Originally Posted Here

On Atheism

Author: Matthew (aka Mordagar)

    My friend Mark has posted a great deal of blogs here concerning his thoughts on God, so I thought I would post one as well. I mostly agree with what he says, though I don't always agree with how he says it. In the following essay, I will lay out a bit of my beliefs and why they correspond with atheism as opposed to theism. I didn't come to atheism lightly; it took a fair bit of searching on my part to arrive there. It started for me at about age 16; I began to realize there was more and more to Christianity that just wasn't tenable. My parents had raised me as a Christian, though even as a child I had trouble believing. I sincerely wanted to however, as I surely didn't want to end up in hell, and didn't want to face more immediate consequences such as my parents' chastisement.

    As I said, age 16 was when I began deeply questioning the fundamental truths I had been taught with regards to my religion. At age 17, I read some Voltaire and some of the philosophies of his contemporaries, and I began thinking that Deism was the way to go. It seemed pretty logical on the surface; God creates the universe and puts all its aspects into play, and leaves. He doesn't necessarily care about his creation, and he doesn't intervene. Who could argue with that? I found later reasons why, although not as repugnant as YHWH, a Deistic God was lacking in a few areas as well, as I will allude to later. This brought me to Pantheism, a theory that I believe isn't mutually exclusive; it is something that can go with atheism as well. I believed in Pantheism because I thought that God could simply be energy, and since energy and matter are interchangeable, it was only logical that God was everything and everything was God, and that the universe itself was worthy of reverence. I now think that Pantheism, while looking good on the cover, is simply a way to dress up the word God in more unfamiliar terms. It is also misleading to say you believe in God whenever the common definition doesn't correspond to a Pantheist view. However, in regards to a personal, anthropomorphic God, I am an atheist. In giving reverence and respect as well as regarding the universe and nature with awe and wonder, I am a Pantheist. I am in good company here; great thinkers such as Albert Einstein and Carl Sagan could be considered both atheists and Pantheists in this sense.

    Furthermore, not only am I an atheist, I am an agnostic atheist. I don't believe in a God, but I can be convinced otherwise. I take each person's God claim separately and approach it with an open mind, and the possibility that they might get me to believe in their God. I would love to be proven wrong. I welcome the prospect. It seems to me only reasonable to take each person's God claim and examine it individually, because I am under the impression that no two people believe in the same God. They may call the God by the same name (YHWH, Christ, Allah, Krishna) but each person's interpretation of that God is different, and must be examined in different lights. Faith is a highly subjective thing, evidenced by the different denominations of major religions, such as Christianity and Islam. Many have been killed over this, but that is not the focus of my writing today. Perhaps another time.

    There are about four common arguments that I see time and time again in debates, and here I will briefly explain why each argument just doesn't make me a believer. The most prevalent of these is probably the cosmological argument, followed by argument from complex design, argument from morality, and the argument from personal experience. I am sure that these arguments, whether singularly or in conjunction with each other make for convincing evidence for a theist, but I find them leaving something to be desired.

    The cosmological argument for the existence of God, sometimes called the prime mover argument, goes something like this:

1. Every finite and contingent being has a cause.
2. Nothing finite and dependent (contingent) can cause itself.
3. A causal chain cannot be of infinite length.
4. Therefore, there must be a first cause; or, there must be something that is not an effect.

    Made famous by St. Thomas Aquinas among many others, this argument is all that some people need to believe in a God (first cause.)  Some atheists would argue, "If the universe needs a cause, then why is God exempt from this rule?" I will not go this route, as I feel it is a weak argument. Theists will usually reply that the first cause argument does not apply to God, as the being is infinite and eternal. The cosmological argument fails for me, because it trades one unknown (the origin of the universe) with an even greater unknown (an infinite being.) In the case of Occam's Razor, which I find useful in establishing my epistemology, something supernatural cannot have caused something we know to be natural, as by definition it would be natural also if it possessed the ability exert a causal influence on the universe. There is no excuse for a use of the God of the Gaps in any case, in my opinion. The gaps are ever closing as science moves forward. Hawking proposes that the beginning of the universe was most likely a singularity, a point in which all dimensions, space, and time came into being. Asking what happened before this singularity would be absurd, akin to asking what is north of the North Pole. In the end, even if the entire cosmological argument were conceded, that makes you a Deist at best. There is no way to know which God is responsible for the universe, or if perhaps it was more than one God. I said I would write more on why I don't accept Deism anymore, well here it is: argumentum ad ignorantiam. This logical fallacy is why I don't hold Deism as a tenable explanation. Just because we don't know the cause for sure isn't any reason to insert a God, however impersonal, in its place.

