Is belief in God a delusion? - Richard Dawkins

Great Debates
81

[QUOTE=Lizard]
No, you are 180 degrees wrong in your understanding of what I am trying to say, as are Loopydude and Diogenes the Cynic.
First of all, superstition, by definition, doesn’t require conceptual justification. If it did, it wouldn’t be superstition! As soon as you start trying to mix the language of logic and the supernatural you are wasting your time. Superstition can’t be debunked by arguing logically with the superstitious, and science cannot be undermined using theological arguments on logical thinkers.
[/QUOTE]

I can agree with this, and I almost feel like I’m going to say “but they started it first”, but they started it first! It’s really the theists who insist on mixing theology and science, and the atheists who are responding. Most atheists, like me, couldn’t care less whether you believe in God or not, but don’t try and convince me that God created the universe or that God caused something to happen in the physical world. Which, btw, makes God rather pointless, dont’ you think? What’s the difference between no God and a God who doesn’t/can’t interact with the physical world?

82

[QUOTE=Lizard]
For some reason posters in this thread are hung up on Occam’s Razor, but as I’ve already said, logic tests like the Razor have no application to the fundamentally illogical within the illogical’s own set of values. I might as well say fornication is bad because God forbids it. If you don’t believe in God, than why should you care what he might think of fornication?

The Razor has been around for 600+ years, but religion is still with us. How do you explain that? Obviously Occam’s Razor does not cancel out the benefits people derive from religion. uglybeech has a point.
[/QUOTE]

Wait a minute. First you say I deny religion can explain anything, and then you say the superstitious play by such a different set of rules as to make comparison with my understanding of “explanation” inappropriate. I think that’s quite what I’ve been asserting up to now. I know precisely squat about the “supernatural”, so much so that I can’t even tell whether or not the concept can even be defined in any coherent manner.

As we’ve seemingly moved ouside of the realm of the scrutable, if people want to be incoherent and say that works for them, that’s perfectly fine, but I can’t see how an incoherent “explanation” is an explanation at all. It’s a story, a metaphor, a myth, whatever else you want to call it, but I can’t put it to any test, refute it in any way, examine it at all, really. It’s just an entirely different thing altogether, one that isn’t so much invalid as it is outside of the realm of independent inquiry entirely. If I can’t even question something, because the thing I’m questioning is permanently hidden by definition, it’s outside the realm of debate completely. It’s a matter of “faith”, completely.

83

[QUOTE=Loopydude]
. . . if people want to be incoherent and say that works for them, that’s perfectly fine, but I can’t see how an incoherent “explanation” is an explanation at all. It’s a story, a metaphor, a myth, whatever else you want to call it, but I can’t put it to any test, refute it in any way, examine it at all, really. It’s just an entirely different thing altogether, one that isn’t so much invalid as it is outside of the realm of independent inquiry entirely. If I can’t even question something, because the thing I’m questioning is permanently hidden by definition, it’s outside the realm of debate completely. It’s a matter of “faith”, completely.
[/QUOTE]

Exactly. The difference is, since the religious have faith, what they believe is not “incoherent” to them. Because they buy into the basic premise, it all makes sense.

I feel like you think I am arguing for religion. I’m actually trying to argue for the good that religion can achieve. It’s a powerful motivator, and becoming more so in our world, so I think religion should be treated with respect and care–kinda like dynamite. Anything that can cause people to behave as religion has needs to be understood at a fundamental level.

84

I should add that “buying into the basic premise” is the crux of that Stanley Fish essay I keep referring to but that no one is apparently reading.

85

How one defines the premise is at the crux of every one of these sorts of arguments, and that is precisely why there can never be a reconcilliation between the faithful and faithless beyond a mutual respect of the other’s privilege to live as they choose. What “good”, “bad” or “power” religious belief bestows says absolutely nothing about whether or not its delusory. And, as I alluded to in the first post, one cannot even debate properly on the subject with a person of faith because they don’t have a common set of rules. I tend to think the faithful have no rules at all beyond their own personal impressions, which I am simply told I must oblige and respect, as all experience is by its nature subjective. I think that’s a load of horseshit. I can’t give such assertions any more credit, and one can debate the finer points of epistemology forever with such people and get absolutely nowhere, since they constantly appeal to things I’ll never be able to question. I must take their faith on faith, you see. Because I can’t, that’s the end of the discussion, typically.

86

[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
I dunno about you, but it seems like kind of a silly game to me, about on par with Star Wars fan-fiction or Tolkien groupies, save that the latter groups have never, to my knowledge, used their interests to justify wholesale mass slaughter or subjugation.
[/QUOTE]
As mentioned here in the Pit

[QUOTE=Lizard]
The difference is, since the religious have faith, what they believe is not “incoherent” to them. Because they buy into the basic premise, it all makes sense.
[/quote]
Because they are irrational. It’s just as “incoherent” as it is for an unbeliever; they simply can’t see the incoherency, or deny it.

