PoodleLovinPessimist

My debate with D2_Supreme didn't quite make the cut, so I thought I would bring the topic up for discussion here.

In the jargon, Strong Atheism is the belief that God does not exist. No shilly-shallying, no waffling: God does not exist. And this is a reasonable belief.

There are two main pillars on which reasons for this belief rest:

1. Negative: "God exists" is not a reasonable belief, therefore the contrary is a reasonable belief
2. Positive: If God existed, we would expect to see certain evidence; we see the contrary of this expected evidence, therefore we can reasonably reject belief in God.

There are five main categories of "God":

1. Undefinable
2. Unknowable
3. Knowable and false
4. Knowable in theory but currently unknown
5. Knowable, true, but prosaic

Undefinable "Gods" are, by definition (or lack thereof) simply meaningless. If you can't give me any definition of "God", then the marks or sounds are entirely meaningless. We can simply exclude undefined terms from rational consideration.

Unknowable Gods are, by definition, unknowable: Gods that hide, gods that created the laws of physics and then departed the scene, gods that work in "mysterious" ways. It is impossible by definition to tell the difference between the existence and nonexistence of these gods, and the choice becomes a matter of preference. Absent even a theoretical method of knowledge, a preference is sufficient reason to believe or disbelieve a proposition, so disbelief is reasonable.

Knowable and false gods include Yahweh and Allah, and the Intelligent Designer: Gods who are defined to behave in very specific and understandable ways, where the evidence clearly should be present. That the evidence does in fact contradict these expectations is evidence that these gods are not present.

Neither knowable in theory nor prosaic definitions of "God" satisfy our intuitive notions of what the word "God" ought to mean. Yes, you can define "God" as "The laws of physics and the initial conditions of the universe," and yes, such a "god" does indeed deserve belief, but the definition goes too far outside our intuitive understanding of "God" to be worthy of belief. Likewise for a God who is knowable in theory but is too subtle or remote for our current knowledge; a definition of god that specifies that it hides or works so far behind the scenes as to be hard to discover is not sufficiently intuitive to deserve the word "God".

No matter how you slice it, disbelief in God is rationally warranted.

Selsaral

At the risk of boring you all with my same old argument, I'd suggest another powerful argument against the existence of the supernatural that supports the position of strong atheism:

There is ample evidence that gods and the supernatural are simply created by people. For the exact same reasons christians dismiss the IPU because 'she's obviously just made-up', we can dismiss the claims of other theists as mythical. At the very least, the existence of Mormonism and Scientology and thousands of other absurd and 'obviously made-up' religions casts profound doubt on the assertions of theists, which is the only evidence we have for the existence of the supernatural.

Alethias

Isn't your negative pillar, that "God exists" is not a reasonable belief totally dependant on your positive pillar that there is no evidence for the existence of a god? Reason relies on evidence or it's meaningless. The assignment of "reasonableness" to a specific belief is arbitrary if you divorce a requirement for evidence in validating the belief in question.

But this is only a very minor nit to pick. You sum up in better words than I could have why I consider myself a strong atheist.

I like your 5 categories of "God". I've personally only run into #2, #3 and #4 in discussion. One that is probably #5 is defining God as The Universe. My best answer to that at this point would be, yeah, but so what?

SoT

drewjmore

An admirable writ, to be sure. However,
makes note of the slipperiest definition of 'god,' and then stumbles in the semantics. I'll give this some thought and perhaps a real suggestion in a later post. The point a debate opponent should make here is that, "our intuitive notions," have no bearing on the nature or facts of the hypothetical god in question. Again, I think this is semantics-- avoid such phrases, and you may be alright.

-djm [veteran conversational terrorist]

Yahzi

Erm... Absent evidence, reasonableness requires you to disbelieve a proposition. Preference has nothing to do with it.

If nobody knows, you don't get to make up what you like; all you can say is, I don't know..

If you leave this barn door open, it swings both ways: if preference is adequate, then all a theologian has to do to render his belief reasonable is to remove it from all possiblity of knowledge. That hardly seems what we mean by "reasonable."

Destronicus

I consider myself a weak atheist, but that's probably because I have a pretty loose definition of what a god could be. If we happen upon an alien life form someday that is immensely powerful, I think it could be possible to apply the term "god" to that being.

This is kind of a silly example, but I think it helps to illustrate my position: In "Transformers the Movie" there is a giant robot named Unicron that eats planets to survive. Now, if we look up into the sky and saw a giant robot eating the moon, many might worship Unicron as a god. Of course, we would probably eventually figure that it is just a product of an advanced alien civilization and destroy it with nuclear weapons, but where do we draw the line between super-advanced intelligence and god? What if Unicron was 1000 times more powerful? 1,000,000 times?

Something else that might help make my point clear is the Kardashev Scale. Would we consider beings from a Type IV or V civilization gods? Why or why not?

PoodleLovinPessimist

In ordinary conversation, you're absolutely correct. In the rarefied domains of philosophy, there's a problem. Consider the statement:

(1) Absent evidence, reason requires you to disbelieve a proposition.

The question becomes, is there evidence to believe (1)? This is the shoal which wrecked the Vienna Circle's boat of Logical Positivism.

As long as you're clear you're making stuff up, I don't know why you shouldn't do it.

This is not much of a problem. If you want to define "God" as an ineffable and unknowable force for good, and you're clear it's a made-up metaphysics, you can call your choice to believe this as "reasonable" by fideism. If you say, "I believe because I want to believe," and you do indeed want to believe, then ok, no big whoop.

seebs

I have met reasonable strong atheists and reasonable theists. I think life experience and terminology have huge impacts on what beliefs might be reasonable for a given person to hold.

I have certainly met people whose strong atheism strikes me as a reasonable interpretation of their experiences.

drewjmore

After some consideration, I must ask: how were the 5 classes of god established?
The first two seem essentially identical, and the latter group of three seem to be similar ideals. Why not use just 2 classes: knowable & unknowable? An unknowable god is of course indistinguishable from no god at all, which leaves the knowable god. To be known, a knowable god must in fact provide some knowledge-- if only an explanation of why they provide no such knowledge! "Mysteries" abound from this point.

I humbly present my own version of your sentiments, with the none-to-subtle influence of Selsaral's words:

Quote:

An indefinable/unknowable deity can make no pronouncement, deliver no commandment and smite no evildoer. A knowable god must make itself a supernatural force-- perform miracles, answer prayers and punish sinners-- or be consigned by the faithful to the role of mythical parental figure. In practice, we find persistent religions to be hybrids. Often, the god makes itself known only to a select few, who dedicate themselves to the 'study' and dissemination of their god’s will. Further, these gods typically exhibit past behaviors which—taken on 'faith'—demonstrate boundless power. In other instances, religions claim that their god IS knowable, although this is usually through intense ‘study,’ and ‘soul-searching,’ which amount to brain-washing or auto-hypnosis. In still other varieties of faith, god was knowable in the past, but has since removed themselves from existence and is no longer so, and this god’s return may bring both pleasant and horrible things in future.

Terribly inadequate, I know, but simpler.

-djm [closet theologian]

seebs

I think "unknowable" and "knowable" may be too broad. It is in many cases possible to know something about an entity, but not everything about it.