Morning Scepticism: Labels

If I were to reject psychic powers because my magic 8-ball said its nonsense, that would be a bad reason to believe that there's no such thing as a psychic. Yet a well-reasoned position on why psychics are deluding themselves holds the exact same appearance as doing so because of a magic 8-ball or because a man in a white coat said so. To get hung up on what the belief is as opposed to why it is believed is leading to arguing the label rather than the argument. One can argue against the position with the most uncharitable interpretation as possible, and sadly this happens all too frequently.

Morning Scepticism: Unicorns

Imagine if any talk of unicorns began with "you can't prove that unicorns don't exist" and that anyone who argued that unicorns were a fictional construct were told such statements are an article of faith. Yet this is exactly what happens if you replace unicorns with God. Because despite how trivial such a statement is, its perceived profundity means that atheism is forever going to be considered an unjustified leap of faith. While you can't prove the non-existence of unicorns, there's absolutely no reason to consider that unicorns exist and good reasons to think otherwise. In other words, absurd until demonstrated plausible.

A Justification For Atheism

Ideas must first be coherent before they can be scrutinised. If I were to ask "do you believe in Quixido?" would it make any sense to comment on the ontological status of Quixido without knowing what Quixido is? When it comes to God we do at least have a fair idea of what the conception of God is. While many would disagree over God's nature, there's at least a general sense by which the concept can be understood. Far from Quixido, God involves a consciousness and intelligence whereby the universe in some capacity represents an expression of that intelligent conscious will, and generally speaking it has some interest in the affairs of humanity.

So an atheist in the very broadest is someone who rejects that notion, it's a descriptor for those who do not think such an entity is a valid one. This is to be distinguished with noncognitivists who have no idea of the concept, and strong agnostics who take such an entity as being unknowable. For myself I tend to fluctuate between atheism and agnosticism depending on the specifics put forward because depending on how God is conceived determines its coherence.


Is God possible?
When it comes to the conception of God as being omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, the existence of such a concept is seen to be incompatible with the existence of evil. Such a conception of God can be ruled out, and indeed much time and effort has gone into addressing this concern. The problem of evil is justification for being a strong atheist, at least in respect to conceptions of God that involved absolute power and absolute goodness.

Likewise other traits are problematic. To be both omnipotent and omniscient brings contradictions (can God act in such a way that even he won't know about?), as does the trait of omnipotence on its own (can God make a rock so heavy that he can't lift?). These kind of proofs though are at least to me unsatisfying because while they ground God in definition they don't capture the essence of what God is. Someone praying for God to cure their cancer doesn't concern themselves with the paradox of omnipotence, but curing cancer irrespective of limits to such traits is something God is meant to be able to do.

Then there's the problem of the supernatural. Can something supernatural act within the natural world? If something is acting in the natural world what stops it being natural itself? Can something simultaneously be in and outside of time? Can something outside of time experience or be said to have a thought? Such problems would make some conceptions of God impossible too, again grounds for strong atheism.


Is God plausible?
While some conceptions of God can be ruled out a priori and thus we have justification for strong atheism, this doesn't cover the range of different conceptions that could be reasonably called God. Perhaps while not impossible, there's good reason as to why they aren't there.

A weak atheist could state that there's no good evidence for God. While absence of evidence doesn't make evidence of absence, the lack of any good instances of observed intervention count against an interventionist deity. An undetected and undetectable deity is indistinguishable from there being no deity at all. Claims are often made, sometimes miraculous in nature, but these claims have to be put into context of those who claim alien abduction and those who fake bleeding statues and the fallibility of human memory. The reliability of the testimony has to be weighed against the possibility of false testimony. This is the problem of miracles.

A weak atheist could also state the problem of design. While it is said design requires a designer, any intelligent design we know (a pocket-watch for example) comes not ex nihilo but from a complicated designer. The ability to make a watch is something that has evolution both biologically and culturally to allow for such design. "Who designed the designer?" isn't just a witty retort, it's highlighting that a designer doesn't solve the problem of complexity that its being used to explain in the first place.

A weak atheist could also state the problem of physical minds. As far as empirical inquiry into the nature of the world, the evidence clearly points towards mind being an emergent property of physical forces. Altering the brain alters conscious experience. Damaging the brain affects cognition. This leads to problems for the nature of God as well as notions like a soul or an afterlife that are tightly-coupled with some concepts of God.

A weak atheist could also state the burden of proof. While an atheist cannot disprove God they cannot disprove Thor or Ra. Nor could they disprove Santa for that matter, or an alleged china teapot orbiting between Earth and Mars too small to be detected by any instrument. The burden of proof is on the one making the existential claim, because there's an infinite number of things that cannot be demonstrated. A weak atheist would be justified in stating the absence of a good case for God is a good case for atheism.


