Justification for Theistic Beliefs

Great Debates
1

Yes.

  • Prayers will get “answered” exactly the same way regardless who you pray to–God, Vishnu or a kitchen table. They appear to ‘work’ because they exploit psychological quirks like confirmation bias, the human propensity to remember ‘hits’ and forget ‘misses’, which makes us ruminate on meanings to meaningless coincidences, among others.

If I start a fake cancer clinic in Mexico and administer sunflower seeds, one person in (what was it?) 100 or so will experience spontaneous remission totally unrelated to the demonstrably worthless treatment. The testimony of that one guy, however, the one who says it was a miracle and recommends you to everyone, will be worth more for people sincerely hoping for help than any amount of scientific criticism showing sunflower seeds are totally useless. People want to believe over any amount of data you could show them, it seems.

Similarly, if a cancer patient prays to a random idol and experiences spontaneous remission, there’s no question human psychology will do the rest to convince him of its effectiveness. You can’t even blame the guy. Heck, it’s darn convincing, even if ultimately irrational to base a belief on.

The only way to avoid this pitfall is to recognize how our minds work, admit we can be very easily deceived, and apply tests that minimize these stupid psychological quirks. When we do that, prayer, ESP, and other paranormal phenomena which ‘work’ thru confirmation bias are shown not to produce any discernable effect at all.

  • Miracles are unreliable, anecdotal and virtually always explainable right off the bat as hoaxes, wishful thinking or subjective interpretation of very unconvincing data–the few cases that remain unanswered should give us pause only until we remember that an unknown natural explanation is at least a dozen times more likely than an unknown supernatural one, and given historical precedent, almost assured as our knowledge increases.

  • The argument from design is refuted with logic alone if it consists of postulating an unexplainable, undesigned entity paradoxically greater than the one you’re hoping to ‘explain’ this way.

  • The soul retaining memories, personality and thought patterns after death? Two words–Alzheimer’s disease. Watch the ‘soul’ selectively die before your very eyes in perfect unison with parts of the brain being wrecked, before the body itself is dead, exactly as you would expect if there was no soul responsible for the mind, eventually leaving an empty husk of a human being.

  • So many people were convinced throughout history and were willing to die for their faith? Well, so were terrorist fanatics…

  • Your life has been changed by your religion? Well, others claim their lives were changed by everything from fad diets to religions incompatible with yours. Good for you, but not really evidence, much less proof, of God–more like proof that people can have their lives ‘changed’ by literally anything.

  • People from times even more superstition-prone than our own developed a belief that a person rose from the dead, then passed it on orally at least 30 years before it was even written down? Impressive!

  • Multiplicity of world religions, with no real way to distinguish which one is correct because all they really have is faith based on the aforementioned (bad) arguments, with everyone being equally convinced they’re right and thinking the rest are gonna regret it when they die? Hmmm.

  • Feeling the holy spirit? Well, that’s not entirely reliable, as there’s really no arbiter of what a ‘true’ experience with that is. It also appears to work for every religion, not just Christianity, and quite realistic mystical experiences like it can be successfully placeboed by everything from dopamine injection to sound waves of a specific frequency to even magnetic stimulation of the cranium…

  • Deities evolve just like you would expect them to if they were made up! First, they appear as primitive, often barbaric, authoritarian and vengeful war gods believed in by warmongering tribes. Then they become somewhat more sane, but still retain the vestigial characteristics of blood sacrifice and other unwholesome aspects. Finally, as our own morality shifts for the better once again, they mutate into the loving, fluffy beings of It’s a Wonderful Life and Touched by an Angel!

  • Need I go on? It’s already about a dozen times more parsimonious that human creativity invented disembodied supernatural forces during times of scientific ignorance, mostly due to the desire for easy answers to life’s questions and the fear of the unknown and death, than that they actually exist.

The universe is exactly as you might reasonably expect it to be if there were no gods, no spirits, no evil or good forces out to get us, bless us to the 4th generation or arbitrarily punish us for being exactly as they created us. If there’s a single sound theist argument, no one has seen it yet.

