Tag Archives: God

God Exists Because the Alternative Sucks?

14 Thursday Feb 2013

Posted by in My Story, The Questioning

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The other day I was going through some of my old notes from years ago when I found this gem that I had written back in 2007 (almost 6 years ago):

“The following is the closest that I can come to proving the existence of God. It’s good enough for me.

If there was no God and no heaven, there would be no true purpose or goal in life or the universe. If there was no God and no heaven, whether or not you live, die, or had never been born in the first place, would eventually make no difference to anyone or anything. It would mean that everything that exists isn’t just insignificant, but totally worthless as well.”

That reasoning “proved” to me that God exists. In fact, it satisfied me enough that I was able to put the question of God’s existence from my mind for some months at least.

I don’t remember if it occurred to me or not that I was making an assertion based only on how the alternative would make me feel. If it did occur to me, I guess I never realized how fallacious such reasoning is.

philosophy-professor

Perhaps deep down, I realized that this reasoning never actually proved anything about God, that it just made me feel a little better about unquestioningly accepting his existence. As time went on, I learned more about epistemology and the scientific method and it didn’t take me long to discard this reasoning as an embarrassment.

In the years since I wrote those words, I’ve found P to be false but luckily for me, I found “I will be sad” to be false too.

Just to be clear, there is a lot wrong with this kind of reasoning that I engaged in six years ago. The universe isn’t here just to make us happy and reality doesn’t magically reconfigure itself based on our emotions. The fact that you find a hypothesis to be emotionally inconceivable says nothing about the accuracy of that hypothesis.

Why Christians should be Killing Babies

07 Thursday Feb 2013

Posted by in My Philosophy, Religion

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Every once in a while I exercise my right to post something that most people find utterly repulsive. This is one of those posts.

Most Christians believe in a God that judges people for their sins and sends them to eternal heaven or hell based on his judgment. Let me show you how it logically follows from those beliefs, that we should kill all newborns.

To the Christian I ask, do you believe that a newborn goes to heaven if he or she dies? If not, then you cannot claim your God to be a benevolent God. What did a newborn ever do to deserve eternal hellfire?

I’m going to assume that you believe newborns go to heaven if they die. Here is the problem with that belief: Since living life beyond the newborn stage increases the chance that a person sins, thereby reducing the chance that he or she will get into heaven, shouldn’t you take it upon yourself to kill all newborns to ensure their eternal happiness? Sure you would go to hell for your troubles but wouldn’t it be the right thing to do? Wouldn’t it be better for one person to go to hell for killing thousands of babies than for half of those babies to grow up as sinners and go to hell when they die?

The beliefs that; 1) God is benevolent, 2) God is more likely to send grown people to hell than babies, and 3) One shouldn’t kill babies, is not a coherent set of beliefs. At least one of these beliefs must be wrong. If you disagree, please tell me where my reasoning is faulty.

The Semantics of my Atheism

04 Tuesday Dec 2012

Posted by in My Philosophy, Religion

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What really is my position on the existence of God? Am I really an atheist or am I more of an agnostic? The question isn’t as simple as it seems.

I personally dislike the atheist/agnostic labels because I feel that my position isn’t clearly defined by either. I don’t consider myself agnostic because in most cases, I think those who believe in God are making a mistake. I don’t consider myself a pure atheist because in most cases my position would not include the unequivocal statement that ‘God does not exist’. My references to “most cases” I hope will become clear soon–once I discuss the definitions of “God”. If we drill deeper, my beliefs are probably closer to agnostic atheism or atheistic agnosticism than to either atheism or agnosticism. It just didn’t sound right to call my blog, “X Amish Agnostic Atheist”.

My position is quite simply that; the available evidence for the existence of God, as most people would define God, does not warrant the belief in such a being. Note that the above position applies to anybody that doesn’t ascribe to the common definition of God; be they atheists, agnostics, pantheists, Buddhists, or what have you. For a period of time, I actually considered myself a pantheist and there may still be pantheistic ideas out there that I would consider.

