Justify the belief that gods do not exist.

[wiploc]

Some people believe that gods do not exist. (One can call this position "atheism" or "strong atheism" or "anti-theist perversion," anything you want. But we aren't going to argue terminology in this thread. Clarity is good, so you can explain what you personally mean by "atheist," but you shouldn't suggest that other usages are inferior.)

This thread is to make a list of arguments, of reasons to believe that theism is false.

And we can discuss the soundness of those arguments.

I'll start:

1. The Parable of the Pawnbroker.
(I'll just post titles here, so as not to take too much space at the top of each thread.)

2. Presumptive Falsity of Outrageous Claims.



Feel free to add to this list.

[Jashwell]

[Replying to post 530 by instantc]

They are of course ad hoc. Claiming that it's necessary is no different from me saying "well obviously since nobody's seen dragons they must be invisible". (Claiming that the Universe even needs a cause is ad hoc). Reaching the conclusion that "he must be or he would be logically inconsistent" is a defence.

There's a difference between rejection of and belief in the falsity of a proposition. It is on grounds of parsimony that we can address the implausibility of a statement.
Your logic would lead to the situation where the same proposition, (still in absence of positive evidence in both cases), is judged to be true or false because of how it is mentioned or brought up, specifically a genetic fallacy.

One person makes claim (X+Y).
You don't claim it is false.

One person makes claim X. You say X is inconsistent. He then adds Y.
You claim it is false.

[instantc]

There's a difference between rejection of and belief in the falsity of a proposition.

Obviously.

It is on grounds of parsimony that we can address the implausibility of a statement.

World is full of complicated and unparsimonious things. There is nothing implausible in an unparsimonious hypothesis at face value. Parsimony only plays a role when two explanations are otherwise exactly equal in every other aspect.

Your logic would lead to the situation where the same proposition, (still in absence of positive evidence in both cases), is judged to be true or false because of how it is mentioned or brought up, specifically a genetic fallacy.

Again, I'm not suggesting that anything should be judged true or false on that basis. The underlying psychological motivation of a claim is simply a pointer towards it being probably true or untrue. Compare situations where your friend tells you a joke that involves a chicken crossing a street, as opposed to him telling you a childhood memory involving a chicken crossing a street. In both cases, it is possible that a chicken has crossed a street in the described manner, but in the latter case it's way more likely that it actually happened.

One person makes claim (X+Y).
You don't claim it is false.

One person makes claim X. You say X is inconsistent. He then adds Y.
You claim it is false.

I don't claim anything to be true or false. In certain cases, such as the example that I gave in the previous post, the adhocness of Y indicates that X + Y is probably false.

What it comes to the adhocness of God-claims, I'm not interested in debating it further, since it's not my intention to defend any such claim here.

[Jashwell]

[Replying to post 532 by instantc]

By "more likely" you of course mean "more plausible" and hence "more reasonable to believe".

As is still the case, your view is a genetic fallacy. The ad hoc-ness of a claim may inherently lead you to reasonable believe whether the person talking has any clue what he's talking about but not to reasonably believe whether or not the claim is true.

As should be indicated by the fact that you have to scenarios, both lacking positive evidence, both putting forward the same claim, one being suspected as false merely on the basis of the one supposing it. I.e you're saying "X+Y isn't probably false for this person, but for this other person it probably is false".

I contend that parsimony is a good reason to believe things are false. Parsimony does not simply mean reject all complicated things, nor am I suggesting it should be used when actual positive evidence is present.

[instantc]

[Replying to post 532 by instantc]

By "more likely" you of course mean "more plausible" and hence "more reasonable to believe".

As is still the case, your view is a genetic fallacy. The ad hoc-ness of a claim may inherently lead you to reasonable believe whether the person talking has any clue what he's talking about but not to reasonably believe whether or not the claim is true.

So you are in fact saying that the fact that an honest person provably knows exactly what he is talking about is not an INDICATION towards truthfulness of his claim?

I contend that parsimony is a good reason to believe things are false. Parsimony does not simply mean reject all complicated things, nor am I suggesting it should be used when actual positive evidence is present.

Okay, explain to me the model that you are using here. You say that unparsimonious claims are probably false at face value (in the absence of positive evidence), correct? What does unparsimonious mean? Unparsimonious relative to what? Exactly how unparsimonious does a claim need to be in order for you to believe that it's likely false?

[Jashwell]

[Replying to post 534 by instantc]

X is known to be true / not known to be true and X is known to be false / not known to be false are separate issues.

If I'm not inclined to believe them, that does not mean I should believe the claim they put forward is false. I would simply withhold belief that in the claim. There may be additional reasons, i.e. parsimony, for which I might be inclined to believe it is false.

As for parsimony, it is by no means an objective matter (it concerns the plausible and the reasonable, not the possible and the true), but if we consider it reasonable to believe dragons do not exist then certainly Gods too.

Ideally, any unnecessary presupposition (one that itself is contextually meaningless / adds no verifiable value or explanatory power) for a seemingly consistent model should be believed to be false. For instance, there are plausible self consistent models of the Universe that do not require a God, therefore it is reasonable to believe a God does not exist. (not to mention things like souls, god like powers and supernaturalism themselves also suffer at the hands of Occam's razor)

[KenRU]

Unless I’m mistaken, this was in the context of discussing the need for a universe to have a Creator. So, if you’re not saying the lack of scientific evidence available to explain the origin of the universe necessitates the need a supernatural explanation, then what are you saying?

If our universe is what is considered natural and if the cause of our universe was not by itself, then it must've had a supernatural cause.

