Refining the Atheist Argument

Great Debates
1

Folks, I’d like to place here what I believe is the strongest argument for atheism, and I invite you to attack it or suggest improvements.

For the purpose of the thread, feel free to take positions contrary to your personal beliefs for the purpose of honing your skills and improving the argument.

The main argument goes like this:

Let’s define “faith” as a way of learning about things through personal revelation. I place no judgement as to whether this is insight generated by the individual, or received from a divine or supernatural source.

Faith can be contrasted with the scientific method, which is a process of using empirical observation to learn about things.

All religions which make claims about the state of the world (in particular the existence of a god, and participation of the god in the world in some way) base these claims on faith. This true in general, but it is also true in the case of religions which include a written text as a record of beliefs. Most of the knowledge in these texts is, even if accepted at face value, based on personal faith of the authors.

Personal revelation is also required to interpret the texts and to select which portions are allegorical, which portions are claims of fact, and which portions are known to the authors by faith. This is necessary because at face value the texts contain self contradictions and contradictions with known historical and empirically confirmed facts.

Faith also receives attention as a virtue in many but not all religions. (I believe in all monotheistic or quasi-monotheistic religions faith is a virtue).

The scientific method as a way of knowing about things has itself been empirically confirmed as effective. Unless a complete position of solipsism is adopted, this is not circular. Since in a state of complete solipsism there is no way of knowing about anything, faith is also excluded, and so solipsism is not a relevant consideration in the theist/atheist argument. We know that the scientific method is reliable because the knowledge we obtain from it allows confident prediction of the behaviour of the physical world.

Faith has been established as an unreliable method of knowing. All religious beliefs which are consistent with the current known state of the physical world are inconsistent with historical religious beliefs - ie, almost the entire portion of revealed knowledge which has been subject to observation and measurement has been shown to be incorrect.

Faith, when applied to the same empirical knowledge (including knowledge of the existence and content of religious texts) is not repeatable - different people come to very different conclusions, which can be shown to correlate with the dominant religious beliefs they are exposed to.

The conclusion is that all belief in a god is gained from a method of knowing which has been proven to be unreliable. No alternate methods of knowing have been able to confirm beliefs in a god, despite the fact that most beliefs about god are capable of generating testable hypotheses about the effects of the existence of god on the state of the world.

Following from this, it is more reasonable to believe that there is probably no god than to believe that there is probably a god.

Further, there is no reliable way to gain knowledge about a god, even should one exist. Hence, belief in any specific attributes, behaviour or intent of a god is highly irrational.

Interestingly, if one already has a belief in a god, it is not necessarily irrational to maintain that belief, if one also believes that the cost of seeking information or reasoning exceeds the benefit of more reliable knowledge.

However, making considerable effort to maintain a belief in a god is irrational (since it involves cost with no improvement in knowledge).

(As an aside to this argument, it is this last point that leads me to lose respect for Christian apologetics. I have no problem with people of faith who are quite happy believing and see no need to question their beliefs).

2

Well, I have been known to discuss stuff like this, but can’t even follow what you are in fact trying to discuss. When I read words I have yet to see in this lifetime “solipsism” all I can say is “Huh”. Yes I went to college, by the way.

I see faith is part of your statement, well one can have faith that say the sun will come up tomorrow or that the moon will be full again, so that is not itself a sign of any God or not.

Maybe what you mean is that we are self aware and thus the only beings that can have faith in something? Don’t know about that part either, trained dogs probably have faith they will get a treat if they do so and so. Mainly, I just don’t see what you are saying in that first post and as I write that is all there is.

3

As an atheist, I think that (argumentively speaking), that’s a pretty weak argument for atheism, for the following two reasons:

  1. You redefined “faith”. (As best I can tell the word actually speaks of a way of retaining belief in some claim, not the way to get the information in the first place, which would be “revelation” or “inspiration” or “your mommy/preacher told it to you”, or whichever -but not “faith”.) I don’t know if you redefined the term for reasons of shorthand or what, but regardless as a definition pedant I think this is a bad, bad idea. (Though you might be able to reformulate the argument using “revelation” instead of “faith” and remove this problem, I suppose.)

  2. Your position is based in assertions of personal opinion that you can’t reasonably expect your debate partner to accept, like “Faith has been established as an unreliable method of knowing” and “there is no reliable way to gain knowledge about a god”. And, logically speaking, if they don’t accept your premises they’ll consider your argument unsound and worthless.
    Of course, no matter what argument you make, your premises are likely to be attacked, because religious people have invested a lot of time and effort and belief in their religions, so turning their back on those religions has the high cost of forcing them to swallow that they’ve been a patsy and large chunks of their life have been wasted on misguided pursuits. People will twist logic pretty far to avoid having to swallow that pill sideways. Still though I prefer to formulate arguments based on objective and well-supported facts that at least resist flat denial - even though I know they will be flatly denied anyway*.