87

[QUOTE=Lizard]
Exactly. The difference is, since the religious have faith, what they believe is not “incoherent” to them. Because they buy into the basic premise, it all makes sense.
[/QUOTE]

Isn’t it only coherent if they deny all reason? Wouldn’t their use of a single syllogism bring down the entire house of cards? Any limited use of logic seems arbitrary.

88

[QUOTE=Lizard]
First of all, superstition, by definition, doesn’t require conceptual justification.
[/quote]

Yes it does, or else what’s the point of using the Razor at all? The point of the Razor is to give preference to explanations that get the job done with the fewest additional additions to knowlege and conception. You can’t simply declare that some concept comes for free, as you are doing.

Then you are wasting your time. If you are basically asserting that there is no logical way to deal with the supernatural, then you certainly cannot use the Razor to pick between anything.

You are now trying to back out of the arguments you made and change the subject. YOU were the one who claimed that the razor favored magic or miracle.

What? Can you please stay on one specific line of discussion at a time instead of leaping all around trying to apply one argument to another? I never claimed that the razor demonstrates that there are no gods or that all religion is wrong. Even if it did, that’s no reason to think that this would make it go away regardless.

That’s like arguing that knowing murder is wrong should eliminate murder. But knowing it is morally wrong doesn’t cancel out the benefits that some people can derive from it.

89

[QUOTE=Lizard]
I’ve already linked to a definition. If you want to re-word it to fit your thesis better, you are on your own.
[/QUOTE]

The definition you linked to supports his and our contention. In fact it explicitly says that your interpretation: that it just means “whatever’s simplest for me to think about” is a flat out misrepresentation.

90

[QUOTE=Apos]
Yes it does, or else what’s the point of using the Razor at all?
[/QUOTE]

You’re catching on. There is no point to using Occam’s Razor in this context. Read **Loopydude’s ** last post.

91

[QUOTE=Apos]
Yes it does, or else what’s the point of using the Razor at all?
[/QUOTE]

You’re catching on. There is no point to using Occam’s Razor in this context, because it doesn’t represent anyting the religious will respect. As I keep saying, logic holds no meaning to those who think illogically. Read **Loopydude’s ** last post.

92

Uh, yeah.

I keep telling myself, “never again”, and I do it anyway. Because I’m a complusive idiot who doesn’t learn. A bit like Dawkins, perhaps, just not nearly as witty. I’m out, and should have never been in.

93

[QUOTE=Apos]
That’s like arguing that knowing murder is wrong should eliminate murder. But knowing it is morally wrong doesn’t cancel out the benefits that some people can derive from it.
[/QUOTE]
Comparing a false but comforting belief to murder is absurd. Why are we moralizing on this issue? IMHO Dawkins’ fundamental intellectual failure is that he puritanically expects others to view everything exclusively through the lens of empirical reason. It’s not merely that he is questioning the “truth” of religion. It’s that he presumes that everyone should priotize empirical truth above all else. I agree with him on the first point, but not on the second.

Again, I think it’s like expecting all sex to be procreative and being intolerant of sex for pleasure. Thought and belief aren’t always about empirical truth. Sometimes they are about comfort, pleasure, enjoyment, and at times pure self-preservation. This is perfectly fine, IMHO. And if you believe it’s not, then I think the onus is on you to prove that false but comforting beliefs about largely metaphysical issues are so inherently destructive that we need to jettison this very large part of our nature and culture entirely. I’m not setting up a straw man here, as Dawkins has been quite explicit that he believes religion should be largely eliminated.

As for the technical question raised the OP: is belief in God a delusion? No, it is not by standard psychiatric definitions. These definitions generally require that delusions are such strongly held beliefs that the subject is almost entirely unable to question their veracity. They aren’t able to seriously entertain the possibility that their beliefs are false. I think even the most faithful don’t rise to the level of belief psychiatrists are talking about unless they are mentally ill to begin with. Secondly, psychiatric definitions require that these beliefs be held in the face of irrefutable evidence to the contrary. Third, these definitions largely exclude beliefs common to the culture.

94

[QUOTE=Lizard]
I’ve already linked to a definition. If you want to re-word it to fit your thesis better, you are on your own.
[/QUOTE]

You should read your own lonks. I didn’t reword anything, I quoted Occam virtually verbatim.
From your Wiki link:

Here is what I said:

Now what did I “reword” exactly?

It’s clear that you don’t understand the Razor and that’s why you can’t understand why it makes mincemeat of theistic explanations for the universe.

