A polemic started on Guardian website on whether a schism begins to emerge within the atheist ‘movement’ (but some don’t even see atheism as a movement). The polemic is getting hotter and hotter (by the day, if not the hour). It was started by Michael Ruse with an article “Dawkins et al bring us into disrepute”.
In this article Ruse unleashes a devastating attack against “new atheism”, seeing it as dangerous as all religious forms of fundamentalism. Here is the final paragraph from Ruse’s article. 
“Back in 1961, in the depths of the cold war, terrified as we were by the threat of nuclear annihilation, John Whitcomb Junior and Henry Morris published The Genesis Flood, a six-day-creationist account of origins. Because of its dispensationalist message – God clears things out every now and then, as he did at the time of Noah, and we should expect the next (literal) blow up fairly shortly – it became the fundamentalist bible. But don’t worry. It’s all part of God’s plans, even the Russian bomb. Today, nearly a decade after 9/11, terrified as so many still are by the terrorist threat, the atheistic fundamentalists are finding equally fertile soil for their equally frenetic messages. It’s all the fault of the believers, Muslims mainly of course, but Christians also. But don’t worry. In the God Delusion, we have a message as simplistic as in The Genesis Flood. This too will solve all of your problems. Peace and prosperity await you in this world, if not the next.
Forgive me if I don’t sign on”.
I am looking forward to see where the debate will go.
The lack of logical thinking is a characteristic of atheists. And Dawkins is a master in illogical statements like this one posted on London buses: THERE’S PROBABLY NO GOD. NOW STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE.
I propose another add for Mr. Dawkins:
IF THERE’S PROBABLY NO GOD, THERE’S PROBABLY GOD. NOW START WORRYING AND HAVE A NICE LIFE.
I have another one: THERE’S PROBABLY NO LOGICAL THINKING.…NOW STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE.
Octi, what logic is lacking in the conclusion that 9-11 was a direct result of the terrorists’ religious beliefs?
I find your proposed responses to the Atheist Bus Campaigns to be illogical themselves.
“IF THERE’S PROBABLY NO GOD, THERE’S PROBABLY GOD.”
If X is probably not true, then X is probably true? How does this make sense?
“NOW START WORRYING AND HAVE A NICE LIFE.”
How does worrying lead to a nice life? Personally, I find paranoia and stress to be unpleasant.
Shine,
IF THERE’S PROBABLY NO GOD means that the probability of God not existing is.. let’s say 98.9%. OK?
Therefore it is logically to assume that the probability of God to exist is 1.1%. Therefore it is correct to say “IF THERE’S PROBABLY NO GOD, THERE’S PROBABLY GOD.”
Octi,
What?
“Therefore it is logically to assume that the probability of God to exist is 1.1%.”
1.1% chance of an event occurring means that it is improbable, not probable. The statement “THERE’S PROBABLY GOD” means that the occurrence of the event is probable. At barely a 1% chance, the probability of god existing is possible, but certainly not probable.
I think that you are confusing the words “probable” and “possible.”
Even aside from these arbitrary percentages, it is still nonsensical to claim that an event and its inverse are simultaneously probable; by definition, one has to be improbable for the other to be probable.
It is incorrect to put numbers on the probability of God. All that can be said (and most assuredly it can be said) is that there is no credible evidence for God, and so to the best of our knowledge God doesn’t exist.
If you want a detailed description of how any why it is inappropriate to use numbers in this context, then come over to my blog where I have been doing a chapter-by-chapter review of Richard Swinburne’s “The Existence of God”. You might care to start with Swinburne on Inductive Arguments.
Swinburne is a great fan of the use of Bayes’ Theorem in calculating the probability of God.
I also agree that branding atheism as ‘illogical’ is not fair. In fact what is mostly attractive at Dawkins is his logical thought. Some might say a black and white clarity that is too good to be true.
Branding atheism illogical is very fair. Atheism does not follow the rules of logic. Atheism affirm that there is no God. This in philosophy is called “the affirmation of an absolute negative” that cannot be proven. All they can do is to say that they do not know that there is no God. Or to be agnostics. I can expand on other rules of logic with other occasion.
“Atheism affirm that there is no God.”
This is false. Atheism is only the rejection of theism; it does not make additional claims about the nature of the universe. Rejecting a belief system does not involve affirming anything.
Shine,
THERE’S PROBABLY NO LOGICAL THINKING.…NOW STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE.
In my opinion the probability of God to exist is 100%.
Like Pascal said, if the probability was 50-50 the wise man will choose in favor of the existence of God by pure reason. (the famous wager argument). Below I give you my definition of atheism.