  • I’ve recently been told that non-christians don’t have religious experiences, and another time that christianity predated judaism, because accepting the contrary would have forced acceptance of the unacceptable.
4

OT: when you see a term that you’re not familiar with, it may be to your advantage to look it up. That is how one learns, and learning is how one fights ignorance.

5

You know now that I think about it, you may have just the argument most do for athiesm, be real vague, use giant words no one can follow and reasoning that does not seem to say anything, and hope that when it is read people will just say “OK, I guess.” and you can say see I convinced them! Other than saying you are for it, I don’t follow the why part at all.

6

Your OP does not address the issue of a deity that does not interfere. Nor does it address the issue of one that intervenes only indirectly - what if Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, etc had all had experiences of the Divine, but being human, imperfect, vessels, all had their own interpretations?

7

Excellent OP. My quibble, like begbert2’s, is in the use of faith. Faith is used to justify a belief or position, not to establish it. In this way it is a closer analog to the scientific method. The scientific method is not about creating hypotheses, which can come from study or from dreams, it is more about validating a hypothesis.

I think most theists will accept that God is unknowable pretty well - in fact they say this whenever we find a contradiction in God’s supposed characteristics. Faith being an unreliable way of knowing might cause an argument; you’d have to start by defining what is meant by knowing. However, the fact that almost all religions accept additional revelation supports your view, since this additional stuff was clearly not known from the original revelation and faith.

I suspect the real argument you’d get is “well, science changes its mind too, so there.”

8

Stut, ok I did what you asked and got just what I expected, I know just as much about it as I did before I looked it up. Here is how that word is defined, I swear…

Solipsism is an epistemological or ontological position that knowledge of anything outside the mind is unjustified.

Yeah, that is real clear now isn’t it? Now what are those other words, the second seems to say it is related to a cancer, as in oncologist? See why I don’t look stuff up now?

Is the position cancer proves there is no God then, I have heard arguments like that?

9

You clearly have never taken a Theory of Knowledge class in college, then. I did, and the thing was infested by annoying solipists. You probably also have never read Heinlein. Try “They” and “All You Zombies.”

Not faith, induction. The sun has come up every day so far, so it is reasonable to assume it will come up tomorrow. As we understood why the sun comes up, we stopped being scared by eclipse. We also know that some billions of years from now the Sun will stop coming up - or, rather, it will come to get us. Nothing at all to do with faith.

I’m not sure whether my dogs have faith or not - they certainly yip enough around supper time so we won’t forget to feed them, and my old, smart, dog checks to make sure I remembered to bring treats to feed him on his walk the moment we go out the door. But faith and knowledge in general do go with intelligence, so I’ll agree that we are the only species we know of who has it - but I’d want to check the chimps and dolphins before I say it for sure.

Let me try to rephrase the argument. There are two ways of knowing about things: the religious way, based on revelation and faith; and the logical scientific way, based on observation, deduction, and testing through experiment. Though neither way can nor claims to give us an absolute reading on the existence of any god or gods, when the religious way does give testable information about the real world it is proven to be incorrect, while science has progressed in the direction of more and more accurate knowledge about the world, and is tested every day. In fact, any increased accuracy about the world in religious beliefs, like heliocentrism, actually came from it accepting the conclusions of science.
Given how wrong religion has been about the things we can test, there is no reason to think it right about the things we can’t test. That different religions hold different views about these things further supports this. Therefore, there is no reason to believe in any god, which is exactly the atheist position.

10

The reason solipism comes up in these discussions is that for a solipist, all bets are off. You can’t ever really know anything, since it all might be a hallucination or planted in our minds by some evil being. I bet neither of us believes in solipism, so we can ignore it, and you’ve learned something.

If you believe in a god that always does the best for his people (omnibenevolent) then cancer is an argument against his existence. But if your god is an asshole, cancer isn’t evidence one way or another.

11

If you don’t understand his argument, why not just ask him to explain it instead of accusing him of trying to confuse people? That doesn’t advance the discussion.

Solipsism is the position that we can’t be certain of anything except our own existence - meaning you, Silverstreak Wonder, can’t be sure anyone or anything else is real outside of your own mind. I always end up rolling my eyes at that kind of thing.

12

Voyager, thanks, never got that it actually means everything could be a hallucination, man I am going to have to go become a Wikipedia editor and rewrite everything there in my image using real words. Thanks for the update.

OK at least i got the cancer tie in. As others said above the god would not have to be an asshole as you suggest to have let that develop but just a non interfering one who rewards later, which scripture does seem to favor.

