Unless gravity IS God’s proof.
Well, it’s proof enough that something caused you and everything to exist, at any rate. The tricky part is whittling down the alternatives*. God? Odin? Zeus? Brahma? Amun? The FSM? The Cheese?
- especially if we’re going to close our eyes to any evidence collected and analyzed by that dread cabal of evil liars, science.
No empirical evidence for the existence of something could establish that the thing has any kind of moral ultimacy or supremacy.
But nothing without some kind of moral ultimacy or supremacy is worth dealing with as a “god”.
Therefore, no empirical evidence for the existence of something could be evidence for the existence of anything known thereby to be worth dealing with as a “god”.
A theist would be mistaken to offer empirical evidence about God, and an atheist would be mistaken to ask for it.
Regarding that last question I just quoted, I have just now this very second come up with something to say about this, maybe.
Until about 30 seconds ago, I also have generally maintained that it is not possible to choose one’s beliefs.
(Actually that’s only true in one sense. One sense in which it is is possible is as follows. I can choose to put myself in a situation which I know as a general matter of psychology tends to induce this or that particular belief in people. In that sense, I might be said to be choosing a belief. This is, in fact, one way a few Christian organizations explicitly put some of their missionary exhortations. The LDS religion is a notable example–they say that even if you don’t believe, if you want to believe, then start participating in their church and eventually you’ll find yourself believing. I’ve known several Mormon converts who said this is exactly what it did, and it worked. Anyway, this isn’t my point in this post, I’m just parenthetically pointing out that there is one way it is possible to explicitly choose to believe this or that.)
But it occurs to me that one thing you can choose to do is use this or that means to express one’s beliefs, or maybe that’s not putting it hte right way, but anyway, it seems possible to choose this or that means to express one’s experiences or convictions or something.
And it could be easy to slide from talk about choices between modes of expression and choices between beliefs. A hypothetical example might be as follows. There are three spheres on the table in front of me. I have a choice of languages to use to describe this. One language has a word for pairs of spheres, but no word for individual spheres. the other language has a word for sets of three spheres, but no word for spheres or pairs of spheres. So in one language, the right way to describe the scene is “There are three pairs-of-spheres on the table.” In the other language the right way to describe it is “There is one set-of-three-spheres” on the table.
I myself would never be tempted to say that when I’m deciding which language to use, I’m deciding “what to believe” about what’s on the table. But that’s because I’ve learned to distinguish between propositions and sentences. I recognize that both of the above sentences are different ways to express the same proposition. The thing I believe is a proposition. How I express it is a sentence. And choosing sentences is not the same as choosing beliefs.
But, at least in my own case, personally, I had to learn to make that distinction. It is easy for a person to misunderstand these matters, and to think that the things we believe are sentences. (I have students who stumble over this all the time, for example.) And someone who thinks this might take himself to be choosing what to believe when he’s deciding what language to use to describe the table. He might think he’s trying to decide whether to believe there are three pairs or instead whether to believe there is a single triad.
What does this have to do with religious belief?
Perhaps “choosing to believe” in one religion or another could be modeled as the choice to use this or that means of expressing some set of truths.
This is a thoroughly pluralist view I’m expressing here, so of course it will not sit comfortably with a lot of Christians. But it’s not necessarily so pluralist that it makes all religions equally valid. For there can be better and worse ways to express truths. Going back to the sphere example, there are a couple of things to say about the relative values of different ways of describing them. For one thing, a third language which does distinguish individual spheres will probably be more broadly useful for various technological and other practical purposes. For another thing, we can imagine a mode of expression like this: Kill one bunny for each sphere there is on a table, kill one puppy for each cube. That’s a mode of expression, but it’s a terrible one in that one must kill cute furry creatures in order to use it.
Back to religions. Perhaps some ways of expressing whatever the deep truths about humanity and its place in the world expressed by religious statements (assuming there are any) are less powerful and useful than others, both for purposes directly related to these truths and for other practical purposes. Also, perhaps some ways of expressing these truths in religion are harmful in ways others are not. (For example, one religion may express these truths by killing people. Perhaps some religious killings in our actual history count here. This is not a defense of religious killing–exactly the opposite.)
So then, “choosing to believe” in the Christian God amounts to a commitment to the view that expressing the truths of religion (again, I’m just assuming there are such truths in this post) is done best in the Christian fashion. The Christian myths and doctrines and moral principles are the best way to express these truths about humanity and the cosmos and so on.
My own education makes me see that this wouldn’t really be a choice to believe per se, but I know from experience that that is a distinction that is lost on a lot of people.
I’ve run out of steam. And I’m supposed to be writing my goddamn dissertation* right now.
-FrL-
*working title
“What is it I am wantin’? (shakes fist at sky) What I am wantin’ is the Day iv Judgment!!!”
— landless Irish peasant, 19th century
Osmosis.
Or rather, that not only does osmosis work, but there are ludicrously complex self-aware machines running around that are based on it as a basic operating system.
That put a crimp in my drift toward simple atheistic natural philosophy. In a world so weird, a creator may not be strictly necessary, but it’s no more ridiculous or incredible than* the stuff we know to be real.*