A response to Richard Dawkins' argument against the existence of God.

[Voyager]

@ITR_champion

Break out your copy of The God Delusion and read chapter 4. (If that’s too time-consuming, just read the title of that chapter.) You’re wrong.

The title is “Why There Almost Certainly is no God.” Is this equivalent to a claim that God has been proven not to exist to you? Do you say “It is almost certainly the case that 2 + 2 do not equal 5?” The title is just shouting out that he is pretty sure there is no God but knows full well that such a contention is not provable.

[hotflungwok]

@ITR_champion

How exactly is the existence of my mother “independently verifiable” to any greater extent than the existence of God? Is it because more people have met my mother than have seen God? Obviously not, because many more people have had experience communicating with God than with my mother. Is it because more people have positively identified my mother than have positively identified God? Obviously not, because most people who have seen my mother have never known that she was my mother. Is it because those who have encountered my mother in certain special circumstances have positively identified her as my mother? People in a much wider range of circumstances have positively identified God. Is it because of my birth certificate or other documents? That’s a classic case of argument from authority. Is it because of photographs of her holding me as a baby? The baby in those photographs looks suspiciously similar to every other baby; how is anyone supposed to believe that it’s actually me?

You managed to point out a bunch of spurious reasons, and didn’t bother to mention the only one that counts. There is objective evidence of the existence of your mother. Experiences with your mother are repeatable (Yup, that’s her, had lunch with her last week), falsifiable (nope that’s not her, she doesn’t have a beard) and independently verifiable (yes, I’m the doctor that delivered her child, why?). Experiences with god don’t seem to be repeatable, or we’d have pretty clear evidence by now. In fact, since there’s so much variation in experiences that are claimed to involve god it’s a strike against, regardless of how much similarity you want to see. Experiences with god are not falsifiable. How would you show it’s not god? And of course, experiences with god are not independently verifiable. Who could be a credible objective witness?

The bottom line is that to have knowledge of my mother or anything else, I must be willing to trust my perceptions and reason at some point. I’ve no interest in becoming a David Hume-style, total skeptic.

Certainly, but why does your standard of ‘evidence’ change so drastically when you switch from ‘mother’ to ‘god’? You have a lot (hopefully) of objective evidence for the existence of your mother, so you conclude she exists. All the evidence that exists for god is subjective at best, and yet you still conclude that god exists. Something as amazing as god is actually going to have to have more evidence for existence than your mother before it should be thought to exist, simply by it’s improbable nature.

In our last thread, I already quoted the relevant passages from Dr. Beauregard’s book. (Of course I remember that you responded by lobbing insults at Dr. Beauregard and his co-author, but that has no effect on the accuracy of his research.)

Oh, is that all you remember? Well then let me refresh your memory. See, what I actually did was point out some extremely obvious shortcomings, assumptions, and biases in the study. The actual evidence simply did not agree with the conclusion. And it wasn’t just me. Many people in that thread took turns pointing out exactly how unscientific and unreliable that study was.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@ITR_champion

As usual, you throwing a fit about the quality of my cites while not providing any cites at all to back up your assertions. I’ve asked you before for a cite for this claim and you didn’t provide any. I know from past experience that asking you for cites is a waste of time, but I’m doing it anyway. Please provide a cite.

Show me your cite for prophecies and miraculous healings first.

Break out your copy of The God Delusion and read chapter 4. (If that’s too time-consuming, just read the title of that chapter.) You’re wrong.

I have read it more than once. If YOU read the chapter title, you’ll see that YOU are wrong. If actually ever bother to read the book (and I’m skeptical that you really have. I think you’ve read some of the lame “refutations,” but not the book itself) you will find that Dawkins says over and over agin that it’s impossible to prove that God does not exist, and that even he stops short of calling himself a hard atheist.

So your OP is a strawman. You are arguing (with classic, hollow GOTG wishful thinking) against an assertion that has not been made.

[Sage_Rat]

@Sophistry_and_Illusion

Example: suppose Smith and Jones each observe the phenomenon of St. Elmo’s fire during a thunderstorm. Let us further suppose that Smith is well-read in science, is familiar with this type of atmospheric disturbance, and without hesitation judges the observed phenomenon to be St. Elmo’s fire. Jones’ world view, on the other hand, is a poorly-supported pastiche of superstition and the paranormal, and he without hesitation judges the phenomenon to be a ghost. It is clear, in this case, that Smith’s observation is justified, and I think it is equally clear that it is justified because Smith’s theory of the world that generates this particular belief in response to this visual stimulus is itself justified. Jones’ perceptual belief, on the other hand, is clearly not justified, and it is not justified because it is generated by a theory that is itself not justified. Thus, the observational predicates we employ stand and fall with the theories that stand behind them.

