The Case for Atheism

[Esquilax]

Thanks for the thoughtful responses.

I think the main point of disagreement between us remains that you still think I have the burden of proof.

You do. Ontologically positive claims, such as "there exists at least one supernatural phenomenon," and "god is immaterial," carry with them burdens of proof of varying size and scope, depending on the claim.

Your main argument I think is that naturalism is inherently more plausible and therefore the default rational worldview for humanity which ought only to be abandoned with strong evidence for the alternative.

Not at all. In fact, I don't think anyone here has said anything of the sort. What we have told you is that natural phenomena have the advantage of being detectable by everyone, and have a long track record of success when it comes to searching for the solutions to unanswered questions. We know that the natural world is there, which instantly makes it more probable an answer than a supernatural one that isn't detectable. After all, if something isn't detectable how does one know it exists?

That's not to say supernature is excluded, even as the answer we first investigate in a given issue, just that without the means to detect that it's there... we have no means to detect that it's there. In that case, its existence is indistinguishable from its non-existence.

But I don’t think you’ve really shown why that’s the case. To convince someone like me who doesn’t share that assumption you’d have to show why it’s more plausible.

Natural world= Obviously extant.

Supernatural world= Only ever revealed through conflicting subjective accounts with no verifiable accuracy nor objectively measurable phenomena.

That's why the natural is more plausible. Always.

We all have worldviews – it’s more or less impossible to live our lives without having some basic assumptions about the world we live in. Clearly if naturalism is true this has different implications to our lives than if theism is true. You’re clearly a thoughtful person, so it’s hard for me to understand why you would assume your worldview to be true until someone proves otherwise. Isn’t that the essence of your burden of proof argument?

Do you spend your entire life considering the infinity of other gods, supernatural entities and phenomena that might be affecting your day to day life? Probably not, right? You'd never get anything done if you did. Isn't that assuming your worldview is true until proven otherwise?

Or do you realize, with every other competing claim that presents no evidence, that a lack of evidence means you don't need to worry about that claim until such time as evidence is presented?

I'm honestly not sure why it's so hard for you to understand how "I shouldn't believe in something until I have a reason to believe in it," is a rational position to take.

Real quick: there is a demon constantly behind you, wherever you go, nibbling on your aura. Do you believe me? If not, why are you just assuming your demon-less worldview is true until someone proves otherwise?

I’ve argued from a Bayesian perspective, interpretation of evidence involves our prior beliefs about the world reconsidered and updated in the light of empirical evidence. Since we both hold prior beliefs isn’t the rational thing to do to examine what explanation of the world most plausibly fits the world? Rather than just assume one’s right until proved wrong by the other.

Why do you assume we're not doing that? The supernatural is extremely implausible in the light of the current evidence. And I can't help but notice your religious views are labeled as "Christian": Isn't that assuming one worldview is right until it's proven wrong by the other?

How would you determine the cause of a being who doesn't have a cause? Its by definition impossible.

Well, I was more talking about the purported effects god has on the world, but the other thing that comes to mind is, how did you determine that god doesn't have a cause?

Again this reflects your presupposition that the naturalist worldview is inherently more plausible than the theist one. Why is a naturalist view more mundane - most cultures in the world would consider it less plausible. I don't really see any evidence for this claim - sure as a believer in naturalism I understand why you would hold that view. But as a Christian I think its more plausible that the world can be explained using theist assumptions.

As I've said, the natural world has the benefit of being detectable immediately. We know that it exists, whereas we don't know that the supernatural exists. That's a leg up, in terms of plausibility.

And again, you keep talking about assumptions, but why assume anything at all? I don't intend to be dragged down into the presuppositional mud with you; I'll wait for evidence of a thing. The one reason I'm more inclined to go with naturalistic explanations is because we at least have evidence that the natural world exists.

Ok I can understand how that could be misinterpreted. My argument is that its not possible to design a study that could conclusively show theism or naturalism are the most valid explanations for the world. But I agree you can use a combination of scientific and philosophical methods to examine the extent that naturalist and theist assumptions reflect the world.

So far, no investigation of theistic assumptions has led to any positive result, ever. Just saying.

As a Christian my view is that not that we detect God - how could we if he's distinct from the material world we live in- its primarily that he makes himself known. One way that he does that is become human and reveal what God is like. He justifies these claims by dying and being raised from the dead - with 500 witnesses to confirm this.

Oh, how disappointing.

So, you're saying that god shows himself to us, because a book for which we cannot verify the historicity thereof, that makes numerous demonstrably false claims, and further miraculous claims for which there is no evidence, asserts with no evidence that 500 people saw another man for whom we have no evidence rise from the dead, an event for which we have, you guessed it, no evidence.

I wrote a scene for a story of mine a few months back, where a thousand people witnessed an auction. Does that make it true? The mere assertion that X number of people saw a thing doesn't mean that assertion is true, especially when we can find no contemporary evidence that the man they purportedly saw even existed, let alone that he could actually accomplish the things he supposedly did. You're going to have to do much, much better than this: this claim is only persuasive if you already believe it before hearing it!

Does this form of evidence fit within your admission criteria for evidence for the existence of God?

No, why on earth would it? Why would anyone take "an old book says a lot of people saw an event that's also in that old book only," seriously?

Secondarily, I would say something like the big bang combined with Kalam/Cosmological argument suggests the theist worldview is more plausible than naturalism. Sure there are counter arguments such as we'll find naturalistic explanations in the future - but on balance theism is the more plausible.

