and our clearly religious tendencies make us similarly unreliable as sources of information. I personally have a great deal of experience with this, I can't count the number of times (mostly as a child and teenager) that I was convinced of something, 'felt' something, saw a pattern in coincidences, had a strange dream etc, only for it later to be debunked.

Therefore when it becomes apparent that all that exists as evidence for religions is word of mouth and stories, I can legitimately continue my skepticism. How many silly stories have you heard in your life? How many times were you told a ghost story as a child, been terrified to death, and over the years come to learn it was just a story? Being skeptical of stories is a fundamental aspect of reason, and completely justified.

And when a religion makes grand claims about the world, and they turn out to be completely bogus, it debunks the credibility of the religion. Hellenism claims thunder is caused by gods on chariots. Clearly that isn't the case. Nuer witchcraft claims the future can be accurately foretold by termite and chicken oracles. Clearly that isn't the case. Christianity claims the entire world was flooded a few thousand years ago. Geology completely debunks this theory.

Every religion, cult, and belief system in the world makes supernatural claims. People claim they can tell the future with playing cards. People claim they are reincarnated after death. People claim the world is held up by a giant. People claim a god created everything and takes an active part in the world. People claim they can talk to dead people, that they can see ghosts. But never once has a conclusive piece of documented evidence EVER been provided. Based on these claims the world should be awash in supernatural events, with prayers being granted left and right, sinners being punished, minds being read. But not one single piece of evidence, except for warm and fuzzy feelings that have already been shown to be completely unreliable? This even further reinforces the fundamental skepticism of our reliability as impartial witnesses and experiencers. Knowing that people misinterpret events SO easily (every played that game where you whisper something in someone's ear, and they whisper it in the next person's ear, and when it comes around the circle it completely changed?), the only possible position is fundamental skepticism of supernatural stories, or to outright dismiss such stories. After hearing all about Xenu the galactic overlord, sky gods, giants, dragons etc, one more supernatural claim with nothing but believer's profound assurance becomes downright silly.

The AntiChris

Great post.

I just hope all the agnostics and weak atheists who use the 'intellectual integrity' argument to refute the strong atheist position take note.

Chris

Hawkingfan

Please don't include my name with Kuyper's. I am an atheist, and was agreeing with you if you'd read my post closely. Thanks!

Hawkingfan

I think this is a poor analogy. I personally would not be skeptical about hearing about people selling their house whom I earlier new had strong intentions of never leaving. It does NOT in any way "not fit in very well with what I know about the way the world works." From experience I know that those sorts of things HAPPEN ALL THE TIME.

This is also a poor analogy because the initial claim that was made can be TESTED and a rational conclusion could be made.

A better analogy that describes my viewpiont is as follows (my apologies to whoever initially wrote it):
"For example: Is there bacterial life on Mars? In the absence of evidence I should remain uncertain. Are there perpetual motion machines on Mars? There is an absence of evidence for this and the existence of such machines contradicts things I know to be true, namely the laws of physics. So I should reject the existence of perpetual motion machines on Mars. Similarly there is a lack of evidence (or very little) for the existence of God and his existence violates most (if not all) of the laws of physics. Extraordinary claims such as the existence of God need extraordinary proof. This is why I am an atheist.

People believe in God because they don´t understand how the Universe works, they don´t understand how they Laws of Physics work, or Evolution, or whatever scientific branch.

Most of the believers don´t use rational or critical thinking to comprehende the Universe. They prefer to say Godidit, not because they want to, but because that´s their frame of reference.

There are other kind of believers, a very small number of believers who are more intelligent. In order to make God´s existence neccesary, they build a whole belief system."

bd-from-kg

Hawkingfan:

Yes, I gathered that. But your post was essentially a standard argument for weak atheism - a lack of belief in God - whereas my point was that a very strong case can be made for strong atheism - a positive disbelief in God.

What's your point? If you don't like the example, just pick another that pushes the "implausibility meter" up another notch or two. After all, we're not really talking about buying houses here.

???. I said that the likely response would be to demand more evidence.

Perhaps the problem here is that you're interpreting this as an analogy, whereas it's actually meant as an illustration of a principle.

Perhaps you'd like to explain this to Kenny.

As C.S. Lewis pointed out, the claim that Mary was a virgin wasn't based on the fact that the ancients didn't know that a virgin birth violated the "laws of nature", but because they knew that it did. That was the point. The claim that Jesus walked out of his tomb after being well and truly dead for over a day wasn't made because the ancients ddn't know that this was a violation of the "laws of nature"; it was considered significant (to put it mildly) precisely because they knew that such a thing was a massive violation of the laws of nature. More generally, to suppose that "miracle claims" show ignorance of the laws of nature is to misunderstand completely what miracle claims are all about. Alleged miracles are thought to be important because they are known to violate the laws of nature. They do not reflect ignorance, but knowledge, of how the world (normally) works.