Is God necessary?
Despite problems associated with concepts of God, there are those who say that it doesn't matter about the problems associated with God or how unlikely it is because God is necessary.

The most common of these is the first cause argument, that natural causes cannot account for existence itself. The notion of a prime mover went out the window with the notion of a clockwork universe, with notions like the arrow of time and causality probabilistic rather than definite. And even if the argument did hold it is at best an argument for deism, but the question of if a natural cause requires a supernatural one, does a supernatural cause require a supersupernatural one?

While the teleological argument is in occasional use for life itself, it is commonly found today in the cosmological constants. In essence, the universe is fine-tuned for life because if some of the variables are off by only an a fraction then life as we know it wouldn't exist. While whether there are any fine-tuned variables is a debate for physicists there's a more fundamental problem with this reasoning. There's no reason to assume that life, and more specifically us, is the focal point for the laws of physics. Evolutionarily so much owed to our existence is a product of contingency that it makes no sense to privilege us more than any other life-form.

The argument from morality is another necessity that could be said to be only the product of a divine being. The most basic objection to this is that evidentially we can see degrees of what we could consider morality in other animals. Morality, evidentially, clearly is an evolved trait and requires no further explanation.

The transcendental argument argues that for absolutes there needs to be an absolute mind. 2+2=4 because God holds it to be true is one such transcendental argument. But this argument holds 2+2=4 could just as easily be true as 2+2=231214 2+2=white. It makes absolutes arbitrary, and if by their nature universal then why bother posit a deity to explain it in the first place?


Is God explainable?
While there are many things wrong with the concept of God, there's something to be said for the cultural and psychological factors that enable belief in the first place.

The first challenge to God is that it's just the construct of our culture. The reason that we're asked about the Christian conception is that we've grown up in a predominantly Christian society. Instead of being asked about the historicity of Muhammad ascending to heaven on a winged horse, we are told about the historicity of Jesus conquering death. No dining in Valhalla for us in the modern western world or breaking the cycle of Samsara, just eternal punishment or reward because of the sacrifice of the Godman on the cross. Furthermore that construction has changed throughout history, the Old Testament has God fighting battles while these days God shows Himself by burning the image of Mary into a grilled cheese sandwich.

But what accounts for the belief itself? We have evolved certain ways of thinking. We are intuitive physicists, intuitive biologists and intuitive psychologists. These processes are important as they allow us to distinguish between different interactions. We are wired for agency and in particular human agency. Even seeing design is something intuitive for a lot of people.

In modern times we have seen the birth of religions, Mormonism is less than a couple of centuries old while Scientology is approaching its 60th birthday. Then there's the New Age movement where not only are there claims of extraordinary powers but personal belief in possessing them. Alien abductions, conspiracy theories like 9/11 being an inside job or the staging of a moon landing, these are part of our culture despite their respective implausibility. New beliefs in crazy unsupportable things arise all the time and some even gather significant support even though there's no good reason for it to do so. In this respect, explaining God belief is just one of the many weird things that permeates in our species without good reason.

Of course being able to explain the cultural phenomenon doesn't mean the phenomenon doesn't exist, but what it does do is take away the sense that the fact that it's so pervasive in and of itself dictates further insight.


Conclusion
The position of atheism is justified for a number of reasons. That there are no good reasons for God is sufficient grounds for weak atheism, and that there are good reasons against thinking that such a construct is likely if it's even possible. Arguments for the necessity of God don't make such a case and sometimes are downright absurd, and the case is made even worse as God is perfectly explainable as a personal and cultural construct without any need for there actually being such an entity. The case for atheism is very solid, and should give any theist pause for thought. The notion that we should all be agnostic in the weak sense seeks to neglect what is already known on the subject, taking one's personal ignorance and projecting it onto people at large.

Concern-Troll Agnostic

Why atheism and not agnosticism? Such a question can provoke heated discussion among the non-believers. It seems that believers too try to weigh into the argument, selling atheism as unsound where agnosticism is the more prudent position. "The Great Agnostic" Robert G. Ingersoll would claim that atheism and agnosticism are one and the same, Bertrand Russell would distinguish between the terms depending upon his audience, and even Dawkins describes himself as an agnostic in the same way he's agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden.

The point being that whether atheism or agnosticism applies, the argument is drawn over whether one should ever use the word atheist. Now I'm perfectly happy to use the word even if I find it lacking. It's useful enough to get my point across and it is the closest word that sums up my position regarding the supernatural which would be understood by as many as possible.

But to use the word is to invoke claims of unreason; that it goes too far, that one is close minded, that one hasn't considered the possibilities, etc. Whether it is just or unjust criticism, it seems that for many there is an importance in refraining from declaring atheism and being part of the lesser agnosticism (depending on your definition of agnosticism). The two main challenges I see I present below.