My position is also; if you believe in God, as most people would define God, then A) you must have evidence that I do not, or B) your belief in such a God is unjustified. I am of course assuming that my determination of what makes a belief justified or not, is valid, and that I have not made a mistake in the reasoning with which I concluded that the available evidence does not justify the belief in such a God.

Now, on to definitions… With all the different religions and belief systems, God and gods are ascribed many different characteristics. Some of these Gods, I am more inclined to discard as foolish given the ready natural explanations for the things that are ascribed to them. Many cultures have believed in thunder gods and almost all of us consider the notion foolish now that we have a natural explanation for thunder. I am as atheistic about such Gods as most people are willing to unequivocally state that, “Santa Claus does not exist.”

On the other hand, if we consider a pantheistic God, such as; the universe itself is God, then I tend to be more agnostic than atheistic. However, I would consider such a God to be so ill-defined as to be almost meaningless. Is God; mathematics and the all-pervasive mathematics only? If that’s how you want to define God, then sure, I have no problem believing in mathematics.

Now, on to the semantics of the supernatural… According to many definitions of God, he is supernatural, existing outside of time and space, outside of our universe as we know it. We will never be able to detect such a God with our natural instruments and while they will never be able to prove that such a God exists, we will never be able to prove that such a God does not exist (I’m not even going to go into the whole burden of proof issue). I consider such a God; meaningless. If something is in principle undetectable, then it is by definition; nonexistent. Otherwise, the concept of existence is meaningless. Check out my older post about the Nonexistence of Undetectable Things for a more in-depth explanation of what I’m referring to.

Let’s take a break from God and talk about aliens for a moment. Do they exist? Are they out there? I don’t know. On the subject of aliens I am agnostic, but not at all atheistic (I know the word technically doesn’t apply to aliens) because they are detectable in principle. I hope they exist.

What if you were to define God only as our creator? Would I believe in the possibility of that? Sure, if you’re willing to think of abiogenesis + evolution as your God. Oh, it has to be an intelligent creator? Hmm, what about those aliens? Could aliens have created us? Well, not really… it doesn’t make sense that animals are so genetically similar to us if we humans were created by aliens (unless they created the animals from the same stockpile of DNA). Well, maybe the aliens just brought the first cellular lifeforms and allowed evolution to take its course–creating us in that sense. Could I believe in such alien Gods? While I would consider such a God not out of the realm of possibility, I do think abiogenesis is a more likely explanation. While, I believe such alien Gods are far more likely than the Christian God, I’ll remain fairly atheistic about both.

Then there’s the idea that we live in a simulation. Could an advanced species have created computers powerful enough to simulate a universe and could we be living therein? Probably! While such a God is interesting to consider, it is once again, one of those undetectable Gods that just isn’t very meaningful in our natural universe.

So what really is my position on the existence of God? It all depends on what your definition of “God” is.

Why do I call myself an “atheist” then? I don’t believe the evidence for the existence of God, as he is commonly defined, justifies a belief in God. Could I be wrong? Sure, but I think the likelihood of such a God existing, based on our current evidence, is so low that my beliefs are much more like the pure atheist than the pure agnostic. That is why I call myself an “atheist” even though in some cases I am not an atheist.

Despising God

12 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by in My Philosophy, The Conversion, The Questioning

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As atheists, we are sometimes posed the question; If the positive existence of God was proven to your satisfaction, would you worship him? My answer to that question is; No.

Now, before you assume that my reason for rejecting God is personal, rather than epistemological, let me assure you that I believe wholeheartedly that the God of the Bible does not exist. My reason for believing so is quite simply that I do not find that the evidence warrants a belief in the existence of such a God.

When I first began questioning the existence of God, I was racked with guilt. I believed that my questions were blasphemous and that blasphemy was an unforgivable sin but I could not quell them.

