Atheism, Evidence and the God-of-the-Gaps

[The Grand Nudger]

Do you see why your ministry has failed here Randy?  You came in with bad intel.  Apologists aren't winning souls, the con isn't even -for us-.  It's for you (and your fellow christers), and you've swallowed it whole.  Now you're here regurgitating -their- shit and making an ass of yourself.  

Rather than bitching and moaning to us about the situation you find yourself in, maybe you should take the issue up /w the apologists who lied you into the situation you are in to begin with?

[Randy Carson]

If God did this, then surely we would know he existed, right? Well, why wouldn’t this kind of evidence also be subject to the “God-of-the-gaps” objection? Just because we don’t know how a giant man can appear in the sky doesn’t mean there is no natural explanation for him. Maybe aliens or time-travelers are at work, deceiving us?

Agreed, without godlike powers you can't know absolutely that the evidence for a god is not false or contrived.
So, barring having those, you are correct in your contention that no evidence is absolute proof.
Unless a deity gives such powers, we poor mortals must apportion our belief to the evidence knowing that that knowledge will never be without some doubt.
And the evidence for the Christian god is so meager.
It is indistinguishable from tales told to illiterate goatherds by slightly more clever clerics which provided the clerics with a livelihood without actually having to work for it.  Or to make sufficient distinctions requires Olympic class mental gymnastics.
Religion is just the worlds oldest scam.
It is slightly newer than the world's oldest profession which is a little newer than the world's oldest lie,"Of course I'll respect you in the morning."

Have you moved from thinking that there is "no evidence" to conceding that there is some albeit "meager" evidence?

Gee, that's progress.

[The Grand Nudger]

You're so desperate to see effect that you're willing to imagine it whole cloth..huh, lol?

[Thumpalumpacus]

What type of evidence or proof would you accept? Because of your presuppositions, you can’t examine any evidence or proof that I might show you without bias.

Your presupposition is this: there is no God. Therefore, no matter what I might present, you will and must interpret it in a manner consistent with that presupposition.

• If I showed you a video tape of God coming down from heaven, you’d say it was done with special effects.
• If I had a thousand eye-witnesses saying that they saw it, you'd say it was mass-hysteria.
• If I showed you Old Testament prophecies fulfilled in the new Testament, you'd say they were forged, dated incorrectly or simply misinterpreted.

So, I don’t think I can show you any evidence of God’s existence that you will accept because your presuppositions will not allow you to consider that evidence objectively.

The formal name for this logical fallacy is poisoning the well. Go loook it up so that you'll understand the problem, and then stop practicing it -- or quoting shitty articles that peddle it.

And here we come to the point of THIS thread...if there is no evidence that can falsify atheism, then it is not based on science; it is a faith position.

There is evidence that can falsify strong atheism ... you just don't have it. In order to cover up that deficiency, you point at atheists and shout, "Yabut you are based on faith!" ... all the while hoping that no one notices that you have no evidence.

Never mind the fact that agnostic atheists like myself make no claim as to the existence of god(s). I make no assertions about god(s); I only make assertions about my lack of faith.

You have a nice day, now. Bless your heart.

[Chad32]

But the "role" that God has is not confined these "narrower and narrower" gaps. In fact, a deist might argue that God created the clock, wound it up, and kicked back to watch it run. I believe in a personal God who is more interactive than that, but what necessity is there for even a personal God to be involved in the day to day running of the material universe?

What role would a personal god play? I'd settle for making sure that his followers all live good lives, regardless of where they live in the world, and keep them from killing each other over which way to worship him. Instead you have someone claiming to be a catholic who made himself known worldwide for killing 180,000 jews. You have babies dying of neglect because their christian parents rely on prayer healing instead of going to the doctor. You have holy men raping children. You have wars fought over differences in opinion on how to worship the same guy.

If you want to fall back on just a creator god, it could be Vishnu as much as it could be Yahweh, or anything else. What do you get out of a personal relationship with a deity that watches his followers kill each other, and lets their prayers go unanswered?

[Randy Carson]

The problem with the "God-of-the-gaps" objection is that it can have unintended consequences for atheism. Specifically, it makes atheism impossible to falsify, in the same way that most religious beliefs cannot be falsified. Rather than rely on science, "God-of-the-gaps" pushes atheism far away from being a scientific belief.

If there was atheistic dogma, and our lack of belief was based heavily on the god-of-the-gaps (science will fill it in eventually) argument, you might have a point.

But there isn't, and we don't.  So this entire article is moot.

I can't speak about atheist dogma, but I can say this with confidence: a lot of folks who post here regularly are convinced that while science has not explained everything yet, eventually, it will. Only Julia L (or Jenny A - I get them confused) has said that no, science cannot answer every question.

(To be fair, I'm sure many would admit that to be true if asked directly. But others post as if their faith in science prohibits such an admission.)

[Chad32]

In places where the laws of physics no longer apply, science fails. That would be before the big bang, and the center of a black hole. Maybe one or two other places. I wouldn't want to set many boundaries for science, because one way to hinder it from solving something is by saying there are areas that it can't solve anything. Science is the best method we have for seeking truth. The kind of faith people put in supernatural forces is not the same as the confidence we have in science, because science demonstrates itsself. Anyone can go to a lab and see a molecule. We don't need to take anyone's word for it.

Science holds up to scrutiny. Religion makes scrutiny a death worthy crime.

[Randy Carson]

Rather than argue from what we don’t know (or “God-of-the-gaps”), good arguments for theism take what we do know and show how it logically leads to the transcendent creator of the universe.

So, starting with your conclusion and then looking for ways to lead to it; as distinct from following the evidence where it leads.

If that's how you want to argue your case, then fine. Just be honest that that's what you're doing.

That's not what Horn said. He suggests that we can start with what we know to be true - for example, of the material universe - and argue from that point that a Creator must exist.

This is precisely what the Apostle Paul did in his letter to the Romans:

Romans 1:19-20
what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

This is not exclusive to Christianity, of course. Even the ancient philosophers were able to reason their way past the pantheon of the gods to arrive at a belief in a single creator.

[Chad32]

Yahweh is not the only creator god that has ever been worshiped. Trees are proof of trees. They are not proof of Gaia.

[Randy Carson]

What a weird argument.  Arguing that atheism is unfalsifiable is arguing that you can't prove your God exists, and since you can't do that, boom, I'm an atheist.

I think what Horn is pointing out is that if atheism is not falsifiable, then it is unscientific.

The point is that if the atheist GotG objection is true, then it proves too much.