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If skepticism makes you an atheist

bpesta22

Cereal Killer
bpesta22
Joined
Jul 31, 2001
Messages
4,942
And if you're a true skeptic, there must be a willingness to change your mind about god if presented with new / proper evidence.

So, what type of new / proper evidence would be needed for you to abandon atheism?

The problem is that many of us likely require something extraordinary, like god calling our name, or curing an amputee, or making paris hilton a talented actress.

But, assuming a personal** god existed, I don't think it would owe us proof on demand. So, the "absence of extraordinary evidence" claim could neither be used to support our atheism nor make us feel warm n fuzzy about our skeptical willingness to change our mind if presented with proper evidence.

The argument then becomes: Unless there's some non-extraordinary / plausible scenario that would make us change our minds about god, we're no better than the fundie theist who won't change his/her mind about creationism (for example) even though tons of evidence against it exists.

So, we atheists are no better than fundies; perhaps even worse. We claim to be openminded, yet there's no realistic/non-extraordinary scenario which exists that would cause us to change our minds.

Are we hippocrates by claiming the open-minded high road, or is god's failure to cure amputees (or answer when called) compelling justification for labelling ourselves skeptics?

Can anyone think of a plausible scenario that if shown to be true would lead one to reject his / her atheism?

(**I don't think one can falsify deism, so I believe it's a potentially rational but empty world view-- beyond saying goddidit, deism to me offers nothing in the way of explanatory power),
 
Perhaps the inability to enumerate something that would cause me to believe is a symptom of the vacuity of theism and not of my closed-mindedness.

What, exactly, am I supposed to envision I might hypothetically be convinced exists?

Until you define what you want me to set an evidentiary threshhold for, you are asking me to enumerate a threshhold for every conceivable entity.
 
Why does the scenario have to be non-extraordinary to prove our open-mindedness? God is an extraordinary claim, and requires extraordinary proof.

IMO, this is more true today than it was centuries ago. Then, science had no explanation for numerous natural phenomena, and the existence of god(s) was the most rational explanation - or at least, a rational explanation. Now, with science having explained most of what was once attributed to god(s) (think thunder & lightning, the sun rising & setting, seasons, etc., etc.) there is no rational reason (redundancy?) to believe in god(s). Until there is some phenomenon that forces a supernatural explanation - and by definition, that would have to be an extraordinary phenomenon - there is no reason to move away from atheism.
 
bpesta22 said:
But, assuming a personal** god existed, I don't think it would owe us proof on demand...
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Fair 'nuff, but then:

The problem is that many of us likely require something extraordinary, like god ... curing an amputee,
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If we can make an amputee's life better with a high-tech prosthetic, but god refuses to do anything, because there's no burden of proof... well... seems rather pointless to bother with God. God should provide extraordinary evidence, or we are left acting exactly as if God did not exist.
 
bpesta22 said:
Can anyone think of a plausible scenario that if shown to be true would lead one to reject his / her atheism?
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If someone wins the JREF prize, yes, I will rethink my atheism in a personal god.

ETA. I missed this before I posted:
But, assuming a personal** god existed, I don't think it would owe us proof on demand.
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I don't agree with this, at least not on its face. Why would a personal god not owe us proof of his existence?
 
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What would get me to abandon my firm stance that there are no gods?

A god, any god at all, showing up, knocking on my door, and making a pitch for my worship in person, submiting to examinations and tests to verifiy its powers and manifestations of divinity which rigorously support those characteristics would convince me that either that god is real, or that it is a reasonable facisimilie.

However, none of this would convince me that the god is a moral and just being who I should worship.
 
zizzybaluba said:
Why would a personal god not owe us proof of his existence?
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Oh for the same reason that I don't owe you squat to prove that I've never been to China. I just don't care to, so there.

However, much like God, you can then decide not to care, in any way whatsoever, about Jimbo's non-trips to China.
 
geni said:
So a god not asking to be worshiped would not chnage your mind?
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Brian: I'm not the Messiah! Will you please listen? I am not the Messiah, do you understand? Honestly!
Girl: Only the true Messiah denies His divinity.
Brian: What? Well, what sort of chance does that give me? All right! I am the Messiah!
Followers: He is! He is the Messiah!
Brian: Now, puck off!
[silence]
Arthur: How shall we puck off, O Lord?
 
Jimbo07 said:
Oh for the same reason that I don't owe you squat to prove that I've never been to China. I just don't care to, so there.

However, much like God, you can then decide not to care, in any way whatsoever, about Jimbo's non-trips to China.
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I think that analogy fits for a non-personal, deist type god, but not for a personal one.
 
I've been atheist my whole life so I have many times been asked why I don't believe. Later, I learned that when asked, I would ask what is god? The answer is almost different every time and varies from god is love to god is an actual physical being who micromanages all of reality.

So if believers gave a consistent answer to the question "what is god" and if that answer was plausible then I would consider it.

