If I had conclusive proof that God does not exist, you mean? I guess that might move me into the “hard” or “strong” atheist camp, since I would be actively claiming that God does not exist. So I guess that would be more of a belief than my current stance, which is that I simply lack belief in God.
On the other hand, if I had conclusive proof that God does exist, I think I would have no choice but to become a believer. I might not like it, since I have so many moral/ethical disagreements with the Christian God; I might have a hard time respecting him, but if the proof were truly conclusive, I don’t think I could ignore it.
But what I believe about God isn’t the issue here, and I apologize for the tangent. Concerning the value of logic in proving or disproving God, I doubt that it can offer a nickel’s worth of proof either way. If it were able to answer the question, I’d bet that it would support atheism better than it would support theism, and the verse I quoted above (for whatever it’s worth, which to me isn’t that much) seems to corroborrate. But again, logic seems to me ill-suited to address the issue at all.
**
Yeah, that’s true. It’s annoying, I know. I annoy myself with it sometimes.
And on the subject of nitpicking, since you aren’t retaliating by pointing out my spelling mistakes, I assume you prefer to take the high road and overlook them without comment.
I think you’re right. The only thing logic can do, even esoteric symbolic logic that is up in the stratosphere somewhere, is draw a valid conclusion from some initial assumptions. If the assumptions are nutty then the conclusion also has a pretty good chance of being nutty, although not necessarily.
Proof of the value of a conclusion arrived at from assumptions, I think, can only be assessed by using the conclusion as the basis of some action, such as a prediction * if A then B* that turns out to be true.
Those who believe in God say that their proof is the world around us, but there are other, and in my opinion more reasonable, ways for accounting for that world.
I was referring to conclusive proof and belief in anything, not just the existence or non-existence of a God of some sort.
A related question concerns the assertion “I don’t believe that God exists.”
If one does not possess conclusive proof of either God’s existence or non-existence, and one asserts that he or she does not believe that God exists, is that the same thing as asserting “I believe that God does not exist”?
The definition of “belief” that I have been using has suggested an element of uncertainty and the proverbial “leap of faith”. MrO’s definition seems a bit different, as one with conclusive proof of the existence of God, and hence, lack of uncertainty, would be a “believer”.
What, then, is belief? Is it that lack of certainty? Does non-belief in the existence of something and uncertainty as to its non-existence constitute belief in its non-existence?
How does belief develop? What is its standard? Is there a level of proof, that while non-conclusive, reaches a level of sufficiency to merit belief? Is that standard of proof the same for both the belief of the existence and the belief of the non-existence of something?
Can I conclusively prove that the world exists apart from my perception of it? If not, is there sufficient proof for me to believe that the world exists apart from my perception of it? Is there sufficient proof for me to believe that the world does not exist apart from my perception of it? Is it possible for there to be insufficient proof of both the existence and non-existence of the world apart from my perception of it? If so, is it then possible to be unable to believe either proposition? Or is it necessary that one must believe A or not A, and if so, what is the basis of that belief, if sufficiency of proof is lacking for both A and not A?
Just a Christian and programmer checking in. I can’t logically prove God exists; if I could, it would make explaining my beliefs and why they matter to me to others a lot easier. I’ve tried on this board to give specific examples of God acting in my life, but they can be explained by coincidence (“God’s-incidence” as a friend who used to be a Fundamentalist would put it). I also can’t answer the other question I hear a lot: “They why hasn’t he/she/it intervened in my life?” I wish I could.
On the other hand, to me, faith is a bit like falling in love. At some point, you have to close your eyes and take that great leap, trusting you won’t be let down. Logic is the equivalent of building a bridge across it.
I learned mine in large part by being raised by an engineer. Colleges offer courses in logic, so that or a good programming course may help.
Sorry if I sound saccharine, folks. Blame it on too much travel and too little sleep.
CJ
ckondek, I think you may be misinterpreting that person’s argument, or he himself may be a bit confused on the subject. Science has most definitely not proved that God doesn’t exist. That is a false claim. It’s true that science has not found any evidence that supports or requires the existence of god. What science has demonstrated to a degree is that the concept of God is epistemically unnecessary, that is, the notion of God is not required to explain concepts or events that were previously thought to be beyond all mundane cause (i.e. they must have had a divine cause and were otherwise impossible).
For example, some (flawed) arguments state that the evidence for God is in the perfection and wonder of his chief creations, human beings. Leaving aside some of the problems with this argument, the steady advancement of the sciences has provided more reliable explanations (than vague divinity) that account for the characteristics and attributes if humans. Similar examples include life in general, and the planet Earth.