    The argument from complex design is sometimes referred to as the Watchmaker Argument, which was made famous by William Paley in 1802. Also called the teleological argument, it states that the complexity of design found in nature requires a designer. Laws of nature require a lawgiver. The argument can be presented in a formal fashion thusly:

1. If you look at a watch, you can easily tell that it was designed and built by an intelligent watchmaker.
2. Similarly, if you look at some natural phenomenon X (a particular organ or organism, the structure of the solar system, life, the entire universe) you can easily tell that it was designed and built by an intelligent creator/designer.

    This applies usually to biological phenomena, but it also extends to the complete harmony in which nature works, and sometimes even the fact that there is life at all. This often works in conjunction with the cosmology argument, although they are noticeably different. In my experience, this has to be the single most convincing argument to believe in a God based on what I have heard or read from people's personal testimonies. I will refute this on two levels, one based on the watch analogy, and the second based on the entire concept of complex design.

    The watch analogy fails simply because a watch is an artifact, and the universe is natural. If you were to stumble upon a watch in the woods, it wouldn't catch your eye because it was a complex mechanism, it would be because the mind knows that these kinds of things don't grow on trees (pardon the expression), and we would have recognized far less intricate creations as artifacts as well. It only appears to be designed based on what we know about the natural world, in order to recognize design, one must have a concept of non-design. Furthermore, watches, even though designed, aren't created. They are assembled, which makes the analogy fail on that level as well.

    The argument of complex design apart from the watchmaker analogy usually argues two things: that life is too complex to have not been intelligently designed, and a more emotional argument concerns "the beauty and splendor of nature." To first address the notion that life is intelligently designed, I would first have to concede a point. The point I will concede is that life is complex, and there appears to be a designer. There is however a practical, parsimonious, and natural explanation for the appearance of design, as well as reasons to question the intelligence any designer. Some have called evolution "the blind watchmaker" due to the fact that it can produce such complexity throughout generations. Opponents of intelligent design have asked questions such as why a designer would "give us a pathway for making vitamin C, but then destroy it by disabling one of its enzymes."  Proponents of intelligent design such as Behe have posited that certain systems, especially on the cellular level, are irreducibly complex. His critics point out that just because every part is necessary now, doesn't mean it was necessary throughout its evolution. Other evidences that point to the stage-by-stage process of evolution as opposed to intelligent design are the vestigial embryonic buds found in legless creatures. Only in evolution is the fact that snakes, whales, and dolphins sprout undeveloped leg buds, only to reabsorb them later accounted for. Anomalies such as these don't point to an intelligent designer.

    As a final part of this response, the question of "the beauty and splendor" of nature is brought up. As I have iterated in my introduction, I too think the universe is a beautiful and amazing place. I love to watch the moon and the stars, and contemplate the vastness of space. It makes me feel humble, but it doesn't make me believe that a God necessarily created it.

    One of my favorite arguments is the argument from morality. It states that in order for there to be an absolute moral code, there must some transcendent deity to dictate this code. Without God given morality, everything would be a matter of dispute. I would argue that there is no ultimate and absolute morality. Morality is often situational, and it evolves with the social zeitgeist and neuroplasticity. When a child is born, the neurons of the brain are in a massive tangle, and as speech and motor skills develop, the neurons start to form synapses in the corresponding areas of the brain. The most basic of all instincts are separated from the primitive limbic brain and are burned deep into the developing neurons. I use the word deep, as they are obscured underneath the thick tangles of other neurons undergoing the same synaptogenesis.