The Kalam Cosmological argument begins with a premise that is both unsupported and a fallacy of composition, continues into a second factually incorrect premise (the universe in its current state may have had a cause, but there's no indication that it needed one before that, or even if "before" makes sense in a point before spacetime) and follows through with a non-sequitur conclusion (not all causes are gods) that only gets you to a deistic god at best, and not your christian one, even if we were to accept the premises. It is not a compelling argument for anything other than William Lane Craig's willingness to play word games.

Could also look at the fine tuning argument which again combines evidence from physics and chemistry with philosophical argument. Once more I think this suggests naturalism is very unlikely. You could counter with a infinite worlds argument, but as its pretty much untestable and hence no empirical evidence for it, once more I'd still conclude naturalism is very unlikely.

I don't need to counter with the multiverse, I simply have to point out that "fine tuning" is only a thing that matters if you presuppose that the universe as it is counts as a "success" state, from which all others are "failure" states. No matter how implausible a universe with life in it is, that implausibility is only significant if one can demonstrate that something was trying to reach this particular model and could have failed. You have to assume the conclusion for the argument to even be a thing.

There's lots of other combinations of empirical evidence and philosophical arguments (e.g. transcendental argument such as Bahnsen vs Stein debate, Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism) which also suggest theism is a more likely explanation of the universe.

The transcendental argument's first premise is an unsupported assertion which I reject out of hand, and Plantinga's nonsense conflates methodological naturalism and metaphysical naturalism just as much as you do.

I'm without doubt you could come back with responses to each of these arguments. None ultimately show naturalism to be false but on balance taking these arguments and empirical observations cumulatively I think its unlikely naturalism is a valid explanation of the universe. Do you disagree?

I do disagree: every argument you posed there features no evidence and relies on unjustified assertions about the nature of the universe that they don't even attempt to support.

So when I look at the empirical evidence I think my theist assumptions better explain the world than naturalist assumptions.

How very sad for you.

I think I'm actually arguing something quite similar to your justification for naturalism. I look at the world around me and the empirical evidence about the universe and theism makes more sense to me. I think fine tuning and the cosmological argument make it at least pretty unlikely that naturalism is true.

Neither of those arguments get to "christian god" even if they were true, and I've shown that they're not. They're just random assertions. Why would I take them seriously at all?

If you take all the other philosophical argument for God's existence cumulatively - naturalism in my opinion is very unlikely.

Are any of them less fallacious than the ones you've presented so far?

Jesus becoming a man and providing evidence such as the resurrection to me is strong evidence that God exists.

How do you intend to demonstrate that Jesus even existed, let alone that he was divine in nature?

We're both making claims. I'm claiming a theist foundation for the universe your claiming a naturalist one. Why from your perspective is it not insane to not provide evidence for your naturalist claims?

Because the only claim I'm making is "have non-fallacious reasons for the things you believe." If any of your arguments above were, you know, functional, I would have accepted them. How is that assuming naturalism?

No I wouldn't conceed that naturalism has a greater track record. As far as I can see the only evidence you've cited for naturalism is your belief there's no evidence for the existence of God. I would disagree, and in addition I think there's lots of reasons I've cited above why I think naturalism is unlikely to be true.

So you don't agree that every phenomena that used to be attributed to god in the past later turned out to have a natural cause? They used to say god caused rainbows, are you saying that didn't turn out to be light refraction off water molecules? God was the cause of lightning, are you saying that didn't turn out to be standard, mundane electrical discharge?

Name me one phenomena in the world that, when we discovered the cause for it, turned out to be god.

Again this is still trying to switch the burden of proof. You'll continue to intrepret the world from a naturalist worldview until someone will show you different. But why do you hold that worldview in the first place? Isn't that a fair question?

Look, I'm starting to get tired of this rude insistence you have. You don't get to jump into my head and tell me what I believe and think, okay? If I say I don't assume naturalism is true, you have absolutely no basis to be gainsaying me on that. Cut it out.

I asked the same and haven't yet had a response other than the burden of proof argument which I don't think is valid.

You don't think it's valid because you can't shoulder it. The only one assuming anything around here is you, and the fact that you're just sitting here and attempting to redefine everyone else's positions as being as poorly justified as your own, instead of just justifying your own, speaks volumes about the kinds of beliefs that you have.

Hold on a minute, where's your proven track record of success that naturalism is a valid way of using the universe. Isn't your stated basis for naturalism that its the default for humanity? That isn't particularly persuasive evidence in my opinion.

The cause for every phenomena that we have ever discovered has turned out to be natural, and not supernatural. That is testament to the successes of methodological naturalism, after how many centuries of human inquiry.

That's a great question, how I as a Christian evaluate whether God exists is to examine the evidence he has provided about his existence.

Primarily from a Christian perspective we evaluate the evidence that God provides by revealing himself in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Hate to pull the brakes on the Christ-train, but we have no contemporary evidence that the man even existed. That doesn't bode well for the claims that he was divine, which have even less evidence than that, but which are much more extraordinary claims.

Secondarily you can do that by looking at the world - this includes a combination of empirical methods to study the universe, philosophy, and whether we like or not we interpret that evidence within our presuppositions. I think we differ in our evaluation of the evidence - I think from fine tuning, cosmological argument, transcendental argument, evolutionary argument against naturalism etc that data about the world is more consistent with my Christian worldview than a naturalist worldview.

I think you really, really need to think hard about those arguments, dude, because calling them arguments is unfair to real argumentation. What they really are is a bunch of assertions.

I don't take random assertions seriously, and I wonder why you do.