The nebulous god
The first challenger is the liberal theist. Well I say liberal when I really mean the argument for God comes in an incredibly liberal form. It's correlated with the Abrahamic deity by name alone, but its form is so nebulous one wonders whether it could be called god at all.

Yet this is the god put forth and challenged, how could anyone deny such an entity? Well we can't, bring the term to such an abstract and it becomes meaningless. Such an entity is insoluble, an abstract that is beyond all knowledge and indeed possible knowledge. I can understand why Shermer uses agnostic in the Huxleyian sense, it's impossible to speak in anything but strong agnosticism when comprehension is beyond human understanding by very definition!

Of course in that sense agnosticism is preferable. But this is not the deity being questioned. In our society, it's the Judeo-Christian construct of God, and it has definite attributes. The nebulous deity has taken form and its that form on which we're asked to commit ourselves to. Of course it doesn't have to be the Judeo-Christian deity, any gods in any culture have the same property of defining the insoluble.

And what reason is there for this? Are we actually observing such a force in nature and measuring its properties? No, such claims are reverential in nature, or philosophically-reasoned inferences. In short, it's completely indistinguishable from the imagined. The gambit of any theist is that while all other gods in all other cultures are products of deluded minds, their god truly revealed itself to its followers.

These revealed gods ultimately rest on an act of faith, and it's an act of faith that flies in the face of human psychology and sociology. How can it be that we are not projecting our agency detection software onto the universe? How can it be that one culture is right while all others are deluded when all are using the same brain? I see no reason to be agnostic towards any of these cultural gods because they all try to claim knowledge that is unobtainable. The nebulous god? Yes. Zeus? No.


Teapot agnostic
The other challenger is the agnostic atheist. And most of them are weak atheists, it's not that they are doubting theists. But for some the argument is that strict agnosticism in the non-Huxleyian sense should be maintained because we can't disprove that God exists. It seems that atheists could argue among themselves for hours over which word to use without getting anywhere, yet still have almost equal philosophical positions.

This is my defence of the use of the word atheist.

It seems there are many reasons to avoid the term itself; that in some places it is equivalent to baby rapist, that it is taken as an a priori dismissal of the possibility of gods, that it's constructed to be a world-view, that it takes an untenable position on the unknowable.

As linked above, I draw a parallel to what it means to be a non-astrologer. If someone asks me if I believe in astrology, i say no. I don't fall into a quasi-rant where I explain that while I can't disprove astrology I see no reason to believe that there's any correlation between the movement of the planets and stars to events of individuals and societies on this planet, let alone causation. I just say no, I don't believe in astrology. I have no reason to and the only reason I'm asked whether I do is because a portion of the population does.

So why can't it be the same when involving gods? Perhaps it's the supernatural component. So while astrology may be paranormal, the criticism of astrology can be done involving this reality. Thus I'm building up one huge straw man and making a categorical error. This falls back on the insolubility problem outlined above.

Even to take the most extreme definition of atheism: a denial of God, it doesn't mean that it falls into an a priori dismissal. It also doesn't mean that one isn't open to the possibility of there being god(s) as real entities. To use an example, take ghosts.

At one time I believed in ghosts, I thought they were real, that humans would linger on after death and be able to "haunt" people. And over time I ended up losing that belief, now I'm pretty sure that ghosts don't exist. Does this mean that I dismiss ghosts out of an a priori? No. Does it mean that I'm now fixed forever with a denial of something I can't disprove? Again, no. Show me strong evidence that ghosts do indeed exist and I'll change my mind.

Perhaps it would be best to be teapot agnostics, that is agnostic in only the sense that one can't disprove gods in the same sense that one can't disprove there's a teapot orbiting between Earth and Mars. This distinguishes it from the standard use of agnosticism which really boils down to doubtful theism, qualifying the use of the word in denial but of the greatest standard of disproof.

Atheism, I feel, has come to entail that very position. I'd say the bulk of atheists I've met would be teapot agnostics, not claiming to have disproved god but have no reason to believe in god beyond the futility of not being able to disprove the concept. They think the idea of gods silly, myth born out of human culture and thought processes, yet would not claim to know gods don't exist. This is the new atheism.

The F word

This is something that keeps coming up by theists who don't know better: atheism is a faith. Now given that faith is a virtue in theism, maybe a theist wouldn't be so quick to paint atheism with the same brush. Could it be that believing without evidence is no longer a good idea in this age of reason, so instead of abandoning faith they wish to paint non-believers with the same brush. The post-modern approach to philosophy. "I believe in something crazy, but it's fine because you do too." Now it must be recognised why this is such a poor argument, not only misrepresenting the atheist position, but incorrectly using the word faith.