As time went on and the questions became more pronounced, I began to wonder how a being intelligent enough to create this universe, could torture someone like me for all eternity. According to the Bible, I was headed straight for hell. I didn’t feel evil.  All I ever wanted was to know the truth. How could an all-powerful being, torture me for following the truth? Was it really my fault if circumstances conspired to make me question his existence? How could he hide from me and then punish me for not believing in him? If he was God, could he not easily convince me beyond the shadow of a doubt, that he exists?

At the time, I still wanted God to exist. I feared an existence devoid of such a protector. I concluded that if God really did exist, then he must be nothing like he is portrayed in the Bible. I could not believe in a benevolent God and in hell at the same time. I could not believe that an omniscient being would resort to eternal torture.

As time went on, my definition of God shrinked until it vanished into nothingness. I no longer believe in the existence of God, benevolent or otherwise. I do not believe that the God of the Bible exists. I do not even believe that anything remotely god-like exists. If something god-like actually does exist, I would find it hard to believe that it would be like the God of the Bible. However, I can look at the hypothetical, ‘What if the God of the Bible really exists’ and develop an opinion of such a God.

The God of the Bible can be blamed for the mass murders of hundreds of thousands of people. He can be blamed for rapes, pillage, plunder, slavery, child abuse, and rampant destruction. He tells us that happiness can be achieved by smashing children against rocks, and he tells us that homosexuality is evil. Since he takes credit for it, we might as well blame God for all the natural disasters, evil, and suffering that humanity and the animal kingdom have ever endured. It doesn’t stop there. God claims that he’s really a nice guy and we have to worship him or else he will torture us for eternity.

After I stopped believing in God and my case of Stockholm Syndrome faded away, I stopped seeing the God of the Bible as a benevolent being, and started seeing the things that are really written therein. Any person or being that engages in the things that are attributed to God, is unimaginably evil in my opinion. As a matter of moral principle, I would never worship such a being. At this point, I believe I would rather be a martyr and be tortured for eternity, than to worship a narcissistic terrorist like God. Oh, and by the way… if I was God, I would be way nicer!

Semantics Shemantics

02 Saturday Jun 2012

Posted by in Epistemology, My Philosophy

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The statement, “God does not exist,” is perfectly fine when used in normal conversation. Many atheists are heard saying this and they are attacked for it because of epistemological reasons. In the epistemological sense, this statement is not okay because it has not been proven that God does not exist. In fact, it may well be impossible to prove that God does not exist.

Likewise, the statement, “Santa Claus does not exist,” is perfectly fine in ordinary conversation but it’s not okay in an epistemological argument because it has not been proven in the strict sense of logic that Santa Claus does not exist.

When somebody says, “Santa Claus does not exist,” their statement is epistemologically suspect. But what the person really means is, “The available body of evidence does not warrant a belief in the existence of Santa Claus.” The latter statement is fine in the epistemological sense but the first statement is not. The first statement is fine in normal conversation because we are used to taking shortcuts in everyday language. It is the same way with the atheist’s proclamation that, “God does not exist.”

Before you rail on the atheist for making epistemologically suspect claims, perhaps you should consider what the atheist really meant. Before you claim that atheism is an untenable position because it asserts a nonexistence claim, perhaps you should consider what it really means.

The Nonexistence of Undetectable Things

01 Friday Jun 2012

Posted by in Epistemology, My Philosophy

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Why is there no proof of God’s existence? If you ask a Christian this question, you get a barrage of “proof” that after a little digging, turns out to be nothing but faith.

However, some of the Christians I have met (I even entertained this idea at one point in time as being the reason I couldn’t find proof of God’s existence) claim that there is no proof of God because God is in principle, undetectable.