95

[QUOTE=uglybeech]
Comparing a false but comforting belief to murder is absurd.
[/quote]

This is like arguing with the guy from Memento: it isn’t absurd when you actually read the line of discussion it was a part of, instead of just yanking it out of context. Lizard asked why something would still be around even if there was a solid reason against it. I was simply pointing out that there are a lot reasons that things stick around.

???

The straw man here is in insisting that all religious people really justify their religion as you claim. By and large, they don’t. They put it into the realm of physical and rational causes. They make decisions based on these beliefs. They insist that they are rational and, in fact, others are idiots or morally deficient for not recognizing it.

96

[QUOTE=Lizard]
You’re catching on. There is no point to using Occam’s Razor in this context, because it doesn’t represent anyting the religious will respect. As I keep saying, logic holds no meaning to those who think illogically.
[/QUOTE]

You said it. I didn’t. Are you allowed to insult yourself in GD? :slight_smile:

This is irrelevant handwaving regardless. I’m not Loopydude. I responded to claims YOU made about the razor: claims that at least purported to be logical and sensible arguments at the time.

97

[QUOTE=Apos]
This is like arguing with the guy from Memento: it isn’t absurd when you actually read the line of discussion it was a part of, instead of just yanking it out of context. Lizard asked why something would still be around even if there was a solid reason against it. I was simply pointing out that there are a lot reasons that things stick around.
[/quote]
OK, I thought your comparison with murder had more layers than it did, so fine, as long as you’re not moralizing against false beliefs, I have no problem.

But I think you’re mistating Lizard’s position. I hope he doesn’t mind my interpreting what he’s saying, but I think he isn’t merely making a positivist argument, that just because something exists, it’s necessarily good. He’s arguing that religion is performing a function separate from describing empirical reality, and Occam’s razor only applies to certain narrow tasks involved in hypothesizing mechanisms, etc. In other words, the tasks of science. I tend to agree with Lizard on this. Or at least I believe that Dawkins continuously begs that particular question, as if he can’t concede that there’s any other mode of thought that has value.

Yes certainly, religious thought often intrudes on the tasks of science, and that’s where I get irritated too. I am an atheist, and a disgruntled one at that. But I’m not so interested in how the religious (who I generally don’t agree with) justify themselves, as how Dawkins (who I generally agree with) condemns religion. I think his arguments get awfully facile at times. It is, after all, possible that *both * sides are wrong at times.

98

To answer the OP:

I think Dawkins’ argument is terrible, and hardly the beacon of rational thinking that many assume him to be.

First off, it is worth considering what Dawkins means when he says “there is no evidence for God”. Human history, if nothing else, is full of stories of miraculous things happening which demonstate the existence of some higher power. Some are widely believed, some not. Some are personal to the people who tell the stories, some not. To merely hand-wave and say that none of these accounts existist is ludicrous.

But of course that isn’t what Dawkins means. Dawkins is operating from what you could call a “Scienceist” (as dsitinct from scientist or science) point of view which says that only things that can be empirically verified are true. If it can’t be empirically verified then it must be at best undecided or worse false. Working from this method of determining truth, since none of the accounts of God’s actions can be empirically verified, then they must all be false. Therefore the term “no evidence” means that there is no evidence that he deems credible. Not that there is no evidence ever presented, but that there is no evidence that he accepts.

The question then of course is, his “Scienceist” view of truth reasonable. IMHO no. First off it has the problem that it is overly restrictive. Not all true things can be demonstarted to be true through empirical observation. There are other ways of demonstrating truth, such as inference. So to take the Scienceist view is to effectively deny that all of what we know of history is true. History is discovered through inference, not through empiricism. You can’t experiment on the past to see if what you think you know about it is true. You can’t devise an experiment to test for instance that Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo. We can infer that is what happened through what we observe now, but we can’t empirically verify that is actually the case.

It is somewhat ironic because much of Dawkins own speciality, evolution, relies on inference and not on empiricism. Because the mechanism of evolution is so slow, much of what know is not through direct experimentation, but through inference looking at the fossil record. Dawkins, if he was being consistent, should discount much if not all of this since this inference is not strictly empirical. Note that I am not trying to disprove evolution, merely pointing out that Dawkins method of determining truth is too restrictive.

Secondly though, it has the other flaw his Scienceist view holds that all things happen through a uniform set of cause and effect laws. That is the whole basis of empiricism. God or gods however, are not thought of to be bound by those laws. So if we decide a priori as Dawkins does that only things that can be explained by natural laws happen, then we are effectively not giving God any room to reveal himself. If it can be explained by natural laws then it is not evidence of God. And if it can’t be explained by natural laws then it didn’t really happen. It makes it impossible for there to be any evidence of God because God cannot fit in this narrow view of truth.