    Through this method, children learn language, motor functions, and their morality. It is this and the evolving social zeitgeist that make up the morality. As synapses are formed, your parents teach you the rules that are compiled by society as a whole. From this, we are as adults able to empathize and put ourselves in another persons shoes, apply the ethic of reciprocity, as can be observed from Kohlberg's stages of moral reasoning. This is precisely why we are concerned with poor parenting or childhood abuse. Childhood abuse and poor parenting create sociopaths, those who are unable to empathize. This is accurately why we see some fluctuation in morality across different families, across different cultures, and across different generations.

    For example, the morality at the time when the Bible was written is distinctively different than the morality we have now, and I'm not even appealing to only the Old Testament, as Christians will say that the New Testament established a New Covenant with the revelation and sacrifice of Christ. I will, however, give some examples from each, concerning subject matter I hope anyone who is reading this would find reprehensible: slavery.

    However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you.  You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land.  You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance.  You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way.  (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)

    Here we have an example of slavery condoned in the Old Testament. Now for the New Testament's excerpts concerning this subject:

    Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear.  Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ.  (Ephesians 6:5 NLT)

    Christians who are slaves should give their masters full respect so that the name of God and his teaching will not be shamed.  If your master is a Christian, that is no excuse for being disrespectful.  You should work all the harder because you are helping another believer by your efforts.  Teach these truths, Timothy, and encourage everyone to obey them.  (1 Timothy 6:1-2 NLT)

    Those who were holding slaves used these verses from the Bible in the Civil War to justify their cause. If it was in the Bible, who were they to question it? Clearly the Bible is not the ultimate source for morality. Today's Christians must glean their morals and ethics from secular morality, that which changes and evolves overtime.

    Finally, we come to the argument from personal experience, or the argument from miracles. I saved it for last, as it is the most easily refuted out of any argument. I define miracle as "something that is not naturally possible and so must have occurred because of supernatural intervention," although I would ask anyone who I have a discourse with to redefine it in their own terms, if they don't agree with me. The biggest problem I find with the argument from miracles is that every religion has had their fair share of them. Even pagan Gods, most of which aren't worshipped today, have produced their fair share of miracles. Richard Carrier paraphrases this story:

    "Consider the astonishing "rain miracle" which rescued the army of Marcus Aurelius in 172 A.D., complete with the enemy army being zapped to death by lightning balls hurtling from a clear sky, while the "good guys" were at the same time rescued from a desperate thirst when clouds gathered and sent down a torrential rain, despite a long period of summer drought. Everyone claimed responsibility, from advocates of the god Jupiter, to proponents of Neoplatonic magic-working, to, of course, Christians. It even appears on the column of Marcus Aurelius, where some rain god is seen sweeping across the battlefield, toppling the enemy while filling the Roman soldiers' shields with life-giving water (a clear depiction of lightning striking the enemy appears in a different but related scene, which has been badly damaged by weathering)."

    This story doesn't convince me to believe in Jupiter or any other God they would like to like to attribute it to. It is unknown even to them which God they should attribute it to, and it is equally unknowable whether or not one can attribute any number of personal miracles to their God. Perhaps they all stem from a God we have never heard of? Unlikely. It is more parsimonious to believe that there are natural explanations for any miracle, and that once again the God of the Gaps has been invoked.

    This sums up my extensive response to common arguments I receive. However, I'm not quite finished with my writing for the night. I'm on a roll, and I see no reason to stop now. (Grin) By the way, don't consider this to be the extent of my ability to argue on each of these topics. To completely encompass all points I would need to make in order to present an argument in its most convincing fashion, each topic would need to be at least half as long as this work is turning out to be. If you truly have any questions about my reasoning, feel free to contact me. I'm a friendly person who eschews ad hominem, so I'm sure we would get along famously. I have a few more points to make, so I will move on to the next paragraph.

    I am often presented with what is referred to as Pascal's Wager. This "wager" takes on the following form in a formal type presentation:

    Option 1: You believe in God.