The idea goes something like this… God transcends time, space, and even the universe itself. Our science instruments are limited to the universe, so that’s why we can’t detect God. We will never be able to detect God because our instruments will always be limited to the natural things that are lurking about in the universe. Since God can exist and be undetectable, we must take it on faith that he does exist.

Something that can in principle never be detected, is by definition, nonexistent and I’ll explain why in the next few paragraphs.

We detect things by the way they affect other things. For example, we directly detect the moon because of the way it reflects particles of light. We also indirectly detect the moon by the gravitational force that it exerts on the Earth and its contents.

The only way that something cannot in principle be detected even indirectly is if it has no effect on anything else in the universe. In other words, it cannot have mass because then it would exert a gravitational force which could in principle be detected with gravity gradiometers. It cannot have any sort of electrical charge because then it could in principle be detected with a variety of electromagnetic detectors. For any other property of something that exists, there could in principle, be designed a detector which detects that property, otherwise the property isn’t real. In other words, the only way that something cannot in principle be detected even indirectly is if it has no real properties.

And let’s not forget statistical analysis. Even if something real could not be detected by scientific tools, if it affects real objects or events, then its influence could, in theory, be statistically calculated using our knowledge of the affected objects or events and our knowledge of how the universe works.

In conclusion, the idea that something could be said to exist and at the same time be undetectable in principle, doesn’t make sense. It is a contradiction. On the other hand, if you decide to drop the idea that God is in principle undetectable while maintaining that he does exist, then the burden of proof is on you. If you claim the existence of something which has heretofore not been verified, then it is your burden to propose a method of detection that would reasonably prove its existence.

Why Does God Require our Belief?

08 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by in The Conversion

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For God it is not enough that we are good and moral people. For God, we must be good and moral people and believe in God, in order to escape hell. This fact is one that drove me from Christian to agnostic. I just plain don’t like the type of person that demands you believe in him while he hides from detection. What is he? Some kind of a**hole?

Pascal’s Wager: Is God the Safe Bet?

07 Monday May 2012

Posted by in The Conversion, The Questioning

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When I was younger and just beginning to question the existence of God, one of the arguments that always seemed to sway me back to Christianity is one that was first developed by Blaise Pascal; a philosopher, mathematician, and physicist that lived in the 17th century. The argument is called “Pascal’s Wager” and it goes something like this;

If you’re not sure that God exists it is still better to believe and live your life as if he exists than to not do those things. If you believe in God and he turns out to be nonexistent, you’ve lost nothing. If you believe in God and he does exist, you get eternal life. On the other hand, if you don’t believe in God and he turns out to be real, you’ll burn in hell forever. Obviously, the rational bet is to believe in God.

When I was talking with my Christian girlfriend about God recently, she brought up this argument and I was reminded of the fact that I have also used it. I started wondering why it no longer seems like a rational bet to me.

Pascal’s wager only makes sense if there is some evidence of God’s existence. It is only convincing to those that believe the odds of God actually existing are about 50/50 or better. As adults, we aren’t “good” simply on the off chance that Santa really exists. In much the same way, an atheist or an agnostic thinks the Christian God is such a ridiculous idea that it doesn’t merit even the slightest change in behavior on the off chance that God exists and that you’ll be rewarded for your behavior.

Belief Systems: Coherency, Completeness, and Reality

18 Wednesday Apr 2012

Posted by in Epistemology, My Philosophy

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Something that you believe is obviously a belief. To be more precise, a belief is a statement about the universe that the holder believes to hold true. The sum of all the things that you believe is your “belief system”. And, once again, to be more precise, a belief system is the sum of all statements that the holder believes to be individually true.

Everybody has a belief system. Without it, we wouldn’t have any way to make sense of anything from the smallest question such as ‘why does water flow downhill’, to the biggest of questions such as ‘what is the meaning of life’.

So what defines a good belief system and how could one belief system possibly be objectively better than another? There are three qualities of a belief system that are very important; coherency, completeness, and reality. I will explain these ideas in some detail below although not in the order just given.