But that is how Dawkins effectively gets to his “no evidence” claim. He dismisses any account of the supernatural because it can’t be verified empirically. Of course if it was verified empirically then it wouldn’t be supernatural. It’s like asserting that squares can only exist if they have three sides. If they don’t have three sides they don’t exist, and if they have three sides then they are really a triangle.

So that is the problem with Dawkins argument (at least the main one). It is entirely dependant on his unproven and IMHO unreasonable assumption that only things that are empirically verifiable can be true. In the end his argument is nearly circular, in that he claims that there is no evidence of the supernatural, yet his whole view of truth is constructed so that no supernatural things are possible.

Bob

99

[QUOTE=Bob BobfordFirst off, it is worth considering what Dawkins means when he says “there is no evidence for God”. Human history, if nothing else, is full of stories of miraculous things happening which demonstate the existence of some higher power. Some are widely believed, some not. Some are personal to the people who tell the stories, some not. To merely hand-wave and say that none of these accounts existist is ludicrous.[/quote]

The fact that claims exist means nothing, and Dawkins has never said they don’t exist. Claims are not evidence. In point of fact, there is no evidence whatsoever thatr gods exist. Perhaps even more importantly, there is no demonstrated necessity for gods to exist. If every known thing in the universe can be adequately explained without gods (and everything CAN be), then the god hypothesis not only lacks evidence (or even suggestion) but is also superfluous.

There is no evidence of any sort. Evidence, by definition, must say something verifiable about reality. If it doesn’t say anything verifiable about reality it isn’t evidence.

This is all a huge strawman. Dawkins is well aware that scientific investigation and empirical method always includes inference. He doesn’t say that sky gods must be directly observed in order to be known to exist. The problem for you is that they can’t be inferred either. There is no evidence whatsoever, direct or indirect, that sky gods exist, nor is there any demonstrated necessity for them. You’re also wrong that you can’t empirically very things indirectly or inferentially. I don’t think you know very much about science.

Inference is PART of empirical method.

Yes it is.

All you’re doing is showing that you don’t know anything about empirical method. If you think it’s only about things which are directly observed, then you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept.

The portion I bolded is flawed and shows another erroneous assumption. What empirical method calls for is that mere claims of supernatural events must be regarded as false until proven otherwise.

Sure it would.

This kind of complaining over definitions is really a bit of a red herring. Never mind how the “supernatural” is defined. You can either prove specific claims or you can’t. If you can prove a dead guy came back to life then the semantics really don’t matter. It’s also rather a moot issue for theists since they’ve never been able to show a shred of evidence for any event or phenomenon which has not adhered to ordinary natural laws. To slip the issue of what events are “natural,” I will modify that statement to say that theists can’t produce evidence for any of their specific claims, period.

100

[QUOTE=Bob Bobford]
Human history, if nothing else, is full of stories of miraculous things happening which demonstate the existence of some higher power.
[/quote]
So ? Stories mean nothing, the “demonstrate” nothing . There’s not a single shred of evidence for a “higher power”. You might as well claim the Nazgul are real, since there are stories about them.

[QUOTE=Bob Bobford]
Working from this method of determining truth, since none of the accounts of God’s actions can be empirically verified, then they must all be false. Therefore the term “no evidence” means that there is no evidence that he deems credible.
[/quote]
That’s a fairly standard definition of evidence. “Bob told me so” isn’t evidence; neither is “I had a dream about it”.

[QUOTE=Bob Bobford]
You can’t experiment on the past to see if what you think you know about it is true.
[/quote]
Of course you can; Carbon-14 dating, for example, can tell you that a particular object is really only 300 year old, and not 1500. As opposed to religion, which makes claims that are either immune to experiment, or long since falsified.

[QUOTE=Bob Bobford]
It is somewhat ironic because much of Dawkins own speciality, evolution, relies on inference and not on empiricism. Because the mechanism of evolution is so slow, much of what know is not through direct experimentation, but through inference looking at the fossil record.
[/quote]
But we have plenty of hard evidence that evolution exists. There is zero hard evidence for a god of any kind; it’s not the same thing.

[QUOTE=Bob Bobford]
Secondly though, it has the other flaw his Scienceist view holds that all things happen through a uniform set of cause and effect laws. That is the whole basis of empiricism. God or gods however, are not thought of to be bound by those laws. So if we decide a priori as Dawkins does that only things that can be explained by natural laws happen, then we are effectively not giving God any room to reveal himself. If it can be explained by natural laws then it is not evidence of God. And if it can’t be explained by natural laws then it didn’t really happen. It makes it impossible for there to be any evidence of God because God cannot fit in this narrow view of truth.
[/quote]
The sane view, you mean. Once you start denying cause and effect and natural laws, you take leave of rationality.

You are also distorting the meaning of “natural law”; if something happens, it by definition is allowed by natural law. Natural laws cannot be violated, because they are defined by what happens in the world; they do not define the world.