This relates to something you said earlier:

Not so. If by "laws of physics" you mean regularities that hold universally - with no exceptions at all - we simply don't know any to be true. If you mean regularities that generally hold, God's existence (and even His occasional intervention in the universe) doesn't contradict them.

Ad hominem arguments are really not productive.

Hawkingfan

I consider myself a strong atheist. And my reason that I can tell you that "There is no god" with 100% certainty is because I have a strong belief that nothing describes reality better than science. And after reading credible science books, credible math books, books written by credible scientists, I find that god plays no role whatsoever in any description of reality.

My point about your example of the houses was that you said you would be skeptical from what someone told you, and basing your point on it. Whereas I disagreed about being skeptical and therefore, my conclusion is different.
I realize that. But I don't think your example would require a "demand" for more evidence. You would find out the truth no matter what (as long as you didn't move away). Because the house next door would either be empty soon or it wouldn't. Also, I do not see a reason why you should automatically be skeptical about what the neighbor told you. It is just as rational to believe him or remain uncertain. But like I said, the truth in that circumstance will eventually be revealed (you'll be able to see the house vacant or you won't).
But not every claim can be resolved so easily. Either the claimant will not want to be tested (as in my example where the person who claims to walk on water but refuses to prove it), or a test cannot take place for some other reason (as in the Mars example: we cannot go to Mars and see if there is a perpetual motion machine). So in these situations, in my opinion, there MUST be some other means to make a logical conclusion for the claim that has been made. That means must be science (in my opinion).
In the example of the existence of god, we have to treat it like the last two examples above and not like your example, because there is no actual "test" for god. So the only tool we have is scientific abstraction (observation and mathematics). But there is no scientific axiom that includes god. Therefore, it is perfectly reasonable to conclude he doesn't exist.

I'd be more than happy to. Do you want me to quote scriptures intended to be scientifically accurate but are not?
I strongly disagree with this. The bible is full of scientific absurdities not intended to be "miraculous". As I said before, I can list some if you like. I never supposed "miracle claims" to show ignorance of the laws of nature. I am saying that they are easy to disprove if tested scientifically. Anyone who tells me they know someone who can perform a miracle, I tell them to have them apply to the JREF at www.randi.org a miracle testing facility. If they prove they can perform miracles to James Randi under scientific testing, then he awards them with 1 million dollars. No one has ever won. No one has even passed the preliminary testing held prior to the official test. He has even tested faith healers. He regularly asks famous faith healers who can be considered celebrities. But they refuse (I wonder why?) James Randi is very fair (the claimant agrees by contract how the test is to be conducted).
Yes, it is so. By your reasoning, it would be more rational to be agnostic than atheist, because it would not be possible to know if god exists or not, and you would have to remain uncertain. I just feel that saying god is impossible to know is saying he doesn’t exist because if he was impossible to know, he would be outside the laws of science; but nothing can exist outside the laws of science. If the agnostic or you thinks so, you have to show me how.
The idea of god is called “scholastic philosophy” (a term older than Newton). It is based on religion NOT observation. Any claims of observation it has were made to fit theories, not the other way around as it should be. No one has ever proved god from scientific abstraction (observations, experiments and math). God plays no role whatsoever in any form of scientific inductive reasoning (probabilities and inferences) and he plays no role whatsoever in scientific deductive reasoning (conclusions and tested discoveries). God plays no role whatsoever in any scientific axiom. He cannot be proved by The Scientific Method.
But most importantly: If god has ANY degree of ORDER or any RELATIONSHIP whatsoever with our universe, then he can be described using mathematics. It is therefore possible to know if god exists in our universe. Calculus is the best tool we have at coming close to quantifying and gauging that whose existence is difficult to conceive otherwise (for example, infinity). Even though it has difficulty dealing solely with infinite numbers, it can use them to put limits on a quantity being gauged. Any mathematician will tell you that. Calculus can clarify/define relationships between things such as INSTANTANEOUS speed and area. It is also possible to know if god exists because of the Fundamental Quantities of Science (physics term). God possesses none of them. No time (seconds), no mass (kilograms), no length (meters), no temperature (Kelvin), no electric charge (coulomb). He has no location, no speed, no past, no present, no future, no heat, no energy(joule) (no heat or energy=no thermodynamics), no magnetism, no sound, no light, no mechanics, no laws, no forces, no work (force over distance), no conservation. He is not a closed or open system.

