I don’t know if I can convince anyone else that God exists but I think I can prove that atheism isn’t a tenable position. People may be atheistic in terms to the traditional Christian concept of God but it’s impossible to be truly atheistic. Here’s why.
First of all you’d have to know God doesn’t exist.
By definition an atheist has to know beyond a doubt that God does not exist. Aside from the point that you can’t prove an negative, to be an atheist you’d have to know everything. In other words you’d have to be able to search every corner of the universe and know (and be able to counter-prove) every possible argument in the support of the existence of God. That’s not an intellectually honest position to have. The possibility that God (or proof thereof) could be hidden in some remote corner of the galaxy is (as far fetched as it sounds) still a possibility.
Let’s say you did know everything.
Given that you have all knowledge and did know that there was not God in any place and there was no argument that could prove he existed, that would mean you were all-knowing. What is it that we call an all-knowing being again…? Oh that’s right…God. God, by definition, can’t be an atheist.
So the most intellectually honest position for a person that isn’t convinced of God but doesn’t know everything is agnosticism.
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Intellectual dishonesty is not something atheists would take too kindly. Their position is arrived at through research and scientific understanding. For example, evolution is a scientific fact. It is as real as the sun in the sky – whether faith believers choose to accept it or not. But, to respond to your specific argument; no, you are quite right – you can not prove with absolutely certain the non-existence of something. I can’t prove to you little green ferries dressed in bear suits aren’t eating the cheese in your fridge. But for obvious reason I go about my day not believing it. Nor do I believe in Santa, the tooth fairy, goblins, the Yowie, Zeus or the Man in the Moon. If we took your argument to its logical conclusion, I am intellectual dishonest about these things as well. And so would you be. You are then also compelled to agree that Hindus have a point and Allah could be sitting next to Jehovah on the big throne upstairs.
Comment by David January 23, 2008 @ 11:14 pmPoint taken. I should have more precisely worded my title. It’s more of an issue of definition than of intellectual dishonesty. More correctly – atheism , by definition is a conclusion that has to be come to by making large assumptions.
Maybe you have no scientific evidence by which to conclude that God exists. But that is far different than saying we have evidence by which we prove God doesn’t exist. That latter is atheism.
However you then took a large left turn going from evolution to fairies. The existence of fairies in my fridge requires no position to be taken. I don’t need to be a “a-faireist”. God’s existence (or lack thereof) effects our choices and thus requires our thought.
Comment by mootpoints January 23, 2008 @ 11:43 pmI’m guessing you’re a christian, but I could be wrong. But for the sake of argument, let’s picture a typical United States fundamentalist christian. One of the 80 million (give or take) that does not believe in evolution, and does believe that the earth is, roughly, 6500 years old.
They are absolutely convinced that buddist, hindus, muslims, scientologist, catholics, etc re all wrong. No “maybes”. Just wrong.
They are also convinced that THEY are 100% correct.
They believe that man walked with dinosaurs, that noah floated around the globe for 40 days with millions of animals sharing the boat, and some woman roughly 2000 years ago never had sex, but gave birth to a deity.
They “know” as strongly as you or I “know” that tomorrow morning the sun WILL rise in the east and tomorrow evening it will set in the west. There is no doubt in their minds that they are wrong, just as there is no doubt in my mind (and I assume yours) that the sun will in fact be in the sky tomorrow throughout the day (and yes, I know it could be cloudy where ever you are at, but just because a cloud stops you from seeing the sun, does not mean that it is not there).
In reality though there is a ridiculously small chance that the sun will not in fact rise tomorrow.
There is the chance that tonight while I sleep a meteor could crash into the earth stopping it’s rotation on it’s axis. If this happened, the “other” side of the earth would be in constant day time, and “this” side would be in constant night.
There is a chance that scientists have miscalculated the amount of nuclear fuel in the sun, and it could finish expending the last of it’s energy some time tonight. Once this happens, the nuclear reaction in it’s core will stop, it will cease to make any more light, and 8 minutes later the earth will get the last bit of sunlight ever.
I’m sure if I wanted to spend more time, I could come up with a few other “examples” to show that the sun might not rise tomorrow, but you get the idea (I hope).
Admittedly, the chances of these scenarios happening are infinitesimally small, but they do exist. There is no possible reason to expect them, to plan for them (at least not for another 5 billions years for the “running out of fuel” one), or to even take them seriously, even though they COULD happen.
From the perspective of an atheist (or at least in my perspective and that of many other atheists I know, I won’t presume to speak for all atheists), the possibility that god exists, is so remote as to be completely irrelevant in daily life, and can therefor be treated as if it is a 0% chance.