Reality

The individual beliefs in a belief system must comport with reality. It is possible to have a completely fantastical belief system, only if you’re unlike most people (i.e. you’re completely insane).

What I mean is that your beliefs must agree with what you see in reality. If you stub your toe really hard and you firmly believe that you did not stub your toe, then your belief does not comport with reality (and you are most likely insane).

Such a belief system is useless because it does not help you make accurate predictions about the future. Life is all about making accurate predictions. For our entire lives, the sun has risen every morning. Based on this evidence, we form the belief that the sun will always come up in the morning. Based on this belief, whether or not we think about it, we make the prediction that the sun will come up tomorrow morning.

If for some reason, the sun stops rising in the morning, then our belief that the sun will always rise in the morning, does no longer comport with reality. When that happens we are forced to discard the belief and search for a new one. Perhaps we’ll revise our belief to ‘the sun sometimes rises in the morning’. If after a long period of not even that happening, we would be forced to revise it even further, to something like, ‘the sun used to rise in the morning’.

Coherency

Coherency is about how well one’s beliefs make sense when more than one at a time are considered. A coherent belief system is a belief system in which all the individual beliefs fit together in such a way as to create a solid whole. A belief system that contains contradictory beliefs is not coherent.

For example, suppose you held the bizarre belief that all Mennonites are weird. You also hold the belief that a certain friend named Sam is a cool dude and is not at all weird. Then you find out that Sam is a Mennonite. Suddenly you realize a contradiction in your belief system. On the one hand you believe all Mennonites are weird and on the other hand you believe that one Mennonite is not weird. These two beliefs do not fit together. Taken one at a time, they might make sense, but taking both at the same time results in a logical contradiction.

An incoherent belief system is bad. If you hold contradictory beliefs in your belief system it must logically be the case that at least one of your beliefs does not comport with reality. It is false. This tends to cause confusion and cognitive dissonance – neither of which are good attributes to possess in this complex life.

Finding contradictions in one’s belief system is actually quite common for the serious thinker. That’s because we are all operating on incomplete information. None of us knows everything and no matter how strongly we believe in something, new information could pop up which totally disproves our belief. Finding a contradiction can actually be a refreshing experience because it gives you the opportunity to explore intellectually and perhaps to happen upon bigger truths.

It is a common tactic for debaters (think atheist versus Christian) to attack the coherency of the other person’s belief system in an attempt to find and display a contradiction in the opponent’s belief system.

The important thing is that you remove the contradiction. Think about the conflicting beliefs because one of them must logically be false. Are all Mennonites really weird? Is Sam really a cool and completely non-weird guy? In your investigation into the basis of your opposing beliefs you may just stumble onto something new. Perhaps not all Mennonites are weird after all!

Completeness

The last quality of a belief system is “completeness”. This idea is related to how big your belief system is. Are there still questions that you don’t know the answer to? Of course there are! Our belief systems will probably always be incomplete but yours can be more complete than your neighbor’s.

The completeness of one’s belief system can be deceptive. This is particularly true when it comes to religion. Believing that God does literally everything is a pretty damn complete belief system isn’t it?

Well, no because as it turns out, this belief system actually just skips over everything. Take earthquakes for example. Years ago, many people thought God caused earthquakes and that was that. This idea was an explanation for earthquakes but it was useless. It was of no help in predicting earthquakes nor in gaining a better understanding of the overall workings of our planet. Nowadays we know about plate tectonics – how the plates move about on the Earth’s surface, grinding against each other, pressing against each other, and suddenly releasing tension. This explanation of earthquakes is more complete – it is more useful. It helps us predict earthquakes, it helps us gain a better understanding of how the Earth works as a whole, and it even helped explain several things in evolutionary theory that had previously been mysteries.