Thus, if you have a mental experience, and you apply the predicate ‘God’ to this experience, your justification in doing so is not entirely independent of the plausibility of God as a theoretical entity. Nor can your justification for believing in God cannot rest entirely on your experience, any more than Jones’ justification in believing in ghosts can rest entirely on his visual experiences.

This. In all cases, it’s more likely that a person is incorrectly attributing his experience without some sort of extreme evidence to the contrary. This has nothing to do with his state of “mental health”, which is fairly well unrelated to his level of knowledge, skepticism, and practicality.

[ITR_champion]

@Voyager

Let’s start with the last paragraph. Yes you do have to trust your perceptions, but you can test the accuracy of that trust by making predictions and doing experiments. You see a swimming pool, see water, and you can test that you see correctly by dipping your hand in. You’re in the desert and see water, and you can tell that your perceptions are fooling you by going to it and finding nothing but sand. Thus, the hypotheses in both cases are falsifiable.

Now, let’s get to your mother. First, we have strong evidence for the existence of mothers as a class. I hope I don’t have to argue that with you. Then, we have no evidence that any person does not have a mother. Even Jesus. Now, there is a person you claim is your mother, and who is alive. If you offer that hypothesis, we can test it by setting up an experiment - a visit, say. Your mother showing gives strong support to the hypothesis. Your mother not showing decreases our confidence. 10 missed dates decreases it even more. Claims that your mother exists are not proof that she does - see that well known maternal researcher, Norman Bates.

A birth certificate is evidence, not an appeal to authority. I’m not sure what one would be in this case - your father is not an authority, but a witness. Birth certificates have an evidence trail, and are pretty reliable, assuming they are not from Kenya. They can falsify a hypothesis also, such as getting a copy of yours and finding that the name on it is not of the person you thought of as your mother. Maybe a baby picture by itself is not evidence but a trail of pictures of your mother and someone who becomes more and more like you is.

Now, for God, he never shows up to dates, the historical evidence is pretty spotty, and even those who claim to have contacted him contradict each other. If you have 5 uncles, and each one describes your mother in a totally different way - different weight, different hair color, different accent, you’d wonder what the hell is going on, wouldn’t you? And that is even with the knowledge that mothers exist, which we don’t have of any variety of god.

The scientific method does work wonders. The theological method, not so much.

I think that by your standards, the case for my mother fails big-time. There’s a lot of contradictory evidence about my mother. Some people who saw her say she had gray hair, others say black. (She dyed it.) Some say she had straight hair, others say wavy. (She got a perm.) On more important issues there are even larger contradictions. Some say my mother is nice while others say she’s rude. Some say that my mother is helpful and supportive, while others say she’s selfish and distant. And besides the loads of contradictory observations, there’s other reasons to be suspicious of the mother hypothesis. The photographic record shows some large gaps. (Not sure why, I guess we were just too busy to take pictures.)

As for the idea of testing my mother’s existence by experiment or the scientific method, I don’t think we can. If I were to call up my mother and tell her that I wouldn’t accept her existence as factual until she appeared at a certain place and time on ten consecutive days, she’d probably think that either I was joking or had else that I’d gone insane. Whatever her response, I’m almost certain she wouldn’t actually appear. Her record of actual appearances has the same irregularity which you’re complaining about in regards to God.

All that, however, is really besides the point. We could debate all day about whether we can scientifically experiment to determine my mother’s existence, but the fact remains that I don’t. I form my beliefs about her existence the same way I do about all things in my daily life, namely by straightforward observation and deduction.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

We can do a DNA test on you and your mom and prove she’s your mom.

Hell, we don’t even need to see her at all. The fact that you exists means you have a mother. You exist ergo your mother exists (or at least existed at some point). Your own existence necessitates a mother.

There is absolutely nothing in the universe which necessitates a “god.”

[ITR_champion]

@Revenant_Threshold

You mean, “Why there almost certainly is no God”?