Or, as another example, it has been suggested that God must have been behind the Big Bang that resulted in the universe we know, that he set the whole thing in motion because something cannot come from nothing unless it’s caused by god. But it turns out that there are mechanisms (such as quantum fluctuations) that we know about that can explain how the Big Bang could have developed, and we don’t need to multiply unknowns by assuming that divinity was involved in the process.
This argument is of course based on a complete absence of evidence for divinity–if there were evidence in favour of god, then it would be more difficult to render the concept of god epistemically unnecessary. But given the present situation it’s quite reasonable to form tentaive conclusions, such as “science renders God epistemically unnecessary”, however note that that is quite different from “science proves God does not exist”.
The difficulty is that it is extremely hard to prove an unrestricted negative. If I say “God does not exist”, you could easily shoot down my argument by saying “How can you say that if you didn’t check here, under there, and inside this?” In other words, it’s a big universe and God may very well exist somewhere we can’t detect him. In fact, any number of gods could exist in this manner. This does not mean that Yahweh and Allah exist, but that, conceivably they could exist somewhere and somehow beyond the present reach of scientific knowledge (speaking entirely hypothetically).
Still, your friend is absolutely correct when he says that “the burden of proof is on the religious folks”, although I would restate that to “the burden of proof is on the persons advancing the claim” (whatever the claim is, in this case god). Since there is yet no reliable evidence for the existence of God (and don’t let that set of false claims known as irreducible complexity fool you), theists still have quite a bit of work to do on this front before their claims can be treated as anything approaching fact. So yes, strictly speaking the burden of proof is still on those claiming that God exists.
But any good theist will tell you that this is a matter more of faith (opinion) than knowledge. If it were a matter of knowledge it would be a bit of a problem, since aside from statements like “I know God to be true in my heart” there is no substantive formal knowledge regarding god, only personal opinion (and that, we all know, varies incredibly from individual to individual).
Only one small addition: It depends on who you are trying to prove it to. Descarte, if I recall correctly, got a boon from the Vatican on his treaste “proving” the existence of god.
According to the “best minds” the vatican commite had at the time the French mathemetician did a workmanlike job of proving Jehova existed. The point is, “proof” is just as subjective a term as anything else and as such is a variable. Like proving to a blind person your tie is blue. It would probably require different paramters or criteria than proving it to someone who is normally sighted or a colorblind person like myself.
Thanks, thanks, thanks, all, for the replies. I’m doing a lot of archived reading!
Urban Ranger: Sorry, I can’t remember what the computer assignment was, I got the example as a passing reference in a thread. I do recall the person said, “So I wrote some Pearl script, and the program created itself…” Or something like that.
Hanging question (to Abe and others): “and don’t let that set of false claims known as irreducible complexity fool you…”
Why is IC not a valid argument?
Thought: I’m beginning to think you’re right, those of you that made the point about fish and bicycles. For me, personally, the logic side of things never bothered me. It is faith that guides my belief, a decision to believe. cjhoworth, I appreciate you checking in, sounds like you and I feel the same way.
Self-generating programs are possible; this is the essence of dynamic coding, but AFAIK, the scope of this is limited to things like creating a form with an open-ended set of buttons on it, each of which performs a similar function (perhaps with each one linking to a distinct resource) or providing a customised view of data that already exists, based on predefined component blocks.
I don’t think it would be possible to have a program that automatically creates new and useful functionality every time (there is genetic programming, which would create a large set of slightly different programs from which the best ones must be selected, the majority being useless - this is the software equivalent of evolution).
Sorry this is a bit of a detour from the OP. Irreducible complexity is a variation of the tired “Watchmaker” analogy, which itself is an argument by design proposed by William Paley, asserting that the complexity and “good” design we see in all natural systems must be the work of a supreme being, as it is impossible that such complexity and goodness could arise by chance.
The argument is flawed because, apart from the fact that an analogy is seldom a sturdy argument, there is zero evidence to suggest that design plays any role at all in the biological world. For a more detailed discussion of this topic, see Richard Dawkins’s book The Blind Watchmaker. The title comes from the watchmaker analogy itself: if a watchmaker makes a good watch, then a bad watch (the biological systems we have observed, which are far from perfect) is the result of a “blind” watchmaker.
Here is a link to an interesting discussion of a watch that was not made by a watchmaker, but that seems to have evolved.
Behe’s argument on irreducible complexity is set up thus:
His arguments start getting pretty silly from there, as he uses a weak example of a mousetrap as evidence of irreducible complexity to launch into his routine. His conclusion in that article is one of the very worst I have ever come across, and is worth reading. But it looks like Behe can’t even get the macro world right: here is a great little piece by John McDonald, a refutation of the claim that a mousetrap is irreducibly complex.