13

It’s difficult to know whether you’re just yanking everybody’s chains, here, Silverstreak Wonder. You say you looked up"solipsism", and the definition gave you the word “ontological,” yet instead of looking up the word “ontological,” you appear to have assumed that it had something to do with oncology. I’ll give you a hint: it doesn’t.

Acting on the generous assumption that you’re being forthright here, I’ll also direct you to a place where you might be able to gain a clearer understanding of what solipsism is. Brain in a vat.

You say you went to college. Kindly provide the following bits of information to make your meaning clear: 1.) what college did you go to; and, 2.) did you, in fact, graduate?

14

Kay, I have BS 4year degree from CMSU. Grade points were 3.2 on a 4 scale. I think it was 142 hours. Many of my friends know that, I am frequently told they know I am a BS. But on this forum it seems to be illegal to discuss side things like this for unknown reasons.

I already looked up one word and it was a waste of my time, Isn’t crazy supposed to be doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? I just looked that first one up to see, but got just what I deserved, more words to look up. It becomes a chain reaction like an H bomb, see? Better to just ask for the real def from a real person.

15

Epistemological = of or related to the nature of knowledge.

Ontological = of or related to the nature of being.

SW, again on the off chance you’re not just chain-yanking, these terms are indeed real words, and they’re not just here to mess with you. They’re convenient terms used to save time. You’re not familiar with them because you don’t read much in the relevant fields. On the off chance you’re an American football fan, you can appreciate just how awkward it would be to keep referring to “when the offense moves the ball ten yards or more and therefore gets another chance to move the ball ten yards or more.” You’d never say that in a discussion of the game–you’d just use the term “first down”.

Further, you’re under the impression that only secular writers use such convenient terminology to work with advanced concepts. There are a number of brilliant Christian commentators whose philosophical works are every bit as sophisticated as their secular counterparts. They don’t sell as many books as Tim LaHaye because most readers don’t have the training to comprehend them–as has been demonstrated here–but they’re out there, and they’re smart.

16

I suspect most people went through college not knowing the word. I know it (before I came here) because I read Heinlein, read about Heinlein, and took a bunch of philosophy classes for fun. You should read those stories - they are good stories, and not even that long.

True. One of the discussions we have here quite often is if God is an asshole for letting people suffer in this way (and for permitting earthquakes) even if some of the sufferers go to heaven. Whatever conclusions we draw has nothing to do with atheism, because it at best rules out only a subset of possible gods.

17

Stut, Thanks, but how does it save time if so many have to go look it up, why not use just regular words like you did and be done with it? Can’t the educated also understand the normal words too? I still think words like that are used to cover up the meaning in hopes of getting acceptance rather than stopping to go see what they mean. And you can see if you do look, you tend not to find any simple definition anyway, just more words to look up. In an argument, make your point as clear as possible I say. What is the down side of a clear meaning?

18

I don’t know what you mean by “regular words”. What determines whether a word is regular or not?

19

Yes, words tend to be defined in terms of other words. It’s a pretty safe bet that if one is looking up solipsism, one should already know what epistemology and ontology are. Those latter two are the foundational terms, I think, for any discussion in philosophy.

Look at it this way. What’s the definition of a derivative? Well, the formal definition involves the concept of limits. So to fully understand derivatives, one need understand limits. And to understand limits one needs to understand basic algebra. Mathematics builds on itself. Philosophy, which overlaps with mathematics pretty heavily in some areas, does the same.

BTW, I never took philosophy as an undergrad; I had a BBA in information systems, which is usually taught in the business college. These ideas are not inaccessible for intelligent people; you strike me as being intelligent enough.

20

It’s very difficult to be sympathetic to your complaint that our words are too big and scary for you, and that bothering to look things up is also too scary for you.
Regarding the cancer thing, there’s a straight and simple biblical explanation for cancer there - it could easily be part of the smackdown that God did as part of his hissy-fit for being disobeyed about not eating that pointlessly forbidden fruit. That is the just-so biblical story of why we live in a world of hardship instead of an Eden, after all.

And it’s quite fair to characterize the unforgiving God who did this as an asshole - even without the myraid of other assholish things he does elsewhere in the text. (Like that flood, for example - noninterference at its best! And the pillar of salt - classic forgiving benevolence.) Personally I find it quite bizarre that there are Christians who characterize their god of the bible as benevolent and forgiving - based on the stuff he actually supposedly does and did, he’s reminiscent of Saddam Hussein.
And on the subject of the OP, regarding criticisms of the original argument presented, I would cut out the solipsim part entirely. It’s not really necessary to the main point of the argument, and as tangents go it demonstrably has the potential to confuse the plebes.