Atheism
“Is the belief that there was nothing, and nothing happened to nothing and then nothing exploded for no reason, creating everything and then a bunch of everything rearranged itself for no reason what so ever into self replicating parts which then turned into humans”.
If this make sense to you please let me know.
For you guys if life make sense without God I say again “have a nice life and enjoy it” because this is as close as you can get to Heaven. For me and other believers in God this life is as close as I can get to Hell.
Octi,
That quote is not a valid definition of atheism. It is a quip used by theists in the tit-for-tat verbal exchange between theists and atheists. (I fully concede that atheists are also fully responsible for their own share of dramatic quips such as this one. I know that there are a lot of rude aphorisms employed by the more militantly atheistic crowd.)
However, please notice the problem with the first sentence of your definition:
“Atheism is the belief that…”
In my previous post, I tried to clarify that atheism is not an independent belief system. It is a rejection of an existing belief (namely, theism), but it does not create a separate belief of its own.
Octi
First, you haven’t got your Pascal quote right. I suggest you look it up. Nobody is going to take much notice of your arguments if you are quite so cavalier with your facts.
Second, Pascal’s wager involves logical fallacies, including:
- If God is of the omniscient kind, he will see though any feigned belief adopted “just in case”.
- The wager depends on you knowing what God wants of you. If the evidence of God is sufficiently equivocal that you have to take the wager in the first place, you aren’t in a position to know that. If you spend your life following the Christian rules in pursuit of Pascal’s wager and it turns out that God is the Muslim kind and you should have made a pilgrimage to Mecca in your lifetime, you’re going to be in deep trouble after you die.
Third, there is nothing to be gained from redefining words to suit yourself. See my article I’m an atheist, OK? for reasons why.
Jonathan, I did not want to quote Pascal I was merely paraphrasing his quotation.
I think your description of Pascal logical fallacies are logical fallacies on themselves. Pretty week I would say.
Along the history, the character of the people of God like Pascal, Newton, Leibnitz, etc.., speak more that words and philosophy along with the christian roots of Western civilization. Another living example is Israel and the Jews.
Just for fun check the Nobel prizes for scientific achievements to see how many Jews you find. (Please disregard the Nobe peace prizes especially the latest embarrassment).
Of course these are not proofs of the existence of God, but like I said there is no absolute proof otherwise we would just acknowledge Him.
If I were you I would go with the theistic definition of an atheist. If you are not 100% that there is no God you leave your life with a big question mark following you even if you leave a .01% for His existence. Think about it.
Octi, it is understandable that you don’t agree with the atheists (neither do I), however this does not mean we disrespect them. I would like to ask you respectfully to measure your comments. Those that have a conviction that does not necessary agree with yours shouldn’t be regarded as stupid.
Paul did not regard the Athenians stupid either.
Nelu,
I do not disregard atheists at all. I was an atheist myself. I believe a lot of them are very intelligent. I have an uncle who is Prof. Doctor Doc. Engineer Professor Emeritus, Member of Romanian Academy of Science. He is very intelligent but not very wise. Like GK Chesterton once said:…”We educated ourselves into imbecility.”
Belief in God is a belief because He id not give us all the proof. Otherwise would be acknowledgment of God. I think this is what people are looking for.
Octi
It is all very well to proclaim that my arguments are weak, but I notice that you don’t actually say what the weaknesses are – all you do is go into a version of the Argument from Authority – asking how many Nobel prizewinners are Jews, as if that had any bearing on the matter at all.
Two can play at that game – I can ask you how many Nobel prizewinners are atheists. (Hint: it is a lot more than the number of Nobel prizewinning Jews.) But it doesn’t get us any further forward.
Finally all you do is restate Pascal’s wager without addressing the flaws in it that I described. Even if I accept that 0.01% chance of God’s existence, how am I supposed to know what to do about it? Do I follow the Christian route, on the assumption that the 0.01% chance is that God is the Christian kind? Or do I accept the later revelations of Mohammed and become a Muslim? Or instead should I perhaps believe that Jesus was a heretic and become a Jew? Or maybe I ought to believe that Jesus was an avatar of Vishnu and follow Hinduism?
Obviously I can’t do all of these at the same time, and so if I were to follow your advice and take Pascal’s wager, I’m going to have to make a choice. Even if I choose Christianity, do I become a Roman Catholic on the basis that this is the one true church? Or do I become an Eastern Orthodox on the basis that Catholic doctrine is mistaken in believing that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son as well as from the Father? Or do I take up with one of the innumerable Protestant denominations on the grounds that Catholicism has lost its right to be regarded as the one true faith because of its historical corruption and its accretion of non-Biblical tradition, and if so, which one?