But that’s not all–once you reject theistic arguments for the same, reasonable, skeptical reasons you reject other paranormal and anecdotal arguments, there remains no valid reason to believe, but still a possibility it could be true…

At this point, however, add in a few standard atheist arguments, like the problem of evil, which require extremely contrived and awkward rationalizations which you no longer, as a firm believer, have the convenience of uncritically accepting, and the whole thing falls apart faster than a house of cards.

If faith and arguments used by theists return mutually exclusive conclusions more dependent on cultural bias and predisposition than any real, objective criteria, with no way for falsifying even a few of them, the very usefulness of those non-empirical methods for deriving ANY accurate representations of reality is cast into SERIOUS doubt.

“Trying to find the truth with faith is like attempting to discern color with just a light-sensitive pimple. Why not open your eyes instead?”.

I hope this hasn’t been too patronizing, as I only elucidated some random thoughts. Feel free to continue the discussion, if you will.

2

Please describe, in detail, the precise methodology which you used to test that hypothesis and arrive at said conclusion. And do remember that you are describing prayer in GENERAL, rather than isolated circumstances or specialized situations.

Remember, you are making the positive, unconditional claim that prayer never, ever works. That’s a rather broad claim, to say the least. I am inviting you to substantiate that claim, so that we can see how thoroughly you have thought this through.

Moreover, you have only addressed (or rather, purported to address) one of the arguments used for theism. It seems to me that this falls far short of substantiating your claim that “everything used in support of theism is ultimately unreliable” (emphasis mine).

3

BTW, I think we should go over some of the details necessary to substantiate your assertion that “everything used in support of theism is ultimately unreliable” (or, to cite the phrasing you used in an earlier thread, " everything ever used in support of lots of mutually exclusive religions is better explained as the product of psychology, culture and the desire for easy answers on everything from morality to an afterlife"). As I said, that’s a rather broad claim. How about providing the following details?

  1. You say that every single argument used in defense of theism can be dismissed in this manner. Please provide us with a detailed and comprehensive list of said arguments.

  2. Please describe, in precise detail, the methodology which you used to generate this complete list of theistic arguments.

  3. Please demonstrate that these arguments do indeed encompass the entire spectrum of theistic belief.

Please do respond soon. I’m sure that I’m not the only one who’d be interested in this information.

4

There are two broad types of theistic arguments: rational/epistemic and emotional/beneficial.

I submit, however, it is not up to the skeptic to “disprove” any religions, sects, or cults that might happen to come along. It is up to the believers to establish their religions, sects, or cults.

5

J Thunder, why are you bothering to seek complete lists of arguments and holistic substantiation in order to discredit Winace’s assertions? Surely, as with any broad, generalist claims, all you need to disprove the statement is to present one single, convincing occurrence that contradicts the conclusions.

6

It sounds to me like you’re shifting the burden of proof. Winace is the one who made the claim – a most sweeping, extraordinary claim at that. Ergo, it is only reasonable to ask Winace to substantiate that claim.

Clear yet? Winace made the claim. Winace should substantiate it. If one criticizes theism by claiming that prayer never, ever works, then it is only reasonable to ask how one arrived at that conclusion.

7

Perhaps, but if a skeptic provides a specific argument agains theism, then it is up to that skeptic to defend that argument.

It seems to me that a double standard is being applied here. The theists are being asked to establish reasons for their beliefs. However, when the skeptics are asked to defend their arguments against theism, the immediate response is “Oh yeah? Well, well,… prove that you’re the one who’s right! So there!”

I heartily agree that theists should be prepared to defend their beliefs. By the same token though, skeptics should be beholden to defend the logic of their own claims too.

8

—By the same token though, skeptics should be beholden to defend the logic of their own claims too.—

I think its a little generous to call someone who makes a grandiose, sweeping claim much of a “skeptic.” You are the skeptic here, and rightly so.

9

Hmmm… I never thought of it that way.

Hey, how about that. Apos and I agree on something for a change.