          Consequence: If God exists, you go to heaven: your gain is infinite.

          Consequence: If God does not exist, your loss is nothing.

    Option 2: You do not believe in God.

          Consequence: If God exists, you go to hell: your loss is infinite.

          Consequence: If God does not exist, your gain nothing, lose nothing.

    It is called a wager, because in essence it states, "Why not throw in with Christianity, what have you got to lose?" Well, this type of argument has a few problems. The first problem is that it presents a false dichotomy with Christianity vs. Non-belief. In reality, there are hundreds of religions to choose from, and thousands of Gods. If one wanted to truly be "safe" one must accept all religions and Gods. This is impossible, since many of the religions are mutually exclusive, meaning that if you choose one you are damned in the other, and vice versa. The other flaw is that it assumes that the God you choose to believe in can't distinguish a fake belief from true belief. There are other critiques as well, but those are the important ones. Moving on.

    I have been told many times that atheists take things on faith just as much as Christians, Muslims, Hindus, or other theists do. This is a fallacy of equivocation. Faith in the religious sense is most aptly described as "belief without proof or evidence." This is what can be called non-contingent faith, as coined by todangst. Contingent faith, which is where the false equivocation lies, is trust. It begins when we are developing in our mother's womb and continues on to infancy and the rest of life as the basic filter through which we interpret new situations. This faith is based on experiences, and is open to revision and falsification by the same token. If you trust a new person, and that trust is violated, your willingness to trust new people decreases a bit. The Kierkegaardian "leap of faith" can best describe non-contingent faith. Although falsely attributed to him, it describes faith as being "believing in something without, or in spite of, available empirical evidence."

    Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. ( Bible: New Testament. Hebrews 11:1)

    This famous Bible quotation describes non-contingent faith perfectly. Once again, the fallacy of equivocation is made here between the two types of faith, one that is experiential, one that is not. As a final point to anyone who bases at least part of their epistemology on faith, I ask "How can you determine what is true and what is false on the basis of epistemological faith?"

    I'm nearing the end of my writing here; I just have to address supernaturalism quickly. Supernatural is defined as "'not nature' or 'above nature' or 'beyond nature'" or other variations in a philosophical sense. The term is ambiguous as best, and useless at worst. It has no positive ontology to speak of, and there is no reason to believe that it is vital or necessary for metaphysics. If something is truly supernatural, it loses all ability to function as a part of nature, it exists outside the causal chain. To violate this rule would put it back in the spectrum of naturalism. What are the properties of something that exists in a supernatural sense? I have yet to see a positive ontology for supernatural that doesn't steal from naturalism.

    On my final note, I would say that everyone knows what it is like to be an atheist. Whether you are a Hindu, Muslim, Christian, or Jain, you know what it is like to be an atheist. Hindus don't believe in YHWH, Jews don't believe in the divinity of Christ, Christians scoff at Allah and Muhammad, and almost everyone looks strangely at someone who worships Zeus. We are all atheists in respect to thousands of Gods, and we are all born in a state that I would call "default atheism." We are born not believing in any God, although if left up to our own devices we would surely create some as we go. A child stranded on a tropical island left to fend for himself would surely conjure up at least a rain God and a thunder God, and perhaps a fire God too if he ever got that far. The point is most Gods are anthropomorphized to the point of losing all respectability. Gods seem to be created in the image of Men rather than the opposite assertion being true. We would truly be arrogant creatures indeed if we thought we, given the vastness of the cosmos, are created in the image of God or Gods.

    For the record, I am not angry with your God. YHWH/Christ/Holy Spirit to Christians who believe in the trinity, Allah for Muslims, Krishna etc. for Hindus. The list goes on. I simply go one God further than monotheists, and a dozen or so Gods further than polytheists. If given good enough evidence to believe, I will. You must realize, however, how truly arrogant albeit asinine it is to assert that I hate your God or I harbor anger for him. Don't be facetious. To hate your God I would have to believe in him. I don't. Please don't pray for me. All people who will pray for me worry not. For I will think for you.

I stayed up late compiling my thoughts. I hope you all enjoy.