Ask a Radical Atheist

[GreyICE]

So when the deist argument is phrased as "Suppose God created the universe then had nothing more to do with it", I'm forced to ask "Suppose what created the universe then had nothing more to do with it?"

I'm not sure that argument is entirely fair to the Deists. Assuming you have an entity who can create universes, influencing things that happen 14 or 15 billion years down the line during creation doesn't seem much more incredible than the premise.

Of course this argument quickly becomes moot (predestination versus free will) so screw it, it doesn't matter.

I was wondering if we can come up with a hypothetical description of God. I mean if we can't, then there's a semantical problem with the concept, and we can't even discuss it. I'll put forward: "Can accomplish anything within the universe, and knows everything that occurs within its bounds (all-powerful and all-knowing)"

 

[CFLarsen]

Love certainly exists. Its effects are seen all the time.

It's hard to say if beauty exists, but the experience of beauty certainly does. (I'm fascinated, for instance, by why it is that we find our world beautiful, and if there could be creatures out there on some world who look out every day and think, "Geez, what an ugly universe".)

Hope also certainly exists.

Truth is an alignment of thought and reality.

Does the feeling/experience of a god exist? Does the hope of a god exist? Do the effects of the feeling of a god exist?

See where I'm going?

 

[Piggy]

Piggy:
An analogy with other intelligent life - there is no evidence of an alien civilization, so far, but there are no rules (that we know of) expressly forbidding them, as such.

There is no evidence of it, but it is entirely consistent with what we know of the universe.

This makes it what I call an "anchored" notion. Black holes are a good example. Before we had any means of detecting them, we had reason to believe they might be real, because what we knew of the world pointed to their potential existence.

Another example I've used before is the "7 bolt", a hypothetical piece of space junk, a bolt with a number engraved on it beginning with the digit 7, orbiting the earth. We have no reason to think this thing does exist, but it is anchored in the realm of the possible.

God is an unanchored concept. Its origins are myth and superstition and the patterns of our brains, and any reason we ever had for believing it might be true has been supplanted by a successful explanatory model of the world which does not include the supernatural.

That is why modern god-hypotheses can only avoid contradiction with known fact by either removing all qualities from God, relegating God to an entirely ad hoc and imaginary real which exists only for the purpose of housing him (and in which true and untrue cannot be distinguished), or by defining God as something which no one has ever thought God to be.

You've said that the fuzzy/contradictory/completely imaginary definitions are part of your conclusion that something cannot exist. You've said that a self-contradictory claim is a "no-claim." How are you able to rule that some kind of "great deceiver" (ugh, and I know who that sounds like) cannot exist? How can you determine that a simulation stack cannot exist (beyond Paul Davies's assertion, to which I agree, that the idea is useless). Do you not see a difference between "useless" and "cannot?"

ETA: To simplify my garble into one question:

Do you equate useless ideas with the subjects of useless ideas being forbidden?

I do think those "Matrix scenarios" are irrelevant.

These also are purely imaginary and unanchored.

What's worse, they take us into a realm where the very terms "real" and "unreal", "true" and "false", "exist" and "not exist" become indistinguishable.

In other words, God only becomes possible if we enter a purely speculative realm where the very notion of "exist" and "not exist" may not be distinguished.

If we must go to a realm where "real" and "not real" cannot be distinguished in order for God to be real, then God cannot be meaningfully said to be real. God can only be real if "real" and "unreal" become functionally equivalent, which is nonsense.

 

[GreyICE]

Does the feeling/experience of a god exist? Does the hope of a god exist? Do the effects of the feeling of a god exist?

See where I'm going?

Sure. Similarly, when you're hearing voices, you are actually hearing those voices, if you're seeing the wall moving and sound (probably because of acid) you're seeing that. No one has ever claimed that love increases your chance of winning the lottery, or does anything other than alter the perceptions of those in love.

I'd say that no atheist would question that people can feel a desire to experience something greater than themselves, or hope to live on after death, or feel like someone is guiding their actions. Just when you start hypothesizing a God whose going around smiting people and flooding the continent and dropping big rocks with writing on them around, you have a problem (the same way you have a problem if you think nothing bad can happen if you're in love).

 

[Piggy]

I think a reasonable alteration would be to say that there is no god for all supernatural values of "god".

But this does not save God, because definitions which are not supernatural are either humpty-dumptyisms or are entirely equivalent to not-God (i.e. the mere physical universe).

And again, if God can only be real if we posit conditions in which God is not distinguishable from not-God, then God cannot be said meaningfully to exist.

 

[CFLarsen]

or by defining God as something which no one has ever thought God to be.

Yes, "God only knows". But you are now using a religious argument.

If we must go to a realm where "real" and "not real" cannot be distinguished in order for God to be real, then God cannot be meaningfully said to be real. God can only be real if "real" and "unreal" become functionally equivalent, which is nonsense.

What if God was something that we simply haven't been able to detect yet?

Think about X-rays. We had no idea that they existed, until they were detected. Couldn't the same be said for god?

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

... someone who does not merely claim "I do not believe in God", but rather that there is, in fact, no God to believe in.

Which god? Are you claiming that every theist believe in the same god? if I say: "My god is the principle behind nature" does that makes me a believer in god?

Or do you believe that you have to clearly state that because any kind of phrasing that involves god implies that you believe in the same god others believe?

Say, for instance, that I talk to a Mormon, and he states "I'm convinced about the existence of god". Does this predisposes him to believe than when others talk about god... they are "really" talking about his god?

(for me this is your posture, denying god is denying your gods, not every other possible god).

 

[Piggy]

"What would you do if God was proven to be real?"

What would you do if Santa Claus took you on a ride in his sleigh?