That’s a big “if� and also an assumption. Not to mention, we just went in a circle. You have no evidence that the universe needs a Creator, and no evidence that says the universe could not have existed in any other varied form. So, if and when science does have an explanation for these things, wouldn’t that place this squarely in the “god of the gaps� argument?

But, given that the only thing anyone knows about god are in the holy books, and there are factual errors in the these holy books (I assume you agree with this, correct?), aren’t we already starting off with this proof?

Actually, I believe one can reach Deism (and even Theism) without any holy books.

This is an evasive response. If we discount the holy books for a source of god’s properties, what is left to discuss? So, god has no properties to distinguish himself to us? What properties would you like to discuss then?

I’d love to hear them.

Perhaps some other time. But not in this thread.

Then I still maintain, “There is no evidence that a god or gods exist.�

I maintain that “there is zero evidence for god� is indeed a solid argument. If you have evidence which disproves my claim, I’d love to hear it, as I’m sure many here would as well.

The origin of the universe.

You have not yet to shown why this is proof for the need to have a god as a Cause. All you have argued is that currently science does not have an explanation, and you predict that it never will. Correct?

[instantc]

[Replying to post 534 by instantc]

X is known to be true / not known to be true and X is known to be false / not known to be false are separate issues.

If I'm not inclined to believe them, that does not mean I should believe the claim they put forward is false. I would simply withhold belief that in the claim.

I understand this, I don't see how this answers my question.

As for parsimony, it is by no means an objective matter (it concerns the plausible and the reasonable, not the possible and the true), but if we consider it reasonable to believe dragons do not exist then certainly Gods too.

If it's not an objective matter, how am I supposed to know when a claim is unparsimonious enough for me to justify a belief in its falsity at face value?

I don't even know what it means for a claim to simply be unparsimonious. I know that if theory A posits more things than theory B but has the same explanatory power, then theory A is unparsimonious relative to theory B. From two competing otherwise equal theories, the more complicated one loses on parsimony. I don't know what it means for a claim to simply be unparsimonious, let alone for a claim to be so unparsimonious that we should believe in its falsity at face value.

Ideally, any unnecessary presupposition (one that itself is contextually meaningless / adds no verifiable value or explanatory power) for a seemingly consistent model should be believed to be false.

First of all, we are not discussing any particular model or concept and trying to determine whether God adds explanatory power to it. Can you show that the God explanation has no explanatory power with regard to anything that we have already discovered or might possibly discover in the universe later on? That's the burden you need to bear if you claim that God has no explanatory power at all with regard to anything. Even if we have a self-contained cosmological model for the universe, it does not follow that God is an unnecessary presupposition altogether. Perhaps God has explanatory power with regard to morality. Perhaps something else entirely that we haven't thought of yet.

Second of all, who says that unnecessary presuppositions should be believed to be false? The principle of parsimony certainly does not say that, it says that those presuppositions should not be accepted/posited.

[Jashwell]

[Replying to post 537 by instantc]

How are you supposed to know when there is enough evidence to justify belief?
It is a matter of experience if nothing else. One can certainly use analogies - a God is less parsimonious than a dragon, and so if parsimony is good reason to claim dragons don't exist.. it is also one to claim gods do not exist.

The topic is "Justify the belief", not "prove or demonstrate the claim".

As for how it answers your question, if they make an ad hoc claim you don't believe them without justification, you don't assert that their new claim is false. It is still a genetic fallacy to address the actual truth value of the claim they happen to profess because of the way they profess it.

Unnecessary presuppositions that posit no notable or observable differences, even in theory, and lack explanatory value while remaining unnecessarily ... fantastical are indistinguishable from positing literally nothing at all. If a symbol has no meaning, it may be removed without consequence.

[instantc]

[Replying to post 537 by instantc]
As for how it answers your question, if they make an ad hoc claim you don't believe them without justification, you don't assert that their new claim is false. It is still a genetic fallacy to address the actual truth value of the claim they happen to profess because of the way they profess it.

I didn't ask for this, did I? I asked whether or not in the first scenario the claim that a chicken crossed the street is more likely to be false than in the second scenario? If so, then you accept that the underlying psychological motivation points towards the LIKELIHOOD of the claim being true.

Unnecessary presuppositions that posit no notable or observable differences, even in theory, and lack explanatory value while remaining unnecessarily ... fantastical are indistinguishable from positing literally nothing at all. If a symbol has no meaning, it may be removed without consequence.

Setting aside my main argument for now, can you show that God "lacks explanatory value" altogether?

[Jashwell]

[Replying to post 539 by instantc]

It lacks explanatory value because it hasn't been shown to have any - which for an explanation means it doesn't currently have any. This doesn't mean it couldn't or won't have any. It may be the case that someone might somehow (though what traits intelligence offers to Universe creation is beyond me) in the future show that a God does have explanatory value, but it hasn't been shown yet - meaning as an explanation it doesn't currently have any value.

Yes, it could be the case that we were justified in believing it to be false and then we'd be justified in believing it to be true, but this is on the merit of the actual idea & data not on the merit of who suggested it or why.

The reason that the latter is more likely is because we trust jokes to regularly involve falsity. The only kind of joke isn't imaginary - satire or observational comedy rely on the truthfulness of that which they mock.

To explain the difference, consider X the truth claim.
Consider Y to be Not X, or the falsity of X

Substituting in, we still have a seemingly true vs not seemingly true scenario, not a seemingly true vs seemingly false.

In other words, if you trust someone to lie, you are debating whether or not to believe their claims are false or not, not whether they are false or true.