You see, there is not just one possible God, there are innumerable possibilities, and Pascal’s Wager can’t possibly deal with them all. Therefore, Pascal doesn’t help us, and we have to fall back either on making a decision on the basis of evidence – and by your own account, the evidence appears to offer only a 0.01% chance of the existence of any God, or do I throw evidence out of the window and rely on faith instead?
Jonathan,
Forget for a while the arguments and let’s talk from person to person.
1. What gives us value in a world without God? What makes us more valuable than a moth or a fly or a monkey or a horse?
2. What does it mater if you are a pauper or a king if the end is the same for all? What does it mater if you were Alexander the Great or a fly that was eaten by a bird in it’s first day of life? Who cares after we reach the cold death of the universe after 20 billion years if you ever existed or if you ever achieved anything in your life, if you had kids or not if you were the greatest genius or not?
There is only one answer to the endless questions and you know what it is.
You know in your hearth that justice, courage, fairness, kindness, mercy, love do not have any place in a godless universe.
Why do I care for you? Why do I want you to know the goodness of God as I know and experience? Why do I want to share happiness with others. Because God created us in His image and likeness. Because He has the same feelings for us. You do not know what religion to embrace? Do not embrace any religion. Just accept God, make a step toward Him and He will make two toward you.
What do you have to loose? Do you know what I lost? A meaningless, purposeless life of self gratification for a life lived in full, with a purpose, happy and with no fear.
Look at life. Is this all it is?
Octi
Forget for a while the arguments
I hope that doesn’t mean you don’t have any, but are hoping that I won’t notice you are avoiding answering. I have noticed, and will conclude accordingly if you don’t come back to my questions about Pascal.
1. What gives us value in a world without God? What makes us more valuable than a moth or a fly or a monkey or a horse?
We are valuable to each other. Why would you need more?
2. What does it matter if you are a pauper or a king if the end is the same for all?
The good you can decide to do along the way. You are very close to suggesting that if you didn’t believe in a godly reward at the end of your life, you wouldn’t bother doing any good at all. I suggest that if you genuinely believe that, then you can’t make any claim to moral virtue, since you are entirely in it for yourself – for one thing only, your hope of heavenly reward. I doubt very much that this is really the case, but if it is, it would cause me to have an extremely low opinion of you.
Look at life. Is this all it is?
Why can you not decide that the garden is beautiful without needing to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it? (Or if you prefer, without believing that God made it?)
It seems overwhelmingly probable that this life is all that there is. This doesn’t bother me, I know what kinds of good I want to do in this life – in essence I want to do what I can to leave the world a better place than I found it. If I spend all my life worrying what will happen to me in an afterlife I know nothing of, then I will spend my whole life looking over my shoulder worrying which version of Pascal’s wager I ought to follow, and won’t be able to live fully in this one life I have. It’s a bit like trying to drive a car with the parking brake permanently on.
Jonathan,
Following the perspective of an universe without God:
1. “We are valuable to each other. Why would you need more”?
You are not valuable to me whatsoever and I am not valuable to you either. Let’s face it. How valuable are all 1.7 billion muslims to us in USA. We can get their oil without them. I think a few neutron bombs will take care of them. We do not want to spoil the earth, we just want to get rid of the people.
2. “The good you can decide to do along the way”.
How do you define good? In some parts of the world it is good to “love thy neighbor” in other parts it is good to “eat thy neighbor”.
I do not do good in hope of a reward, I do good because it is in me and in every human being as a result of the fact we are made in the image of God. Evolution, atheism cannot explain it. Why should I jump on a stream to save a child if it is not mine and I cannot swim?
If life is all it is this contradicts all the laws of physics, thermodynamics, logic. Where is justice for millions of people killed and abused by tyrants that have it all the way. Check Idi Amin Dada for this, although the list is endless. Again ………”there was nothing, and nothing happened to nothing and then nothing exploded for no reason”……. (see my previous comment), make sense to you?
I cannot spend more time on this because I have to work and why should I care what you think or do because you are not valuable to me after all. (I am playing the devils advocate of course)
Octi
In essence, you are saying that only your belief in God is holding you back from a genocide of a billion muslims.
If that is the case, then I am pleased that you believe in God, and I sincerely hope for their sake that your belief never wavers.
But I must say that if what you have said is an accurate representation of your beliefs, then I think your morals stink.
Jonathan,
Unfortunately if God does not exist, if all there is, is random accidents, chance, luck, then who are you to say that another accident like wiping out 1.7 billion people is morally wrong. It is another example of the survival of the fittest.