Until then I consider the wide variety of ideas on what god is to be the best evidence against such a thing.
 
bpesta22 said:
And if you're a true skeptic, there must be a willingness to change your mind about god if presented with new / proper evidence.
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Well discussions about 'true skeptics' aside...

What it would take to convince anyone to believe in God could be anything. I could have a hallucination which affected me so profoundly that I suddenly starting believing. I could have a series of terrible events happen to me which my psychological makeup could only counter by developing a strong belief in a higher power and a sense of cosmic justice which my day to day life appeared to lack.
Could be anything. We can't really say anything logical or definitive as our perception and psychology means that we could perceive many things as 'proof' of God, correctly or incorrectly.

Can anyone think of a plausible scenario that if shown to be true would lead one to reject his / her atheism?
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How can we know if things are true? There are many disturbed people who have 'experienced' things they believe to be true every bit as much as I belioeve I am typing at my keyboard right now.

In essence - some people might be capable of ignoring the most incredible and seemingly divine experiences, others might see God in the tiniest and most mundane event.

But the Paris Hilton one seems most likely.
 
The christian god? Zeus?

Basically all I'd need is evidence that all the stuff in the bible, including the stuff that contradicts the other stuff, actually took place. That would certainly be an indicator that, at the very least, SOMETHING was up to no good. Maybe being beamed into some "white room" with a loud booming voice telling me the guy exists, then sending me back to my house which had been converted into a giant statue, would do the trick. In short, it's hard to say, but it could be done. Mind you, I'd only believe god exists at that point. I'd suddenly have something to aim a lot of rage at though.
 
Here's another thought: If a personal god exists, why couldn't (s)he just re-arrange my neurons so that I did believe?
 
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Of course first you'd have to accept that first premise, "if scepticism makes you an atheist." It's a big "if."

If there is a personal god, he might not owe us an explanation, but why should we owe him anything if he refuses to confirm his existence? What kind of relationship is that?

I don't think there's any problem, really. If there's a personal God who cares whether or not we are believers or atheists, he must know how to convince a mere mortal that he's real. It would seem a basic skill for any god worth his salt. If he cannot, he either doesn't exist, he's messing with us, or he's incompetent. Not much call for worship in any case. He suposedly gave us brains and the ability to use them, why should he require that we throw them out when dealing with him?
 
bpesta22 said:
And if you're a true skeptic, there must be a willingness to change your mind about god if presented with new / proper evidence.

So, what type of new / proper evidence would be needed for you to abandon atheism?

The problem is that many of us likely require something extraordinary, like god calling our name, or curing an amputee, or making paris hilton a talented actress.

But, assuming a personal** god existed, I don't think it would owe us proof on demand.
Click to expand...

So? Skepticism has never been billed as a guarantee of truthfulness.

So, the "absence of extraordinary evidence" claim could neither be used to support our atheism nor make us feel warm n fuzzy about our skeptical willingness to change our mind if presented with proper evidence.
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Certainly it could.

Suppose that your partner asks you to pick up some avocados for dinner. So you go to the local grocers, and they don't have any. So you go to another grocers, and they don't have any. After five hours and fifteen stores, someone tells you that there's been another E. coli scare and that avocados have been pulled off the market temporarily.

Are you justified in concluding that there aren't any avocados available? Perhaps not -- you didn't check every store in town. And you certainly didn't break into people's private houses and rummage their refrigerators. But you certainly did enough work that if they were there, you would have had a very good chance of finding them, and you found a compelling counter-argument to suggest that they weren't, in fact, available.

And I don't know about you, but I would feel pretty warm'n'fuzzy about my willingness to put in that much work on a wild goose chase.


The argument then becomes: Unless there's some non-extraordinary / plausible scenario that would make us change our minds about god, we're no better than the fundie theist who won't change his/her mind about creationism (for example) even though tons of evidence against it exists.

So, we atheists are no better than fundies; perhaps even worse. We claim to be openminded, yet there's no realistic/non-extraordinary scenario which exists that would cause us to change our minds.
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Well, yeah. That's because most of us have already taken the initiative and investigated all of the realistic scenarios, and there's not much left.

Let me continue the analogy. Is your sweetie the sort who expected you to go to every grocer in the city to find the avocados? Were you supposed to break into private houses? Were you supposed to fly to Mexico and pick some off the tree yourself? If someone said "oh, you just weren't open-minded, you didn't look in the right store" would you take them seriously? Would you go back to the same fifteen stores just in case you had been looking in the dairy case by mistake?

Are we hippocrates by claiming the open-minded high road, or is god's failure to cure amputees (or answer when called) compelling justification for labelling ourselves skeptics?
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God's failure to cure amputees by itself is not compelling justification for disbelief (which is different from skepticism). God's failure to cure amputees -- combined with God's explicit statement that he will cure amputees upon request (Matthew 7:7) -- can be taken as evidence for disbelief.

Multiply this single falsified claim for God by the several zillion other scenarios that have been tried and found wanting, and the evidence becomes more and more compelling as it mounts to justification.

(Oh, and by the way, the word is spelled "hypocrite." Hippocrates was an early Greek physician.)
 
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