The Case for Atheism

[Esquilax]

This is slightly jumping the gun I think we get to the discussion of how presuppositions relate to evidence further down.

You argued in your previous post you base your conclusions purely on the data. From this response you're now saying you have some assumptions but you're willing to revise these in the light of the evidence.

You say assumptions, I say observations, because the fact that the natural world exists, and the natural causes we've determined for events are a part of the data set. Those things are evidence, that we can factor into our rationales.

It's actually a little weird, to be told that my observation that the natural world exists is an assumption.

This is reasonable and I would say also reflects my position. The question which I think we will come to below is how informed your prior is (by which I mean how much more likely do you think your current position about the explanation of the world is than theism). That will determine how much your interpretations are impacted by your prior beliefs and how willing you would be to revise this belief.

But I don't have a current explanation of the world, beyond known scientific facts. I'm suspending my judgement pending the arrival of additional evidence. I mean, I know how the planet formed because our understanding of gravitational mechanics and so on have shown that. And I know how certain phenomena on this planet occur because our understanding of them is comprehensive. But as for universal origins, the evidence seems to point to a big bang, the point before which is simply a mystery.

There is no evidence that's particularly strong for what happened before the planck time, and so from that point I'm willing to simply step back and say I don't know. I have no position on universal origins, beyond that I don't find the arguments presented so far to be compelling. Theism/naturalism is not a binary; I don't believe any of the naturalistic explanations either.

Again, I think this jumps the gun - we're still at prior beliefs. Your assertion about the evidence requiring no gods - I think you need to define that more clearly.

Whether this is convincing or not depends very much on your prior belief.
Do you mean by this evidence about the world that can be interpreted as being consistent with a naturalist worldview regardless of whether it can also be interpreted as consistent with a theist worldview? If not please let me know - if this isn't what you mean then by all means ignore the argument below.

Well, what I mean is that the things that were once the work of the gods, in every case, have later turned out to have natural explanations. If you want to argue that those causes have a supernatural architect, or are caused by a supernatural agent working through natural means, well... I don't really have a way to detect if that's true, and so no reason to believe it. If it's the former, and you're arguing in terms of an initial cause for the universe, then that's fine, but if it's the latter and each of those natural events require a supernatural motivator behind the scenes, then I'm pretty satisfied to just accept that rainbows are light refraction, for instance, and not light refraction because god ordered it so.

What I meant is, for as long as our knowledge of how the world works has grown, so too has the territory of what god is responsible for causing directly, shrank. Is that conclusive evidence of godlessness? Not at all. But it's the kind of thing I think about when someone tells me about some new thing that must be caused by god.

If this is your interpretation of evidence then we're back to the burden of proof argument and strongly informed priors that naturalism is true.

If you're assuming a flat prior you have to show that the evidence is better explained by naturalism that theism. Not simply that if its consistent with both that this makes naturalism more likely.

Yeah, I think you're talking about something else here. All I was saying is that at one point in our past god was an all encompassing thing: he made the clouds, he made it rain, he made the continents we stand on and the planet they're all on, and so on. As our knowledge grew we discovered he didn't make the clouds, precipitation made the rain, the continents are caused by tectonic shift and the planet was formed via gravitational accretion. The point is that all the things that we once thought directly required miraculous intervention to occur later turned out not to. Whether a god designed the systems there or not, the observed track record we have to go on with regards to the discovery of causes for things leans pretty heavily on the "not magic" side.

Thanks that's helpful clarification. So in that sense your gnostic atheist position is a flat prior? That is, there is great uncertainty whether naturalist or theist explanations of the universe are valid explanations of the world?

Essentially. Regardless of the probabilities I choose to assign to various claims, my ultimate position is a simple "I don't know," coupled with an acknowledgement that additional information may drastically alter those probabilities. When the evidence is not compelling, the best bet is to simply not make a judgment until we get better evidence.

That's a helpful illustration. I think this is very useful as this seems clear to me your not using a flat prior to interpret the evidence.

Of course I would also come to the conclusion the storm is due to meterological patterns and that explanation would be totally consistent with my theist position.

The question is why do you think these meterological patterns have a naturalistic cause and don't just reflect the world God creates and sustains?

Ahh, I didn't say what I think about that, though. If what you're arguing here is that the natural patterns are a part of a grand system that god designed and set in motion, then I can't make a judgment on that one way or the other. All I can say regarding the storm is that it's due to X and Y weather conditions combining, that doesn't imply anything about the natural or divine architecture of those observations. It's simply what we see happening.

The tides are due to gravitational pull from the moon. Does that mean that the moon was placed in the sky without any foresight or intent from a divine creator? Not necessarily, but it if was ordered into the orbit of earth by god, he made that happen using naturally occurring gravitational mechanics. That could be a part of some immense system that god set spinning in nothing, or it could be a naturally cascading series of physical consequences, but all I can say about it is that I see gravity from the moon acting on the water.

I think from your illustration (but as I say this may be a misinterpretation so you can correct it) you are saying you hold a strong informed prior that naturalist explanations are more likely.

See above. Don't mistake what we see, with the ultimate cause for that.

I've tried to show in the above example prior beliefs matter whether your a gnostic atheist, agnostic atheist, or theist. So I guess I'm saying I don't think there is a neutral position on this question - by all means show me that I'm wrong.

I'm a little confused by your responses. On some you are saying you
just want to take the evidence into account and therefore consider the flat prior to reflect your agnostic atheism.

But at the same time the illustration you've given suggests a strongly informed prior that naturalism is more likely. So I suppose I'm not sure what position you're taking regarding prior beliefs before interpreting the evidence.

Hopefully I've cleared that up.