Yes. Dawkins argues that there almost certainly is no God, not merely that various arguments for the existence of God are invalid. His argument for why “there almost certainly is no God” is precisely the one that I quote, word for word, in my OP. Therefore I am not making a straw man argument, but rather am responding the exactly what Richard Dawkins wrote.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@ITR_champion

Yes. Dawkins argues that there almost certainly is no God, not merely that various arguments for the existence of God are invalid. His argument for why “there almost certainly is no God” is precisely the one that I quote, word for word, in my OP. Therefore I am not making a straw man argument, but rather am responding the exactly what Richard Dawkins wrote.

I’ve yet to see an argument for the existence that was valid, myself. Claims of personal experience don’t count, since if they weren’t about God, they could just as easily be about Odin or Ra.

[begbert2]

@ITR_champion

I think that by your standards, the case for my mother fails big-time. There’s a lot of contradictory evidence about my mother. Some people who saw her say she had gray hair, others say black. (She dyed it.) Some say she had straight hair, others say wavy. (She got a perm.) On more important issues there are even larger contradictions. Some say my mother is nice while others say she’s rude. Some say that my mother is helpful and supportive, while others say she’s selfish and distant. And besides the loads of contradictory observations, there’s other reasons to be suspicious of the mother hypothesis. The photographic record shows some large gaps. (Not sure why, I guess we were just too busy to take pictures.)

And you somehow think that everyone agrees about God’s hair color? Whether his hair is straight? Whether he’s nice? Whether he’s helpful and supportive, or selfish and distant? And what about his photographic record, huh?

If it wasn’t you writing this, I would assume it was parody.

[Lemur866]

@ITR_champion

The universe is not eternal because all the evidence that we have says that the universe is not eternal. Everything, from receding galaxies to cosmic background radiation, points to the universe emerging from a singularity. Further, physical laws confirm it. If we accept that entropy of the universe always increases, then the universe can’t be eternal, or else there would have been a time in the past when its entropy was negative.

Of course you can posit a multiverse to avoid this an other difficulties, but then you’d need to argue that a being capable of creating one universe is more improbable than a multiverse of infinite or near-infinite size, and no one seems willing to do that.

Of course all this doesn’t prove that “the universe” is not eternal, just that before the big bang there’s nothing we can say about the universe. The laws of physics we know apply only back to the first few picoseconds of the Big Bang, but not before.

And why do you keep insisting that there must be some “being” who created the universe.

It’s very simple.

You insist that the Universe must have a cause? Why? Because everything in the Universe has a cause.

Let’s name the cause of the Universe “God”.

Well, what caused God? Nothing. But you just said above that everything must have a cause. Except God. Unlike all those things which exist in the Universe, God does not require a cause.

But then the axiom that everything must have a cause is broken, because we know of at least one thing that doesn’t have a cause–God. If things–such as God–can exist without a cause, then who knows what else might exist without a cause? Maybe the Universe doesn’t need a cause, then. Maybe the ham sandwich I had for lunch doesn’t need a cause. And so on.

If everything requires a cause, then God requires a cause. If God doesn’t require a cause, then there are things that don’t require causes, and why should God be the only one?

This conundrum isn’t exactly new. The resolution to the conundrum is that we don’t know why the Universe exists. It could be that the Universe is uncaused. Or it could be that the cause of the Universe exists outside the Universe, and is therefore unknowable by definition. Or maybe we’ll figure out some other answer someday.

But you can’t escape the dilemma that either everything is caused, or some things are uncaused.

[Lemur866]

@ITR_champion

Yes. Dawkins argues that there almost certainly is no God, not merely that various arguments for the existence of God are invalid. His argument for why “there almost certainly is no God” is precisely the one that I quote, word for word, in my OP. Therefore I am not making a straw man argument, but rather am responding the exactly what Richard Dawkins wrote.

If I say, “There are almost certainly no cookies in the cookie jar,” I’m making a bold statement about the cookie jar. But I’m certainly not saying that I’ve proven there are no cookies in the cookie jar, now am I?

Therefore, you are making a straw man argument, and are not responding exactly to what Richard Dawkins wrote.

[ITR_champion]

@begbert2

And you somehow think that everyone agrees about God’s hair color? Whether his hair is straight? Whether he’s nice? Whether he’s helpful and supportive, or selfish and distant?

No, I do not. Why you decided to make that junk up and imply that I believed it is entirely beyond me.