10

-I’m often reminded of the theist statement, to paraphrase “God hears your prayers, but sometimes the answer is ‘no’.”

A quaint saying, to be sure, but if prayers, as suggested by George Carlin, are “answered” only about fifty percent of the time, where is the least suggestion that such events are anything but random chance?

11

Interesting choice of words.

12

I’m thoroughly convinced it’s not sometimes, but most of the time, that the answer is no. Mostly because the things we ask for are things we don’t really need, or things we can get on our own.

13

This is a bit of a hijack, but the comments on prayer triggered a thought: If prayer was ever to work, it seems that the collapse of the WTC would have been a good time. Prayers were probably said in every language to every conceivable diety as the towers came down. Even us atheists muttered a heartfelt “NO” to someone or something another. It certainly was prayer for something we didn’t need or could get on our own.

Isn’t that a pretty good test of ‘everything ever used to support theism’?

14

Oops, make that [wasn’t**, in place of was.

15

Although I make no claim that I know that I am correct, I agree with the examples and conclusions that WinAce presented.

In my own family I have seen many examples of all good outcomes being credited to God while the bad outcomes are a message from God that the family member has not been listening closely enough to God. With this mindset, everything that happens is proof of God whether good, bad, or indifferent.

Although not related directly to the question of God, this recent article provides an interesting example of how the brain can work in mysterious ways: Out-of-body experience clues may hide in mind

16

JThunder, are you being tounge-in-cheek, or auditioning for the Semantic Ballet Troupe? Stating that every piece of evidence for such a global and distributed theory as the existence of God is anything is silly, since much of the ‘evidence’ is contradictory, depending on which flavor of God one is attempting to prove.
Can we just all agree that if God is not scientifically verifiable and move on?
And not get into tangled discussions of evidence vs. proof without giving examples of either? (You all know who you are.)

17

To make things clearly: that prayer (often? sometimes? most of the time? occasionally?) works is a claim, which has requires both correlative (it works better than chance) and causal proof (it works for the specified reason: God listens and acts).

That prayer doesn’t work is a claim, and an even harder one to prove, because it is so easily falsified.

If you don’t want to have to prove a claim, then don’t make it. You don’t have to prove that prayer never works to NOT believe it does. You can be skeptical of something without making a grand counter-claim.

18

That was not my reading of the OP at all. The point was that the effect of prayer is indistinguishable from random chance. Obviously, by random chance alone, the thing you pray for will sometimes happen by coincidence. If the things people prayed for NEVER happened, then I WOULD suspect some other force at work.

As for “precise methodology”, I believe you have it backwards. It is unscientific to merely assume that prayer works, and then require others to disprove your assumption. I am not aware of any controlled study that has demonstrated prayer to be effective. If you believe otherwise, show us the study.

19

Neither. I am merely asking WinAce to substantiate his claims, namely: (a) that prayer never works, regardless of which deity you invoke, and (b) that every single argument ever used in support of theism is invalid.

He made the claims, ergo, he should substantiate them. Obviously, this is not a matter of mere semantics.

Bring it up with WinAce then. After all, he’s the one who uttered that expansive claim regarding ever single argument presented for theism.

20

Nope. The exact wording of the OP stated,

That is a much stronger claim than merely saying the results are indistiguishable from random chance. Moreover, even if we grant that distinction, I would still like WinAce to explain the procedure by which he determined this to be true.

**
[/QUOTE]
As for “precise methodology”, I believe you have it backwards. It is unscientific to merely assume that prayer works, and then require others to disprove your assumption. **
[/QUOTE]

Once again though, you’re shifting the burden of proof. I’m not the one who asserted that prayer definitely works. Rather, the OP is the one which asserted that it does NOT work (or, if you wish, that the results are attributable to mere random chance).

This is the double standard of which I spoke. If a skeptic claims that prayer has NO effect, and uses this as empirical evidence against theism, then the skeptic is responsible for demonstrating his alleged “evidence” to be valid. Again, for the umpteenth time, he made the claim. He should be the one to demonstrate how he arrived at that conclusion.