Moving on after the mousetrap fiasco, this is a link to an article that demonstrates how Behe’s claims of irreducible complexity are hardly iron-clad: Is the Complement System Irreducibly Complex? The essay shows that a system that Behe claimed was an irreducibly complex example of molecular biology is not really:
I recommend reading the entire link above, as it is a resource that does not require highly detailed knowledge of sciences (many other resources do, because Behe’s arguments are at least partly of a biological/molecular nature, and a fair refutation must take such into account).
I do not believe Behe is an honest scientist. He goes out of his way to rationalize and make claims that support the idea of a creator and intelligent design, while selectively ignoring or rationalizing away the volume of existing work that suggests precisely the opposite. Probably one of the most telling examples is his claim (still from The Black Box) that science has something to hide. Behe, suspecting some strange conspiracy, supposedly analysed the scientific literature and several biochemistry textbooks and made the surprising claim that evolution is not really mentioned in them. Hilariously, one of the writers of those textbooks took Behe to task by spelling out the presence of evolution in quite a few textbooks: Behe’s Criticism of Evolution in Biochemistry Textbooks:
TalkOrigins central page on Behe and his work: Irreducible Complexity and Michael Behe. Be warned though, many of these resources are quite detailed and lengthy, making for pretty challenging bathroom reading.
In conclusion, neither irreducible complexity nor Behe himself are credible resources to employ when disputing evolution. Unfortunately Behe and IC are routinely invoked as some sort of Darwin-slaying white knights by the zealous or the uninformed. Be on your guard against such claims.
MrO;
I like the term ‘weak atheist’.
As a profoundly religious agnostic I get pissy when people use agnostic and atheist interchangably.
I don’t know if there is ‘a’ God; I don’t care. But I am not arrogant enough (and I am plenty arrogant) to believe I know there is no God. Or are no gods. Or are no Gods.
God in a blade of grass and the universe in a grain of sand is enough for me.
Logic and science and proofs are very good tools, but only tools.
It certainly seems logical that since all of the 'divinely inspired" literature and guidance is faulty in one way or another, there is no supreme being behind any of it. If the people who speak for god, and claim to have some sort of special connection are getting it wrong, or are using it for nefarious purposes without divine punishment, why believe any of them. And why rely on our own individual judgement for questions this big - we’re bound to get that wrong, too. The only answer, IMO, is to rely on our collective scientific investigation into the nature of the universe - if we do not find god, we’ll at least reach the highest plateau we can.
Assuming that the god in question is the Christian God, and that said god is by definition all-powerful and all-loving, logically this god cannot exist.
An all-powerful god could prevent evil.
Evil exists. One’s belief in this god does not protect against evil or even misfortune.
Therefore, this all-powerful god does not prevent evil, and is not all good.
Reversed, a benevolent god would logically prevent evil. Evil exists, therefore if a benevolent god exists, it is not all-powerful.
According to the Christian messiah and various other prophets, this proposed god would indeed be all-knowing. See John 21:17, Jeremiah. 1:5, Isaiah 46:10 et al. The idea of a god being omniscient and omnipotent contradicts human free will. The idea of omniscience is therefore illogical. Again, see Isaiah.
Further, given that our empirical evidence of the existence of this god is the Bible, it would be reasonable to assume that the Bible would be accurate. This is not the case. While one could reasonably chalk up a few errors here and there to translation problems, the fact that the origin myth presented in the Bible is wildly inaccurate alone argues against the possibility that the book itself is in any way divine. If the various contradictions and inaccuracies of the Bible are really due to human error, the logical conclusion is that if this god exists it doesn’t give a damn about people because a being capable of creating the universe in seven days could easily make sure its all-important message wasn’t laughable.
I’m not even sure which philosophers I’m ripping off here but please don’t think I’m trying to pass this off as my own original thoughts.
Count me gobsmacked - how is it I agree with you two 110%?
My opinion, and it’s just my own personal thinking based on things I’ve read, is that it’s all God. The whole universe. Us and everything outside of us.
I believe what’s not God are our beliefs and emotions and knowledge, the “reality” that we create for ourselves. Science, fashion, culture, philosophy, politics, etiquette, religion; they’re all constructs. They’re ours, not God - even when God is the subject, such as in religion. I’ve always thought that’s what was really meant when the Bible talks about Adam and Eve being banished from Paradise because they ate from the tree of knowledge.
Personally I often find it useful to step away from all of my knowledge constructs in an attempt to experience the world directly, without the filters of context and meaning that I live with. Without interpretation and knowledge, not trying to understand. I find myself guided by that sense of “not-me” when I’m able to connect with it; I find that there is a rhythm to it that harmonizes with my own. Probably impossible to ever put into words, my attempts to experience “God”, but there it is.
Of course none of this is a logical proof, but I think it is compatible with logic.