Facts and faith
First and foremost it should be established that a theists believes in a personal deity. Atheism is the rejection of that belief, it's the "not belief". So there are two sides of the coin here: on one side a belief in God existence, on the other God's non-existence. So because a theist makes a leap of faith in the absence of evidence, surely an atheist does too right? Well, no. Faith is indeed belief in the absence of evidence, and there is as much evidence of God's existence as there is of God's non-existence. i.e. no evidence at all. But there is no evidence for Thor. Nor is there any evidence for Zeus. Nor Santa. Nor Ziltoid The Omniscient. Turns out there isn't any evidence for any supernatural entity at all. So is it a leap of faith not to believe in Ziltoid? This is where two fundamental laws in logic come in.

1. Positive claims require positive evidence
2. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

For the first point, it comes about because absence of evidence doesn't equate to evidence of absence. Yet the two look so strikingly similar that it's impossible to tell the difference. So taking a position of ambivalence and using coin flip logic will mean the existence for God will never drop below 0.5. But the same could be said of any deity, pantheon or paranormal entity. That's why the burden of proof is on the one making the claim. Right now we have knowledge of the natural world, the facts that we have gained through empirical observation. While our interpretation of those facts may not be perfect, they are are a gauge of how credulous subsequent ideas are. The further transposed from reality, the more evidence that is needed. So claiming the existence of something that goes against everything we know about reality or is not tied to the bounds of our reality requires some extraordinary evidence to support it.

So where does that leave atheism in the question of faith? Belief in it's most basic form is a binary option. Either you believe in a proposition or you don't. In that, atheism is simply a descriptor for someone who doesn't believe in God. God is the positive claim, atheism is the position of not being convinced by the proposition. Just as if we were in an Islamic country and Allah was the positive claim. Atheism is simply the position of being without faith. But while belief can be simply a matter of a binary decision, the unbelievable complexity of how and why people come to those beliefs and the ramifications for what they mean show that the question of belief and not belief is inadequate on it's own to explain that position.


Knowing the unknown
Agnosticism is not a state of of fence sitting between theism and atheism. It's another question entirely, it deals with the state of knowing. Now with this term the context of atheism can be defined. Since God is defined as supernatural and beyond our realm, that puts the question of God into a strong agnostic position. As natural creatures, we can't know the supernatural. Any attribution to God (omnipotence, omniscience, etc.) is just giving attributes to an unknown entity. There's no way we can know an entity that's beyond all human measure.

Though while theists state that God is this way, it's not entirely certain that many believe it. Otherwise, how would they come to know God at all? A theist god is an interventionist god, and this god would have to change the universe in order to perform. People attribute many events to this kind of god across many cultures. We call these miracles. A miracle would be great evidence for a god if there was one. This brings the discussion to weak agnosticism. In the face of no evidence at all, a position of weak agnosticism should preferred. But when something interacts with the natural world, then predictions become falsifiable.

So when people say that God answers prayers, and praying seems to have no effect, then that seems to indicate an absence. Likewise calling God all-loving in a world full of chaos and indiscriminate suffering would indicate that such a God isn't there. There's always the problem of evil, again indicating that a personal God cannot logically be given some of the parameters of this world. An all-powerful God can cause cancer to go into remission while it can't regenerate lost limbs? Even a salamander can do that. So this points to more and more the unlikelihood that such a God exists. Of course we can't say for sure that God doesn't exist, just that such a deity is incredibly unlikely.

A theist fires back that God is beyond all measure, but that only puts God into the realm of strong agnosticism again. To make God untestable is to make God unknowable, to make God unknowable means any attribution is nothing short of speculation. And with that comes the unlikely question: what does the word God mean anyway?


Who is this God guy, anyway
Now to explore one other area of non-belief: the position of ignositicism. This is a form of agnosticism that instead of answering the question in regards to belief, it's defers it for lack of clarity. So in effect, without having a coherent definition of the concept of God, asking "do you believe in God" is a meaningless question. It's a very pertinent point to make, that we can't be clear on what position to take without knowledge of what the concept even means. This is not to say that no position on God could ever be established. There are many who have defined coherent definitions of not only the entity called God but what role that God plays in the universe. On this grounds a decision can be made. I need not ask for a coherent definition of the Judeo-Christian God, it's quite clearly defined in the bible and by it's followers.

Consider the following quote by Carl Sagan:

The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.

This is the true nature of the question. What do we define God as? Do we take the personal deity of the bible? What about Thomas Jefferson's deistic view of God? Spinoza's pantheistic view? Is the term God a description of the limitations and laws to the universe as Sagan suggests? Or even further still, is God simply the transcendent nature of humanity? Certainly there is no universal meaning to the word, it's incredibly subjective and culture-specific. We can't answer a question of belief without anything to define it. So while for specific incarnations of the concept both a position of atheism and agnosticism can apply, for the term itself, there's no way to be able to answer that question in a meaningful way without a meaningful definition.