What I meant to say and you misinterpreted was that we have intrinsic values because we are made in the image of God. If we are accidents who/what gives you value?
It is not my belief in God that keeps me for killing people. It is in me and you and all the people on the planet. It is God’s imprinted conscience in every human being on the planet not to murder other people either you believe or not in Him.
With this I think I have said enough on this issue.
Best Regards
Octi
I say that killing 1.7 billion people is morally wrong on the strength of the most general possible application of the Golden Rule, the moral principle that exists in all cultures and all religions, and which is more or less hard-wired into our brains as a result of us having evolved as social animals.
You have no understanding of the originally intended meaning of the term “survival of the fittest” and are applying a Social Darwinist interpretation, very popular amongst evangelical Christians to justify killing those they believe to be inferior to them. As I said, your morals stink.
And if you have now said enough on this issue, I notice that you have made no attempt to answer my points on the question of Pascal’s wager. This is as I expected.
Jonathan
- “If God is of the omniscient kind, he will see though any feigned belief adopted “just in case”.
Pascal’s Wager is more of a proposal for action in a specific situation. It does not pretend to be a syllogism Start with a situation in which you are called upon to make one decision or the other. The true state of affairs isn’t known and cannot be known by you. However, if you take one side, and it’s true, you gain everything–and if it’s false, you lose nothing. However, if you take the other side, and it’s true you gain nothing–but if it’s false, you lose big time. In that case, it is suggested, the sensible course of action is to make the decision that offers the reward.
How makes this a logical fallacy? Beats me.
- “The wager depends on you knowing what God wants of you.
Let me see???? Hmmm..I will try a lucky guess. He wants us to believe in Him according with His revelation to us. He did revealed to us you know. To discern which god to chose it up to us. Buddha, Chrishna even Allah have noting to offer. Why would I chose them? That’s why christian God is a reasonable one. To help us to discern.
Whether the Wager applies to other religions could be debated. Have you ever noted the crying lack of Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish and Muslim evangelists? They have their share of assorted holy figures, no question–but the person who goes around an area inviting people to be “saved” is rather a (Protestant) Christian phenomenon . In general, religions present a set of practices for those who are born into them, and their authorities expect those who are born into them to adhere to them not their gods.
God may not be knowable by only objective means because God is not an object, but a person above all categories. Consequently, the knowledge of God is ultimately a personal knowledge.
And with this I really want to wish you all the best. Like I said I would like to move on some different topics.
It has been a real pleasure talking with you.
Start with a situation in which you are called upon to make one decision or the other.
Logical fallacy #1.
We don’t have that situation, so we can’t start there. It is not a 2-way choice.
I will try a lucky guess. He wants us to believe in Him according with His revelation to us.
Logical fallacy #2.
There are lots of different claims of revelations from God. You happen to be familiar with only one of them. But there are more. Christian scriptures themselves warn against following false prophets, which suggests there must be some means of distinguishing false prophets from true ones. In other words, some way of verifying one particular revelation, some evidence that it is true. It would be nice to see that evidence. You are treating the truthfulness of your particular revelation as being self-evident. It isn’t.
Buddha, Chrishna even Allah have noting to offer.
How would you know? What fatal flaws are there in their revelations which are absent from yours? What is the evidence that enables you to discern this?
In general, religions present a set of practices for those who are born into them, and their authorities expect those who are born into them to adhere to them not their gods.
Correct. So why should I regard the religion you were born into as being true while all the others are false?
God may not be knowable by only objective means because God is not an object, but a person above all categories. Consequently, the knowledge of God is ultimately a personal knowledge.
Logical fallacy #3. Persons are knowable, and knowledge of what they are and do can be obtained by objective means. It takes more than mere assertion to demonstrate whether (and if so, why) God should be regarded as an exception.
I realise that you genuinely believe in all this business of “personal evidence” and so on. But I rather suspect that this kind of talk only satisfies you as evidence on the specific subject of God, and that only because you have been told from a very young age to do so, and you accepted it before you were of an age to have developed your critical faculties properly. On all other topics, I rather expect that you look for rather more tangible bits of evidence. Might I suggest that you are, probably quite unintentionally, apply a double standard here? Try evaluating evidence for God as you would evidence for anything else. For instance, you wouldn’t regard the line of argument described in this video as being persuasive. It is a caricature, but I’m sure you will recognise what it is a caricature of.
Jonathan,
I was atheist until the age of 33. After I came to US I start researching for logical and reasonable evidence and I found them enough conclusive to believe and thrust in the triune God, The Father, The Sun, The Holly Spirit.