Updating Your Belief System

We are often given new information. Our job is to analyze that information and ask ourselves if it makes sense with what we can see of reality. If it does, we need to ask ourselves if it is coherent with our existing beliefs? If so, the information is quickly incorporated into one’s belief system but if not, the information must either be discarded as false or one’s belief system must be revised.

When it comes to larger chunks of information (such as the theory of evolution), it is wise to take a little more time to ensure that everything in the set of statements actually coincides with reality. If it does, then we need to check the internal coherency. Do all the statements within the set, make sense when taken as a whole (remember to disregard your own beliefs through this process)? If it comports with reality and has good internal coherency it is time to see how well it would fit with the rest of your belief system. If there are conflicts then things start getting interesting. On the one hand you have a scientific theory that explains reality quite well but on the other hand it doesn’t fit with your beliefs about the nature of reality.

Now you need to start thinking hard. Could you modify your existing beliefs enough so that evolution could fit inside without causing coherency problems? If so, would the resulting belief system be better than your current one? Would it be more coherent? More complete? If so, there’s only one viable option. Revise your current belief system enough so that you can import the new segment.

When I first studied the evidence for evolution I marveled at the how well it explained some of questions that I had often wondered about. It appealed to me because it mirrored reality so well and it was so much more complete than my existing beliefs on the subject – that God created man and all the animals. However, I couldn’t be expected to just drop the idea of God entirely. My beliefs about him were entwined with all the other beliefs in my belief system. So I started wondering if I could believe in both. As it turns out, I could – as soon as I re-interpreted the Bible as more of a metaphorical work than a literal work.

Rarely does a person’s entire belief system change overnight regardless of how much evidence is thrown at the person. It is often easier to live with contradictory beliefs than it is to completely switch a belief system. This is particularly true for belief systems that are well established in a person’s mind. I’m referring to religion and how it is often indoctrinated starting at a very young age.

Judging from my own experiences, I believe it is essentially impossible for a firm Christian to become an atheist in any short period of time (despite having been born atheist, mind you). For me the whole process took about 10 to 12 years.

So if you are intent on changing someone’s belief system – don’t try to do it overnight. Work on one or several beliefs at a time rather than the whole system at once. You increase your odds of eventually succeeding.

Note: In this last section, I have approached the issue of updating one’s belief system from the perspective of someone watching your mind (metacognition). When it happens to yourself, it will not seem quite this analytical. In fact, many of these steps will be taken by your mind without you even realizing it.

Thoughts on God by an ex-Amish Heathen

17 Tuesday Apr 2012

Posted by in The Conversion

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The following are some thoughts that I noted in my handheld over the past year or so. It is interesting to wonder what I was going through at the time… The most recent notes are at the top.

March 12, 2012, 7:45 PM

I wish God would stay the f*** out of my life.

November 17, 2011, 1:47 AM

Shouldn’t the Army also have chaplains for all the other religions?

September 10, 2011, 6:46 PM

Amish boy to atheist man: On the one hand, life becomes less meaningful and less serious. On the other hand, there can be no more afterlife goals.

August 3, 2011, 3:34 AM

Which is more important, truth or belief?

July 13, 2011, 12:13 AM

Very few statements make less sense than, “I wasn’t hallucinating!”

(I bet I was thinking about the religious visions that some people claim to experience.)

June 12, 2011, 10:25 PM

Conventional behavior bears no resemblance to rational behavior.

April 19, 2011, 2:53 AM

The difference between the theist and the agnostic: The agnostic accepts the unknown simply as the unknown while the theist anthropomorphizes the unknown for a variety of reasons ranging from 1) a lack of independent thought, 2) a need for companionship, and 3) a fear of the unknown… Even false hope is comforting.

Date and Time Unknown

I do not believe a supreme being would design a universe that operates according to rules of logic… and then hide from logic.

I also do not believe a good supreme being would punish someone for reaching a logically valid conclusion given the available information.

A God that punishes its subjects for a logically valid conclusion… is an evil God that I want no part of!