Atheism - based on faith?

[pmprcv]

So this is something I have been thinking for quite some time, and I'd like to know what you think about this.

I'll start with saying that the proposition "God exists" can only be either true or false. The two other optionsare obviously excluded: that "God exists" is both true and false and that "God exists" is neither true nor false. So we are left with two positions, that can be translated as 1) God exists and 2) God doesn't exist. They are mutually-exclusive.

Regarding any argumentative position (called X), one can either a) assert X, b) deny X or c) be neutral. Being neutral doesn't mean that one both asserts and denies X; it merely means one does not commit either way or doesn't want to pursue any of the options. So applying this to the initial 2 positions, the only options one has are:

1) Assert that "God exists" is true and "God doesn't exist" is false.
2) Assert that "God exists" is false and "God doesn't exist" is true.
3) Neither assert nor deny either one.

3) is not a position; it is "empty" of arguments, opinions and assertions. 3) is the lack of position regarding the issue. Because one makes no assertions, one needs not justify his "position".

1) Is a position based on faith.

How about 2)? Well, the way I see it, one can justify an intellectual position (one that makes assertions about the objective reality) by 3 ways: logic, evidence (or the "scientific method") or faith. So if position 2) isn't justified with logic or evidence, then it is based on faith.

Logic is out of the question. Logic cannot be used to make assertions about a subject that, by definition, transcends logic - which means that He isn't necessarily bound by the laws of logic. Logic is a human construct, and God is by definition above humanity and above our capacity to understand. This means that logic produces incertain conclusions regarding God. Some conclusions about God that rely on logic may be true, while others may not.

Evidence has never been found to prove the non-existence of God. In fact, most people that assert the position 2) admit that finding evidence for the non-existence of something is impossible - which is mostly true, and is definitely true in the case of God. So as far as I'm concerned, there is no evidence or scientific proof that positively proves the non-existence of God.

Please note that the non-existence of positive evidence for X doesn't necessarily mean that X isn't true. Basically, lack of evidence for X doesn't mean X is false, and lack of evidence against X doesn't mean that X is true.

So, position 2) can only base itself on faith. Since there is no logic that can, with certainty, prove the necessity for the non-existence of God, nor is there any positive scientifical evidence for the non-existence of God, isn't it true that this position is based on faith just as much as position 1)?

It is important to define "faith" in this context as "subjective personal experience".

As in, I believe in God because, in my subjective personal experience, I have learnt to find Him in signs around me, and built a personal and intimate relation with Him, etc. But John doesn't believe in God because his subjective personal experience gives him no signs of God.

Is this wrong? How and why? Do you stand on position 2) and base it on evidence or logic rather than faith? What evidence or what logic is that?

Please not that the point is not to validate the legitimacy of faith in its use to discover the truth, but to show that both positions 1) and 2) are based on faith.

[Goat]

[Replying to post 3 by Artie]

You have a clear idea of what a fairy is supposed to be. To you, there are no fairies. If God exists, He defined us, not the other way around. Can you even conceptualize what you don't believe in?

Why, yes, we can conceptualize what we don't believe in. That is the basis of fairy tales, myths, legends and fiction stories, conceptualizing what we don't believe in.

Now, the statement 'If God exists, he defined us' is making a lot of assumptions about this God.. How do you know that?? Why should this 'God' be concerned about humanity at all. Perhaps this God is more concerned with creating black holes.

[McCulloch]

If God exists, He defined us, not the other way around. Can you even conceptualize what you don't believe in?

I think the question should be, "Can you believe in what you cannot even conceptualize?" Theists claim to believe in the existence of God, yet they cannot provide a coherent definition of what it is that they claim to believe in. They seem to play semantic games defining the word God to mean something which is incomprehensible. Whenever theists resorts to terms like: infinite, transcendent, unknowable, being outside of space and time, all they are doing is obscuring God into a meaningless concept which is incoherent. If God is unknowable, then our conversation has ended. I don't know anything more about the unknowable God than anyone else does.

[wiploc]

[Replying to post 3 by Artie]

You have a clear idea of what a fairy is supposed to be. To you, there are no fairies. If God exists, He defined us, not the other way around. Can you even conceptualize what you don't believe in?

People who have good arguments don't have to resort to arguments like this. Atheism is a reasonable response to this kind of no-true-Scotsman apologetics.