[ITR_champion]

@SentientMeat

Do you have any evidence that other religions produce a much less rich experience? My atheistic experiences are every bit as rich as those which occurred when I was a theist (and they were pretty impressive too – if yours are better still, you must be getting some real good shit, epiphanically speaking.) Do you believe me when I say this? Would you believe a Buddhist, or a Fang trance singer, if they told you that their experiences were very profound, long-lasting, clear, specific, and well-remembered?

I am quite willing to believe the accounts of experiences from followers of the other religions. Not only willing to do so, but I actually do so, as I’ve mentioned in other threads. Many Buddhist monks have a demonstrated ability to use meditation and ‘deep prayer’ to make extreme changes to their bodies and survive in circumstances of extreme cold and oxygen deprivation that would kill normal people. (Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School has studied this phenomenon thoroughly, along with many other phenomena that could be considered paranormal, and his books are an excellent resource on the topic.) So when I look at these results, I have to conclude that the experiences of those monks are genuine, where by “genuine” I mean they are not centered around meaningless hocus-pocus and imaginary things, but rather that they are truly in contact with a genuine level of reality. As for the experiences of those who practice the religions of primitive tribal cultures, I haven’t read much about that but I’m certainly open to the possibility of genuine religious experiences there.

However, none of that is mutually exclusive with my Christian beliefs. People who have only a surface-level summary of the beliefs may jump to the conclusion that one couldn’t simultaneously accept the experiences of Christian mystics and mystics from other religions and traditions, but those who have studied the issue in depth have produced strong arguments to the effect that all religions experience, considered as a whole, points to the truth of the Christian worldview. (It is, of course, possible that someone could argue that it points to the truth of a different religion, but I’m not aware of any major thinker from another religion who has done so.) That much has been dealt with in details by James and Otto, or, if you prefer more recent authors, by E. F. Schumacher and Hurston Smith.

(I’ll try to get back to the remainder of your post when I have the chance.)

[ITR_champion]

@Lemur866

Of course all this doesn’t prove that “the universe” is not eternal, just that before the big bang there’s nothing we can say about the universe. The laws of physics we know apply only back to the first few picoseconds of the Big Bang, but not before.

And why do you keep insisting that there must be some “being” who created the universe.

It’s very simple.

You insist that the Universe must have a cause? Why? Because everything in the Universe has a cause.

Let’s name the cause of the Universe “God”.

Well, what caused God? Nothing. But you just said above that everything must have a cause. Except God. Unlike all those things which exist in the Universe, God does not require a cause.

But then the axiom that everything must have a cause is broken, because we know of at least one thing that doesn’t have a cause–God. If things–such as God–can exist without a cause, then who knows what else might exist without a cause? Maybe the Universe doesn’t need a cause, then. Maybe the ham sandwich I had for lunch doesn’t need a cause. And so on.

If everything requires a cause, then God requires a cause. If God doesn’t require a cause, then there are things that don’t require causes, and why should God be the only one?

This conundrum isn’t exactly new. The resolution to the conundrum is that we don’t know why the Universe exists. It could be that the Universe is uncaused. Or it could be that the cause of the Universe exists outside the Universe, and is therefore unknowable by definition. Or maybe we’ll figure out some other answer someday.

But you can’t escape the dilemma that either everything is caused, or some things are uncaused.

I’m unable to find any relationship between what you claim I “insist” and “said” and what I’ve actually posted in this thread.

[Fantome]

@ITR_champion

Yes. Dawkins argues that there almost certainly is no God, not merely that various arguments for the existence of God are invalid.

You’re wrong. In the chapter titled, “Why there almost certainly is no God”, arguing against that the “various arguments for the existence of God are invalid” is exactly what he does.

His argument for why “there almost certainly is no God” is precisely the one that I quote, word for word, in my OP.

And I and others have already pointed out to you that that is not an argument that “there almost certainly is no God.” See posts 11, 15, 17, 21 and 25.

Therefore I am not making a straw man argument, but rather am responding the exactly what Richard Dawkins wrote.

You are making a straw man by claiming that one snippet you posted is an argument for why God almost certainly doesn’t exist just be cause it came from a chapter titled “Why there almost certainly is no God.”

You’ve ignored the majority of my points, questions and one request for a cite. I wonder why.

[begbert2]

@ITR_champion

No, I do not. Why you decided to make that junk up and imply that I believed it is entirely beyond me.

How in the hell can you argue that your mother’s existence is more doubtable than God’s by making arguments that apply more to him (it? her?) than they do to your mom?

I’ll answer my own question: by having a spectacular immunity to the effects of cognitive dissonance.

