The Case for Atheism

[Esquilax]

It would be helpful to clarify what you mean by evidence. If your criterion for evidence is that it is possible to test in the lab whether God exists - then you're right there is no evidence of God's existence. But I think you would need to justify why you think only knowledge that can be obtained by using scientific methods is valid. How would you go about testing that assumption?

I'm not a scientist, but my criteria for evidence is a: a detectable effect that is preferably replicable, for which b: we can determine a cause. I don't think these are crazy strict criteria: without detectability there's nothing to test, and without a determination of a cause there's no reason to attribute this effect to any one thing in particular.

I don't require laboratory conditions for evidence, but I do require something, which is often a bridge too far for those willing to make supernatural claims.

I think here you're trying to use the analogy of naturalism as null hypothesis. So under this argument your claiming its rational and evidence based to hold to naturalism until there is sufficient evidence for theism that would require naturalism to be rejected.

It's a pretty simple position: don't consider supernatural explanations for things unless there's a reason to consider supernatural explanations for things. Is it that controversial a position that one should expect the mundane before they consider the exceptional?

Superficially this sounds neutral but there's a couple of limitations:
1) As scientific methods are not able to examine the existence of God - by definition you've fixed it that the null hypothesis (naturalism) will be accepted. Which is not much different from saying you presume naturalism without any evidence. Because any evidence that could be used to reject the null hypothesis has been ruled out in advance.

Whoa, whoa! Hold on there, you've made a leap that I don't accept. Scientific methods are not able to examine the existence of god? How did you determine that? There's so many problems with this, but I can boil it down to two main ones: first of all, if god has any effect on physical reality then those effects can be tested the same as any other, and the causes of those effects eventually determined. If he doesn't affect reality, then how is one supposed to detect him? Second of all, all those believers who claim personal experiences with god are themselves claiming to be god detectors, giving us an automatic sample size and something to test.

Now, you might be inclined to argue that when or if god does affect reality, he does so through means that are indistinguishable from natural ones, but that just demonstrates the thing I find most troublesome about this whole claim you're making. You're proposing a god that you cannot test, and who interacts with the only world we can observe in ways that are indistinguishable from if he were not to interact with it at all... and then you try to somehow make it our problem that your god is unfalsifiable. It's insane: the fact that you believe in a god that doesn't offer evidence for his existence doesn't mean we possess unfair presuppositions, it just means that we have no reason to believe your god exists. If you have some reason to believe, it shouldn't be hard to explain that, but so far all you've done is blindfire about presuppositions.

But to be clear, you have the burden of proof here. It's not up to us to disprove any claim you care to make, and we're not being unfair by not accepting your claims just because you make them. Stop trying to make an end run around just showing the things you think are true, and just present your evidence. If it's not sufficient... again, how is that our problem?

2) This idea of null hypothesis testing is actually quite an outdated view of how to interpret scientific evidence. The limitations of this general approach have been outlined in the literature for over 30 years.

Yes null hypothesis testing is still used in science but there is clearly a move away from this to a more helpful approach of focusing on estimation and precision. That is, what's the strength of the evidence that this is a true explanation and how precise can I be in drawing that conclusion. Where this is the case we need to do that for both naturalist and theist views of the world.

Would you agree that thus far naturalistic explanations have a far greater track record of proven results than supernatural ones? Furthermore, I'm happy to accept things based on your idea there, but that raises a much more important question: what evidence for the supernatural have we ever had?

There's also evidence to suggest the way we interpret data is more closer to Bayesian than Frequentist approaches. In the Bayesian approach, you begin with a prior belief before looking at the evidence (e.g. presuming naturalism or theism), you then update this belief with the data to come to a posterior belief.

I think this is more of a realistic explanation of how theists and atheists interpret data about the world. When examining evidence for the existence of God, if you presume only methods that could produce naturalist explanations are permissible, you're by default basing your conclusions on your prior beliefs.

And I've told you that I don't presume naturalistic methods are the only ones that work. But someone would need to propose another method and demonstrate that it's effective at doing what it purports to do before I'll start using it: I don't think "what is it?" and "does it work?" are an insanely high barrier of entry for new epistemological tools.

I even asked you above what evidence for the supernatural do we have: I'm not assuming anything, but I need something to go off of before I just start floating in a world of magic and wonder.

I think this is again a conflation of naturalism with empiricism. You're saying use of the scientific method has been really effective in explaining the world. I agree it has -but I disagree that requires me to be a naturalist. Also I disagree that this implies the only valid way to evaluate any question is by using scientific methods.

I didn't say it was the only way. But wouldn't you agree that if I have something with a proven track record of success on one hand, and an unproven thing on the other that might not even exist, that it would be smarter to start with the former? Again, I'm happy to consider supernatural explanations when I have reason to, I just find it bizarre that, instead of presenting reasons, you're just going on about how we're all biased against the reasons you haven't presented because we won't leap to the conclusion you want without those reasons. You're really putting the cart before the horse here, and in this case there might not even be a cart.

One of Stimbo's responses has already explained this. Gravity is observable, repeatable etc in the material world. Scientific methods are therefore the appropriate method of evaluating this concept. God is immaterial therefore requiring the use of methods designed to understand the natural world aren't appropriate for determining evidence for the existence of God.

If god is immaterial then how can you even detect it in the first place? And what methods would you propose we use to investigate it?

See that? For a person that "presumes naturalism" I sure as hell did just immediately start asking you investigative questions rather than just dismissing you out of hand, didn't I?