That question pre-supposes the possible existence of God rather than examining the question of whether God may possibly exist.

or perhaps rather expressed as "How would you react to the insight that the whole lot of the Bibel, even the parts that condradict *everything*, was scientifically proven to be a completely accurate description of our reality?"

What would you do if the story of Peter Rabbit were scientifically proven to be historical?

Again, not a serious question, to my mind.

 

[CFLarsen]

Sure. Similarly, when you're hearing voices, you are actually hearing those voices, if you're seeing the wall moving and sound (probably because of acid) you're seeing that. No one has ever claimed that love increases your chance of winning the lottery, or does anything other than alter the perceptions of those in love.

Neither does a Deist god.

I'd say that no atheist would question that people can feel a desire to experience something greater than themselves, or hope to live on after death, or feel like someone is guiding their actions. Just when you start hypothesizing a God whose going around smiting people and flooding the continent and dropping big rocks with writing on them around, you have a problem (the same way you have a problem if you think nothing bad can happen if you're in love).

But in that case, it has qualities.

 

[Piggy]

You know: The God concept that is All-Powerful, All-KNowing, etc., etc.

How can you know such a God does not exist? What if it does, and it simply chose to not make you see it. Perhaps to test your faith, or the faith of others, who knows His will?! But, how do YOU know?!

Where would this all-knowing, all-powerful God be?

 

[Piggy]

Its obviously a hypothetical.

Okay, so lets move through the hypothetical.

Hypothetically, lets assume computing power continues to increase virtually indefinitely. Quantum computers, even more exotic technologies, larger sizes, organic computing, all seems likely in the very long run. Give it, say, 2 million years beyond the level we're at now. Might be less. At this point, computing power is so immense that a single computer can do all the operations that every computer on this planet has ever done in an eyeblink.

Okay, now what would 'people' do with that (and I use the term loosely, as it will probably be a little loose by then). Well, a lot of things, probably stuff we haven't even thought of, but probably something they do now - simulations. Only instead of Spore, their Spore makes anything we have look like a joke. A fully realized virtual universe, complete with virtual intelligences, and virtual reality.

It would probably be a moderate to large project, even then. Lets say, in the history of the species, they only make 100-200 of them, to play around with.

One real universe. 100-200 simulations. Chances are, we're components of one of those simulations. And the simulating computer has all the powers we assign to God - full control of the simulation, full knowledge of everything in the simulation, full presence in every part of the simulation.

Hence why I'm an agnostic atheist. I really, really hope that isn't what is actually happening. However, I just can't see a way to rule out it being a logical possibility.

That's humpty-dumptyism. If God is defined as potentially a computer program, then it's not God, or at least, it's a God which (again) is indistinguishable from not-God.

It's also an invocation of the Great Deceiver trope, which has problems I've mentioned above.

 

[Piggy]

Skeptics always open up for the possibility.

That is not true.

We don't need to be open to any "new evidence", for example, that the earth is actually shaped more like a frisbee than like a beach ball.

Some things we do know, and there ain't no going back.

 

[Piggy]

The only thing that still makes me lean more toward the agnostic side is the possibility that the concept of god could very well elude us, much like an ant will never be able to do math.

As a strong atheist, do you have that in mind?

This doesn't wash with me.

This argument essentially holds that an as yet undefined thing might be real, which is a non-claim.

 

[Jimbo07]

What's worse, they take us into a realm where the very terms "real" and "unreal", "true" and "false", "exist" and "not exist" become indistinguishable.

This isn't a bad answer, and I'm reasonably satisfied with it. It suggests that if I carry my argument much further, I'm going to have to argue strongly in favour of imaginary things.

I'm not sure what else I want to say yet, but for now I'm down to trying to distinguish fine points:

Is the phrase, "cannot be meaningfully said to exist," equivalent to, "cannot exist?"

The first seems to me to be saying that we cannot make a positive assertion, the second is a negtive assertion. Am I correct?

 

[Piggy]

I should have said, why does having a different neurology make schizophrenia real, but god just an idea?

Because schizophrenia is by definition a state of delusion. That's what it's supposed to be. To be real, a state of delusion must exist.

Bread, on the other hand, is not qualified by states of delusion. If I hallucinate that I'm seeing bread, that doesn't make bread real.

No valid definition of God (and I mean God itself, the thing people really truly believe in) posits is as mere delusion with no corresponding substance. The faithful believe God is real, not a figment of their imaginations.

So in the case of God, as with bread, we must distinguish between the idea of the thing, and the thing itself. The two are not equivalent.

 

[CFLarsen]

That is not true.

We don't need to be open to any "new evidence", for example, that the earth is actually shaped more like a frisbee than like a beach ball.

That would depend on how we measure it.

What shape is the Earth in the 4th dimension? The 5th, 6th, etc?

Some things we do know, and there ain't no going back.

Science as we know it today will never change?

What about evolution?

 

[Piggy]

But if it has no qualities, what's to accept?

Nothing. Which is precisely what I do accept.

 

[Piggy]

Does the feeling/experience of a god exist? Does the hope of a god exist? Do the effects of the feeling of a god exist?

See where I'm going?

Yes. Yes. Yes. No.

 

[Piggy]

Sorry to leave off here for the day, but it's 7:00 and I have to log out. See y'all tomorrow.

Didn't expect this much traffic here. I may not be able to keep up, but I'll try to get around to as many questions as I can.

And yeah, I know I violated my rule and responded to a couple of comments. I'll try to do better.

 

[Piscivore]

The faithful believe God is real, not a figment of their imaginations.

Actually, as a polypseudotheist, all of the many gods I honor are figments of my imagination.