tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6472507616285260962.post2461786367559532496..comments2023-05-08T05:16:36.124-07:00Comments on higgsblogon: RtBotS, Part 9 of 9: What’s Your Question, Caller?Owen T. Cunninghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17823770160312036509noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6472507616285260962.post-16006034257185012662008-12-10T09:08:00.000-08:002008-12-10T09:08:00.000-08:00The essay suffers from a confusion about who its t...The essay suffers from a confusion about who its target audience is. It is ostensibly aimed at people who are already atheists, and attempts to impart advice to them on how best to frame their discussions with religious believers. But it makes numerous digressions into arguments that seem to directly address religious believers. I probably should clean that up at some point.<BR/><BR/>I certainly agree that I haven't proven that God doesn't exist, but that is the fault of neither God nor me; it's just the fact that nonexistence of anything is inherently unprovable. The nature of proof, plus your comments about agnosticism, collectively steer us toward a large epistemological pothole that we should swerve to avoid.<BR/><BR/>In the essay I tried to avoid the words "know" and "knowledge" because, thanks to epistemology, it seems clear that there is no meaning of those words that is both rigorous and useful. The fact is that "belief" is a much more useful word because belief is what motivates behavior. (People say they "know" something as a verbal shorthand for saying they have "unchallenged belief" -- we "know" the sun rises every morning because thus far its behavior has yet to falsify our belief that it rises daily.) Beliefs are easier to talk about than knowledge because beliefs are formed based on evidence and probability, not necessarily proof (although proof can certainly be useful in the rare domains where it's possible).<BR/><BR/>So, while my goal is not to prove that God doesn't exist, it's to get people to <I>believe</I> that God doesn't exist -- in other words, to get them to stop behaving as if they think God exists. Don't let the popular connotations of "belief" fool you into thinking that this is somehow a weak or self-deceiving position. Belief governs our behavior in matters not just esoteric but also practical. (The fact that we have very good reasons for believing in gravity doesn't change the fact that we believe in it.)<BR/><BR/>I find agnosticism (apathetic or no) troubling, for the reason best exemplified by Bertrand Russell's example of the Celestial Teapot. He invites us to imagine him claiming that there is a teapot somewhere in orbit between Earth and Mars, but it is too small to be observed by any of our telescopes. Therefore it is impossible to prove or disprove its existence. Would you believe the teapot isn't there, or would you declare a stance of agnosticism with respect to the teapot? The same principle goes for gods that have been relegated to the scrap heap of history -- are you also agnostic with respect to Zeus or Thor?<BR/><BR/>Even if one were to honestly claim agnosticism with respect to these entities, I doubt there was ever much time spent lying awake at night pondering the question. This is because, in the formation of belief, evidence is augmented by probability. Just because a proposition is formally undecidable doesn't mean that we can't make judgments about which stance is more likely. What we've managed to learn about the universe, all the evidence we've managed to collect so far, while not completely ruling out God, does make His existence exceedingly less likely than His nonexistence.<BR/><BR/>Right or wrong, people are wired to include the beliefs of others in their own decisionmaking process about what beliefs to adopt. People tend to dismiss the Celestial Teapot more easily than God because, as Rick Warren loves to point out, 90+% of the American public believes in God, whereas nobody believes in the Celestial Teapot. A naive agnostic (not meant to imply that all agnostics are naive) can't help but initially treat that popularity as tilting the probability of God's existence back to the 50/50 range, even though it should have no bearing on the probability at all.<BR/><BR/>So yes, I am technically agnostic, but only in the narrow epistemological sense that pertains to all knowledge. I am effectively an atheist because my decisionmaking processes have gauged the evidence and probabilities in such a way that the likelihood of God's existence is on par with that of the Celestial Teapot, Zeus, or Thor.<BR/><BR/>As for an excessive focus on the Abrahamic faiths, you're right. There are three reasons for that. (1) I know more about the Abrahamic religions than its Eastern rivals, so there's less of a chance that I'll get things wrong. (2) Contextually, being an American ex-Christian, surrounded by American Christians and/or Jews, there is just a stronger sense of cultural urgency to deal with that God (let the Asians spread atheism amongst Hindus and Buddhists). (3) The Abrahamic religions have a significant component of <I>worship</I> to them that I find especially fascinating and objectionable. All religions invite us to believe stupid shit, but the Abrahamic ones seem especially intent on adding insult to injury through the pervasive demand for worship.Owen T. Cunninghamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17823770160312036509noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6472507616285260962.post-61930096920852613112008-12-10T07:30:00.000-08:002008-12-10T07:30:00.000-08:00I read through your Rationalist Credo. Very inter...I read through your Rationalist Credo. Very interesting read. I need to read it again, though, before I respond to anything in much detail.<BR/><BR/>In general, I don't think that you've proven that God does not exist. On the other hand, nobody has proven that God exists, either. The case of Jesus Christ is a weak argument, to be sure. How my immortal soul was saved by the gruesome torture and resurrection of a man seems totally illogical to me. In the traditional faiths, I know that, fundamentally, it is the resurrection that is the key point of salvation, that being that death is not the end.<BR/><BR/>I was raised Roman Catholic, but, I categorize myself as an agnostic. Personally, I think that this is a more logical categorization for you based on the Rationalist Credo. I simply believe that there is no evidence supporting the existence of God. God could exist or he could not exist. It does not matter as nothing on this earth provides any evidence of either case. As you probably know, agnostics are not atheists. Personally, I do believe that there are higher order beings that don't exist in the physical plane that I occupy. I just believe that he/she/they have no impact on worldly activities and that they don't even care about anything that occurs in my physical plane. Wikipedia describes this as an apathetic agnostic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic#Types_of_agnosticism).<BR/><BR/>Perhaps it was a shortage of time and the fact that this is not a book, although, it comes out to 25 pages in MS-Word, I think that you focused too much on refuting Judeo-Christian-Islamic monotheistic concepts. There are lots of other major religions that have radically different views. A complete argument would have to address those religions, too. In the end, it comes down to the same thing; nobody can prove his case and nobody can disprove anyone else's case.<BR/><BR/>I will be very interested to see what my wife's take will be on this. Over the years, she has done a lot of reading on religious history and theology studies. She understands some of the nuances much better than I do.Joe Hafemanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11025384347950362024noreply@blogger.com