Comment by Rodibidably January 24, 2008 @ 2:25 amI just looked over your last reply again ,and this time caught that you said:
“God’s existence (or lack thereof) effects our choices and thus requires our thought.”
Why exactly must the existence of a “god” affect our choices?
Even something as seemingly religious as why people go to church (or synagogue, temple, buddist shrine, pray towards mecca a number of times a day, etc) really has absolutely nothing to do with whether god exists or not. They go because they believe “he” exists. They do not go because “he” actually does exist. If “his” existence dictated whether people will go to church or not, then EITHER everybody in the world would go (i.e. god exists) or NOBODY would go (i.e. atheists are correct).
If something that is SEEMINGLY 100% religious in nature has nothing to do with the actual existence of (or lack thereof) god, then why would ANY other choice we make be based on this.
Your choices may be based on YOUR PERSONAL belief in “god” or “allah” or “l ron hubbard” or whatever it may be, but the TRUTH of that belief is completely irrelevant.
Comment by Rodibidably January 24, 2008 @ 3:36 pmI want to address your response. I know I’m going to be busy through the weekend but I don’t want you to think that this conversation is unimportant. It’s very helpful to me. I’ll be back.
Comment by mootpoints January 24, 2008 @ 11:05 pmOne typo I noticed I made in my first post.
The line:
Comment by Rodibidably January 24, 2008 @ 11:22 pmThey “know” as strongly as you or I “know”…
Should read:
They “know” THESE THINGS as strongly as you or I “know”…
I wanted to invite you to post your reply to an open question to all believers
http://potomac9499.wordpress.com/2008/01/30/an-open-question-to-all-believers/
I am asking in all sincerity, because I do actually want to understand differing view points, and since you seem quite certain of your faith, I felt your input would be very relevant.
Comment by Rodibidably January 30, 2008 @ 1:55 pmI know that you have already given some comments on my own blog to my question of faith, but I am still curious of your response to my comments here.
I think we can agree that we both look at the same evidence for (or against) the existence of “god”, and based on this evidence, we have come to drastically different conclusions.
However you claim in this original post that to be an atheist is intellectually dishonest.
I think that my original replies here made at least a few valid points and I am curious how somebody who so stringently believes that my position can not be defended honestly, responds to those points.
I also took issue with your comment that “god’s existence affects our choices”, and layed out a simple, yet I believe effective, counter argument for this position, which I want to see your reasoning behind your original statement.
I do honestly want to hear your counter arguments in defense of these comments, as I think this type of debate helps both sides come to a better understanding of each other.
Comment by Rodibidably February 15, 2008 @ 2:48 amWell, let me re-hash the discussion up to this point. if I understand the definition of atheism correctly it means one knows that there is no God. It can’t quite mean that we’re pretty sure there is no God, we already have a word for that – Agnostic.
So – my point is – the standard of definition one must meet to become an atheist is too high. One must know there is no God. That’s a standard that can’t be reached. No one can know something doesn’t exist. (i.e. – you can’t prove a negative.)
So what I’m saying is that, using the definition of the word athiest, no one really can be one. At best one can be a “strong” agnostic.
Now this is where we diverged before. The point is made that we can be reasonably sure fairies don’t come to life in our refrigerator when we close the door. We can be be reasonably sure that doesn’t happen but we can’t know.
That’s true. But fairies in my fridge isn’t a position I’m required to think about and come to an intellectual conclusion. The subject of the existence of God evidently is in that we’ve invented a word to describe non-belief.
So my point is ultimately that we can, at best, be agnostics.
So far I’m simply re-hashing my earlier posts.
Now we have the issue of, from the atheist’s perspective, that the chance God exists is so small that it is irrelevant.
I said earlier that the evidence can sometimes lead us to different conclusions. What is the evidence that has lead you to the conclusion you’ve reached?
My question is (and I’m more or less thinking as I go) why do you think the possibility that God exists is so small? What definition of God are you using and what criteria is the concept of God not living up to?
I have to say I really appreciate this discussion. It seems that arguments about God or atheism tends to be more more angry and vitriolic than it needs to be. I think humans can discuss polarizing issues and even disagree in a respectful manner. I really appreciate the tone of this dialogue. Thanks.
Comment by mootpoints February 15, 2008 @ 6:46 pmNot sure which post you want to continue this discussion on, but since I noticed it on my blog first and replied there already, I don’t think I need to copy the reply here as well, but I am willing to continue on either venue, since the topic of each of the original posts are closely related.
Comment by Rodibidably February 17, 2008 @ 8:51 pm