[ttruscott]

...

How about 2)? Well, the way I see it, one can justify an intellectual position (one that makes assertions about the objective reality) by 3 ways: logic, evidence (or the "scientific method") or faith. So if position 2) isn't justified with logic or evidence, then it is based on faith.

...

Fallacy: faith is not contrary to nor without evidence. It is the essence of hope and hope usually has evidence to support the hope as more than a guess.

So I contend that a position that is not justified by evidence will not create hope or a faith based hope.

The evidence Christians accept as the support for their faith, an unproven hope, that is, not an un-evidenced hope, is not missing but is merely not accepted by those who have no perception of spiritual things.

Peace, Ted

[Artie]

You have a clear idea of what a fairy is supposed to be. To you, there are no fairies.

I have no belief in the existence of fairies as defined in http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fairy

If God exists, He defined us, not the other way around. Can you even conceptualize what you don't believe in?

Not to have a belief in something does not require that you know what that something is. Not having a car does not require that you know what a car is.

[Artie]

Fallacy: faith is not contrary to nor without evidence.

"Faith and rationality are two modes of belief that exist in varying degrees of conflict or compatibility. Rationality is belief based on reason or evidence. Faith is belief in inspiration, revelation, or authority. The word faith generally refers to a belief that is held with lack of, in spite of or against reason and evidence." https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve ... ality.html

[Johannes]

[Replying to post 1 by pmprcv]

I think many atheists put forward something like the following argument:

A1. It is reasonable not to believe in the existence of something for which insufficient evidence exists.
A2. There is insufficient evidence that God exists.
A3. Therefore, it is reasonable not to believe that God exists.

Let's modified the A2 just slightly. "There is insufficient OBJECTIVE evidence to show God exists". I am sure that if you asked most atheists, they will say agree to that modification. That means, that evidence has to be 'public' evidence. When examples are given, it is either the logical fallacy of 'argument from personal belief', entirely subjective, testimonial, or emotional. None of it passes the 'How do you know it's God' question, or 'show me'.

In absence of the ability of the theist to meet the 'show me' challenge, it is reasonable to assume that these claims are based on personal belief rather than fact.

It is hard to take piece of 'logic' or argument seriously in absence of real world data in which to examine and test. That is the standard for acceptable evidence.

It has to pass the 'show me' test..and you have to be able to explain the reason that something IS evidence for God. Yes, it's a high standard, but 'God' is a very extraordinary claim.. with nothing that has passed the 'Show Me' test yet.

This is an example of what I mean by disagreement about what counts as evidence. You are demanding a certain kind of evidence that is inappropriate to the matter at hand.

There are many kinds of things that cannot pass the "show me" test: the existence of minds other than one's own, for example, or logical or mathematical truths, or of course this one:

"No one should believe anything that does not pass the 'show me' test."

Are you prepared to show me, all of us, that this is objectively, empirically true?

I honestly see no possible way that you or anyone could do this, although if you can, I'd love to see it. What sort of experiment or empirical observation could possibly establish the epistemological principle that "All claims require empirical evidence before being accepted"?

You have painted yourself into the same philosophical corner as the verificationists did, when they maintained that PV: "Only propositions which are logically analytically true or propositions which are empirically verifiable are meaningful." (They did a bit better than you, since they recognized purely formal, logical truths. It's a bit hard to dispute the truth of things like "All prime numbers are numbers.")

The problem, of course, is that PV itself is neither analytically true nor empirically verifiable, with the delightful consequence that, if it is true, it is meaningless, and therefore neither true nor false, and therefore not true.

Of course, PV can still be (and is) false. I foresee the same fate for your 'show me' principle.

ζητειτε,
_Johannes

[Johannes]

Fallacy: faith is not contrary to nor without evidence.

"Faith and rationality are two modes of belief that exist in varying degrees of conflict or compatibility. Rationality is belief based on reason or evidence. Faith is belief in inspiration, revelation, or authority. The word faith generally refers to a belief that is held with lack of, in spite of or against reason and evidence." https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve ... ality.html

So, the evidence you give us to believe that faith is based only on authority, is the citation of an authority? That's a little funny.

Are you saying you believe this by faith? Or do you just want us to accept your appeal to authority?