NOTHING IN THIS WORLD DEFINES REALITY BETTER THAN SCIENCE. NOTHING!!--even if you don't think is it accurate. It is the best thing we've got. If you disagree, then so be it.
Everything in this universe is some form of energy. Yet, god is not evident. All matter (mass or energy) in this universe gives off electromagnetic radiation of all wavelengths including visible light and will be detected eventually.
Therefore, the agnostic must tell me where he thinks god is—inside the universal laws of science (reality), or outside.
If god is inside, he must be proved by abstraction (math and observation techniques which are fully capable of detecting anything in our universe).
If god is outside and is therefore impossible to know, he is saying he doesn’t exist because nothing can exist outside the realm of science. If we gave them the benefit of the doubt and said he could, then our universe would suffer no consequences whatsoever of his existence. His existence would be meaningless. If the agnostic says it’s impossible to know if god exists AND he could exist (it could only be outside science), he must show this in any case where such an irrational conclusion could be made.

bd-from-kg

Hawkingfan:

I really don’t understand the point of your continuing quarrel with my “house buyer” example. It’s simply part of the human condition that we have to act on imperfect information, which means that we have to estimate the probability that something is true based on whatever information we have. What I was talking about was how we go about doing this. And it turns out that the answer depends crucially on the a priori probability we assign to it.

To see how this works, let’s use Kenny’s terminology (with a slight modification to make it “standard”). Let:

h = the hypothesis being considered
k = background information
e = ‘new’ evidence (i.e., evidence in addition to background information)
P(x) means ‘the probability of x’
P(x|y) means ‘the probability of x given y’

Then Bayes’ theorem says that:

P(h|e&K) = P(h|k) * P(e|h&k) / P(e|k)

Ignoring the “k” (i.e., taking it for granted that we always take “background information” into account) this can be written more simply:

P(h|e) = P(h) * P(e|h) / P(e)

Here P(h) is the probability that the hypothesis is true given only the background information (without the “new” evidence). This is often referred to (abusing language slightly) as the “a priori” probability. P(h|e) is the probability that h is true given the evidence, so it’s our “final” estimate of how likely it is that our hypothesis is true.

An exact understanding of this equation isn’t inecessary here; the point to notice is that P(h) appears as a factor on the right side. What this means is that the probability that h is true given the evidence depends directly (in fact, it is directly proportional to) the probability that it is true given only the background information. Typically in real life there is no rigorous way to determine P(h) (or any of the other terms on the right for that matter), so we have to estimate them based on common sense. The lower we estimate P(h) to be, the higher P(e|h) / P(e) must be in order to get a reasonably high value for P(h|e). In plain English this means that the more inherently improbable a hypothesis seems at first sight (i.e., before looking at the evidence), the better evidence we are justified in demanding before accepting it. Bayes’ theorem just quantifies this “common sense” insight and justifies it mathematically.

All that I’ve added (which up to this point is completely rigorous) is that the “inherent improbability” of a hypothesis or claim is based largely on how far “out of the ordinary” – how far outside our normal experience - it is. Ordinary people moving into a vacant house, ordinary people moving into an occupied house whose occupants have indicated that they plan to stick around, ten-foot giants, talking giraffes, aliens from Arcturus, and God are further and further removed from ordinary experience; thus it is rational to set P(h) lower and lower as we move along this list. By the time we reach “talking giraffes” the evidentiary burden created by this very low a priori probability is extremely high; by the time we reach “God” it is virtually insuperable.

Thus it’s not enough merely to say that one should “look at the evidence”; Bayes’ Theorem tells us (roughly) how good the evidence has to be. In the case of the “God hypothesis” it has to be incredibly good – far better than the available evidence actually is by any sane evaluation.

bd-from-kg

Hawkingfan:

Now on to the rest of your latest post.

You know with 100% certainty that X is true because you have a strong belief that Y is true?

And a well-read scientist could have said in 1900 that “after having read credible science books, etc., I find that black holes (or intrinsic randomness, or any number of other things) play no role in any description of reality”. Sorry, this argument won’t fly.

That’s ridiculous. Your axiom system excludes the possibility that X is true, so it’s reasonable to conclude that X isn’t true? Don’t you need to justify the adoption of an axiom system that excludes the possibility that X is true in the first place? And doesn’t this justification have to include a demonstration that X isn’t true?

That would be interesting. I think you’d be in for some major surprises.

Lots of theists don’t believe in Biblical inerrancy. (Heck, most Christians don’t believe in it.)

No, they’re not. Miracles are thought by believers to be “acts of God”. No sane person imagines that he can command God. Theists typically restrict themselves (for good reasons) to the modest claim that God performs miracles on rare occasions which are inherently unpredictable. This kind of claim really can’t be disproved scientifically, by Randi or anyone else. (In my opinion, of course, this sort of claim is designed to be immune to scientific disproof, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is immune.)