I cannot convince you of the existence of God and this is not my intention. I do not even think you can convince yourself. What you can do is look for God with sincerity and He will reveal to you.
Maybe it is worth to try. You did more “foolish” things in your life that this one.
Best Regards
So, I suspend my critical faculties, and what you regard as evidence (which you haven’t described) will suddenly become persuasive to me.
No thanks. I go by evidence and reason rather than faith. I’ve found that opinions based on evidence are right rather more frequently than those which are not based on evidence.
Johnatan
The existence of God explains why there is something rather than noting; it explains the intelligibility and order in the universe; it explains the continuing existence of the universe; it explains the beginning of the universe; it explains the inherently mathematical nature of the universe; it explains the existence of the laws of nature; it explains the beauty in the universe and the relationship between mathematical beauty and truth; it explains the existence of information; it explains the existence of free will and the ability to recognize good and evil; it explains the fine-tuning in the astrophysics of the universe that allows for conscious life; and it explains why thoughts have the capacity to produce true beliefs. Atheism lacks an adequate, coherent explanation for any of these things To take a leap in the direction of materialist atheism requires an enormous faith that may have more to do with one’s will that we can understand. Pride and the desire to be like God (eritus sicut dei) may have more to do with our reflections and decisions about the existence of God. EVERYONE MAKES A LEAP OF FAITH IN HOLDING PRESUPOSITIONS THAT COMPRISE A WORLDVIEW, AND EVERY WORLDVIEW HAS INEVITABLE UNCERTAINTIES. The Radical Contingency of the Universe Points Toward a Necessary Being.
Best Regards
Editorial note: Octi it would be courteous to acknowledge the quote when you quote extensively as for example in this text from Dean Overman, ‘A case for the Existence of God’. Thanks, Nelu
Octi
You are getting your premises and conclusions the wrong way round. You’re arguing that because God exists, the universe is the way it is. But the fact is that we already know that the universe is as it is (we can see it), but we don’t know about God. So the need is to reason in the opposite direction, from the known existence of the universe to the open question of God’s existence.
Don’t feel too bad about this, better philosophers than you have fallen into the same trap. I’m currently doing a chapter by chapter review of Richard Swinburne’s “The Existence of God”. He was an Oxford professor of the Philosophy of Religion for many years, and his book consists almost wholly of this kind of flawed reasoning, with a thorough misunderstanding of statistical mathematics added, and a large art of his book is a claim that the universe is just the sort of thing that an omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good God would want to make. You can go through my chapter by chapter review on my blog.
Also, I think you need to consider what makes an “explanation”. For instance, it is an “explanation” of the way the world is that everything sprang into existence just 5 minutes ago, including you and me and all our memories that are more than 5 minutes old, and that the “join” is so perfect that we cannot distinguish our real memories of the last 5 minutes from the synthetic ones of earlier times.
This is a complete “explanation” in that you can look at any aspect of the world and say “it is like that because the world was made that way 5 minutes ago”. No matter what you find, it is consistent with this explanation.
If I were to say that I genuinely believe this (I don’t as it happens), then there is no evidence you could possibly muster which could demonstrate the falsity of the “5 minute hypothesis”. But this “explanation” doesn’t allow me to make a single prediction about any aspect of how the world will be in the future. So in fact, while on the surface it appears to explain everything, in fact it explains nothing at all. It adds nothing to our knowledge of how the world is and will be.
Now, there is a great danger of defining God in the same unfalsifiable way, as a total explanation of everything that in practice explains nothing. From what you have written, it seems very much as if you are in fact thinking of God in this way.
Let’s take an example actually involving God. The Bible tells us that if we pray to God, our wishes will be granted. So if we pray for the sick to be healed, those prayed for ought to get better quicker than those who aren’t prayed for. Here we have a hypothesis about God which is testable. You divide a group of patients into two randomised groups, you get lots of people to offer up prayers for patients the first group, and see if they get better quicker than the patients in the second group for whom you arranged no prayers. This experiment has been done and formally published in PubMed, and the results were negative. There was no discernible difference in outcomes between the two groups of patients beyond that which would be expected by mere chance.
But you might argue that God doesn’t want to be tested in this way – after all, the Bible does explicitly say that you shall not put God to the test. So you might decide that what God does is grant your prayers but not if you are using the prayer as a test for God’s existence. This is what is known as a retreat into untestable propositions. If you do this, then your conception of God becomes logically indistinguishable from the 5 minute hypothesis, in that any possible result of any possible observation is consistent with your God-hypothesis.