[Voyager]

@ITR_champion

I think that by your standards, the case for my mother fails big-time. There’s a lot of contradictory evidence about my mother. Some people who saw her say she had gray hair, others say black. (She dyed it.) Some say she had straight hair, others say wavy. (She got a perm.) On more important issues there are even larger contradictions. Some say my mother is nice while others say she’s rude. Some say that my mother is helpful and supportive, while others say she’s selfish and distant. And besides the loads of contradictory observations, there’s other reasons to be suspicious of the mother hypothesis. The photographic record shows some large gaps. (Not sure why, I guess we were just too busy to take pictures.)

Aha, the maternal transitional forms are missing. I say your mother was created just a few years ago.
And the point of that joke is that things like you describe happen all the time in science. Your mother probably never asserted her hair was always the same color. If there was solid evidence for God 4,000 years ago, and again 2,000 years ago, I don’t think anyone would have problems.

As for the idea of testing my mother’s existence by experiment or the scientific method, I don’t think we can. If I were to call up my mother and tell her that I wouldn’t accept her existence as factual until she appeared at a certain place and time on ten consecutive days, she’d probably think that either I was joking or had else that I’d gone insane. Whatever her response, I’m almost certain she wouldn’t actually appear. Her record of actual appearances has the same irregularity which you’re complaining about in regards to God.

You know about your mother. Say you had a dweeb of a friend who said he had a super hot girlfriend. You say you want to meet her, and he agrees to bring her along some day. But over a period of months, every time he is supposed to bring her he makes some excuse. Still think he has her? It’s not like God only shows up once in a while - God has never shown up.

All that, however, is really besides the point. We could debate all day about whether we can scientifically experiment to determine my mother’s existence, but the fact remains that I don’t. I form my beliefs about her existence the same way I do about all things in my daily life, namely by straightforward observation and deduction.

Of course. The evidence for her existence is so overwhelming that it convinces you and everyone else. Your mother’s existence is also not an extraordinary claim. God’s existence is, especially now we know his supposedly holy book is full of inaccuracies.

[Half_Man_Half_Wit]

@ITR_champion

The universe is not eternal because all the evidence that we have says that the universe is not eternal.

Oh, there’s about a dozen theories entirely in accord with current evidence in which the universe is eternal – recently, just as an example, the Big Bounce model has gotten a bit of momentum, thanks in part to the work of Martin Bojowald and Abhay Ashtekar. The eternal chaotic inflation model, mentioned in this very thread by Sophistry and Illusion, would qualify as well, it seems to me.

Everything, from receding galaxies to cosmic background radiation, points to the universe emerging from a singularity. Further, physical laws confirm it. If we accept that entropy of the universe always increases, then the universe can’t be eternal, or else there would have been a time in the past when its entropy was negative.

And what prevents me from making the same argument about an eternal god? Or, in other words, if as you content it is impossible for the universe to exist eternally, what makes you think that anything could, since in this case, all available evidence can only show that eternal existence is impossible? That is, again, the point of the argument: showing the unjustified attribution of special properties to god, without which it is empty.

[Voyager]

@ITR_champion

I am quite willing to believe the accounts of experiences from followers of the other religions.

I, as an atheist, accept the accounts of the experiences of people of all religions. I don’t think any of them are lying. But accepting that you saw an oasis in the desert does not mean there really was one there, and accepting a religious experience as happening does not mean that any deity caused it.

[begbert2]

@Voyager

I, as an atheist, accept the accounts of the experiences of people of all religions. I don’t think any of them are lying. But accepting that you saw an oasis in the desert does not mean there really was one there, and accepting a religious experience as happening does not mean that any deity caused it.

This is my main abstract beef with theism - the absolute confidence that I am correct in interpreting my experiences, and everyone who claims to know a different god is having real experiences but isn’t competent to correctly interpret them. And if they did interpret them correctly, they would agree with me of course!

It’s a position that states that onesself is better/smarter/whicheverer than everybody else. It’s ego, squared.

But atheism does the same thing! you might cry. But atheism doesn’t claim to have some special pipeline to the truth that others lack. It just claims that everyone is capable of being fooled by their experiences. Are atheists better? Not really - many of us have been suckered by our preconceptions and misinterpretations too. We just have noticed that when something is real and true, the concencus* about it tends to increase with the acquisition of information. When people claim to have been having experiences for centuries and still can’t agree about what they’re experiencing, then it’s doubtful that *any *of them know.

• Science!