Forgive me, but I see no good reason to consider appeals to the Wikipedia to be rationally compelling.

ζητειτε,
_Johannes

[Goat]

[Replying to post 1 by pmprcv]

I think many atheists put forward something like the following argument:

A1. It is reasonable not to believe in the existence of something for which insufficient evidence exists.
A2. There is insufficient evidence that God exists.
A3. Therefore, it is reasonable not to believe that God exists.

Let's modified the A2 just slightly. "There is insufficient OBJECTIVE evidence to show God exists". I am sure that if you asked most atheists, they will say agree to that modification. That means, that evidence has to be 'public' evidence. When examples are given, it is either the logical fallacy of 'argument from personal belief', entirely subjective, testimonial, or emotional. None of it passes the 'How do you know it's God' question, or 'show me'.

In absence of the ability of the theist to meet the 'show me' challenge, it is reasonable to assume that these claims are based on personal belief rather than fact.

It is hard to take piece of 'logic' or argument seriously in absence of real world data in which to examine and test. That is the standard for acceptable evidence.

It has to pass the 'show me' test..and you have to be able to explain the reason that something IS evidence for God. Yes, it's a high standard, but 'God' is a very extraordinary claim.. with nothing that has passed the 'Show Me' test yet.

This is an example of what I mean by disagreement about what counts as evidence. You are demanding a certain kind of evidence that is inappropriate to the matter at hand.

There are many kinds of things that cannot pass the "show me" test: the existence of minds other than one's own, for example, or logical or mathematical truths, or of course this one:

"No one should believe anything that does not pass the 'show me' test."

Are you prepared to show me, all of us, that this is objectively, empirically true?

I honestly see no possible way that you or anyone could do this, although if you can, I'd love to see it. What sort of experiment or empirical observation could possibly establish the epistemological principle that "All claims require empirical evidence before being accepted"?

You have painted yourself into the same philosophical corner as the verificationists did, when they maintained that PV: "Only propositions which are logically analytically true or propositions which are empirically verifiable are meaningful." (They did a bit better than you, since they recognized purely formal, logical truths. It's a bit hard to dispute the truth of things like "All prime numbers are numbers.")

The problem, of course, is that PV itself is neither analytically true nor empirically verifiable, with the delightful consequence that, if it is true, it is meaningless, and therefore neither true nor false, and therefore not true.

Of course, PV can still be (and is) false. I foresee the same fate for your 'show me' principle.

ζητειτε,
_Johannes

The thing with the subjective evidence, two questions have to be asked. 1) How do you know that the evidence you claim is not self generated emotional response from within yourself.. and two. .. how do you know your interpretation of your experience is correct.

That is the difference between the 'private' evidence and the 'public' evidence. With public evidence, those issue can be addressed. With the 'private' evidence, a person might be convinced,.. but they can't show that they are right.

One thing that can be verified is that.. well, people fool themselves, and that the senses are subject to error.

It seems to me that people who reject the principle of 'let's check it out and see if our assumptions are correct' tend to want to promote 'faith'.

The bar for reasonable evidence is set much high for the average atheist. There is the logical fallacy of equivocation about what is evidence here, because objective evidence, which the atheists uses when it makes that line of argumentation, is a much different beast than the subjective evidence for the theist.

[Johannes]

The evidence Christians accept as the support for their faith, an unproven hope, that is, not an un-evidenced hope, is not missing but is merely not accepted by those who have no perception of spiritual things.

Peace, Ted

Hello Ted,

I want to make a qualification to what you say here. I agree that a great deal of the evidence of spiritual things is spiritual in nature, and therefore simply unavailable to everyone in the same degree. "He that has ears, let him hear." And he that does not have ears, won't hear, no matter how good the words.

But I think it is not right to hold that some spiritual matters, such as the existence of God in general, cannot be made evident by reason.

Christianity is not capable of being discursively proven to be true (although it can be shown to be compatible with anything else which is true, since all truth is compatible with itself), but certain preliminaries to Christian belief, such as the existence of God understood as the one, omnipotent, omniscient, source of all life and being, can be discursively demonstrated. Such a demonstration would not tell you whether you ought to be a Christian, a Jew, a Hindu, a Platonist, a Taoist, a Muslim, a Jain, or a Baha'i, but it would tell you that atheism is an irrational position.

ζητειτε,
_Johannes