I share your admiration for Randi; I’ve visited his site a number of times. But his techniques are designed to debunk claims of psychic powers and the like. These are really scientific claims; they claim that the natural world is radically different in some respects from the way scientists believe it to be. For example, ESP would be a natural phenomenon if it existed; a predictable, causal connection between the position of the planets and stars relative to the earth and ordinary human events would be a natural phenomenon if it existed. These are testable claims, precisely because they are scientific claims: they assert that certain hitherto unknown natural laws (quite unlike the ones we know about) exist. (And of course they have been tested, and are plainly false.)

Scientific methods (like Randi’s) are simply incapable of testing a claim that 2000 years ago one man walked on water and later walked out of his tomb. There’s no claim that these feats can or will ever be repeated, and unfortunately we can’t go back in a time machine to see whether these things really happened.

Not so. I say that it isn’t necessary to have some means of demonstrating the nonexistence of invisible pink unicorns in order to be confident that they don’t exist. The fact that there’s no evidence that they do exist is quite sufficient to justify positive disbelief. I say that the existence of God (more precisely, the existence of miracles) cannot be disproved merely by observing that miracles are (by definition) violations of “natural laws”. But it’s not necessary to have positive proof that God doesn’t exist in order to be justified in having a very strong positive disbelief in His existence.

I think that what you’re getting at is that the statement “God exists” cannot be defined operationally. And according verificationism this means that it’s is neither true nor false, but meaningless. Verificationism has its defenders, but I’m not one of them. It has been rejected by most philosophers. Still, while the blanket claim that any statement that can’t defined operationally is meaningless (i.e., does not express a proposition) is very difficult to defend, it does contain a large kernel of truth. And the claim that an entity of a certain description exists really does seem to be the sort of thing that cries out for an operational definition. So you do have a point here. But it’s not a point for atheism, it’s a point for noncognitivism.

Really? When did you receive this revelation?

Um, the idea is that God is supposed to have created the universe. If so, one could hardly expect Him to be found in the Universe, as part of it. This is rather like arguing that, since a symphony consists entirely of sounds of various pitches and timbres, the composer must also consist of sounds of various pitches and timbres.

Ah, faith! A wonderful thing. Quite inspiring.

And how exactly do you know that nothing can exist outside the realm of science?

For example, suppose that other universes exist but do not interact with this one in any way. This certainly seems to be logically possible; I seem to be able to imagine this state of affairs without self-contradiction. But if such a universe exists, it is “outside the realm of science”, since there is no way to detect it, much less measure it, do experiments to determine its nature, etc. So if this situation is logically possible, something can exist outside the universe (i.e., the space-time continuum we find ourselves in), and outside the realm of science.

Well if God created the universe (as most theists claim), the universe’s existence would seem to be a fairly significant consequence of His existence. But perhaps you mean that He couldn’t possibly intervene in the universe after having created it. The only problem I have with this is that I can’t imagine what arguments there could be for this claim, or how anyone could imagine that it might be true. A God capable of creating the universe ex nihilo but incapable of making the slightest change to it afterwards seems to me to be a completely unintelligible concept.

Let’s make some distinctions here. The agnostic per se says simply “I don’t know whether God exists.” This in itself doesn’t seem to involve any conclusion at all. But actually it does, because he’s implicitly claiming that the statement “God exists” is meaningful – i.e., that it expresses a proposition – so that it makes sense to say that one doesn’t know whether it’s true. And there are good arguments that agnostics are wrong about this – that “God exists” does not express a proposition. In that sense the agnostic’s “baseline” claim might itself be irrational in the final analysis. But I don’t think that’s what you’re getting at.

Some agnostics make the stronger claim that no one knows whether God exists. This creates another possible sense in which the agnostic’s claim could be irrational. It is often claimed that God’s supposed properties are logically incompatible, and it seems very plausible to me that this is so. And if it is so, the position that no one knows whether God exists is ultimately irrational, since it is certain that those who understand the incompatibility know that God does not exist.

Finally, an agnostic might claim (as you suggest) that it’s impossible in principle to know whether God exists. This claim really does appear to be logically incoherent. The problem is that “I don’t know whether God exists” entails “It’s possible (for all I know) that God exists”. But if we combine this with the “impossible in principle” claim, what we get is “It might (for all I know) be the case both that God exists and that it’s impossible in principle to know that God exists.” But this looks like a contradiction: since God is omnipotent, if He exists, it would seem that He must have the power to give us knowledge that He exists. Thus if He exists, it’s possible in principle for us to know it. So if I know that it’s impossible in principle to know whether God exists, I thereby know that God doesn’t exist – a classic reductio ad absurdum.

At any rate, as you may have gathered, I’m not an agnostic, so none of this applies to me.