Bad Arguments for God

[anticitizen]

I read your article and you asked several times why people find these lame arguments compelling. I actually have an entire video series that explains the psychological science behind these beliefs. For example, "God of the Gaps" is the result of need for cognitive closure generating a primacy effect that is filled with anthropomorphization.

Psychology of Belief, Part 8: Need for Closure:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jHO-7aodbw

Psychology of Belief, Part 9: Agenticity:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwP9QusSxfc

I highly recommend you watch the rest of the series. I may or may not be exactly correct in my arguments, but at the very least, the videos give a nice summary of many of the "classic" experiments in social psychology and how they relate to religious beliefs.

AnticitizenX

I don't know about you, but I'm sick and tired of poor and inconsistent arguments for the existence of God.

I wrote an article on my website which points out the flaws and incoherence of the teleological and cosmological arguments.

Check it out at http://www.blazingtruth.com/2011/07/god-...-universe/

Is there anything I missed? Discuss it below.

Thank you for your time,

D

[Minimalist]

Oh I do love linking this website.

http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

Ah, this question from the "apologetics" section is interesting.

as religion is based on faith rather than evidence, logic, or reason, how does one go about convincing other people that their religion is the correct one?

Historically we have found that the most successful method is to hold a sword at someone's neck and ask "do you believe?"

Islam and xtianity have benefited enormously from the simple human desire not to be murdered by some religious fanatic.

[yoda55]

Unlearn you must!
Teleological
You’re quite right: Science does not *prove* anything, nor does it claim to.

Ah, but it does claim to do so! Watch the leading scientists in the fields of DNA research, for example... They compete with one another, seeking to be the first to 'discover' the answer to the latest riddle. And oh brother watch how they squirm and complain when their "discoveries" are disassembled by the peer reviews! These scientists are not unbiased - and they're acting as if being the first to find an answer is the end-all. They only want their little footnote in history. -- The same occurs in each of the other leading edge fronts in science... So, please, don't try to feed me fairy tales about mankinds' advances being objective through science...

The theories are set in "closed environments" with no other material interacting - not at all what the universe does. Yes, they do it to attempt to isolate characteristics, and simplify potential compounding effects... All that mankind has used is a very small corner of the universe, to theorize and experiment. But, we can say something about sampling theory - and the risks presented by taking very small samples, and coming to conclusions about extrapolations and generalizations.

Science continually seeks to falsify or validate hypotheses, hypotheses which are based on empirical evidence and have empirically testable predictions, to build theories and models that provide the best description of how the world and the cosmos works in light of our current state of empirical knowledge. All theories and models — and scientific “laws” — are, indeed, in principle tentative and may be revised or discarded in light of new empirical evidence. Hence, science does only approach “the Truth” asymptotically.

Examine the Boolean AND table. Each pair of logical comparisons yields a conclusion. Only ONE comparison pair yields a TRUE result. Three out of four combinations yield a FALSE result. If the first of the paired characteristics is TRUE, a FALSE second characteristic results in a FALSE conclusion. Partial knowledge does not make a very favorable condition for TRUE results. Science claiming understanding of "truth" lies to itself and others, since the achievement of knowledge of "truth" is only valid if ALL charcteristics are known as they truly exist. Mankind will never know "truth", only misinformation mascquerading as "truth"... With the finiteness of the human mental resources and lifespan, no one will understand it correctly - infinity cannot be apprehended.

However, some theories (e.g. evolution, quantum theory, gravity) are so comprehensively validated by empirical evidence, that to regard them as untrue, to expect that they might be wholly contradicted by some new evidence, is irrational. (Note also that some old models are still valid within certain bounds. Newtonian gravitation is still an applicable model for most quotidian purposes.)

An older model, using less or inaccurate information, is not better than a model with more and better detail. It may be adequate for practical use, but doesn't do justice to reality.

Evolution has not been comprehensively validated... Scientists take selected (read as very few available) examples of disparite types, in different geological strata, and claim a trend by connecting dots. Who are they fooling?!

Darwin wasn’t even aware of Mendel’s foundational work on genetics, yet in Origin he reasoned that there must be some such mechanism. Thus, the emergence of genetic theory, and the later discovery of DNA, only goes to validate Darwin’s prediction and corroborate the theory.

Rubbish! Science is admitting now that DNA strings of genes are not the only influence on biological forms - they're saying now that "groups" of genes (and where they appear in the helix) have compounded affects... A DNA sequence (length of gene string, numbers of genes and their types, and groupings) determines a species. A selected DNA string, put into a cell, will develop into one type of specie - a fish will not grow into anything other than a fish. It will never become a human being. Each specie has unique DNA. Now, certain traits may be bred into prominant use due to environmental conditions. But, bacterium becoming a man, over time, is unacceptable nonesense.

In fact: “The evidence of evolution pours in, not only from geology, paleontology, biogeography, and anatomy (Darwin’s chief sources), but from molecular biology and every other branch of the life sciences. To put it bluntly but fairly, anyone today who doubts that the variety of life on this planet was produced by a process of evolution is simply ignorant — inexcusably ignorant, in a world where three out of four people have learned to read and write.” (Daniel Dennett)

Daniel Dennet is a clown (see Other Philisophical Views under en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett). He admits to purposefully using terminology incompatible with that used throughout his specialty. He claims that the resultant inability to communicate with and convince collegues is not his problem... Those who obfuscate ideas and understanding by manipulating language are charlatans - snake oil salesmen.

Your criticisms of carbon dating are simply naïve. This is just another religionist canard. The limits of the reliability of carbon dating are well understood. Furthermore, scientists use a variety of other, quite independent tools to date geographic strata. And, guess what? Within error bars, they agree!

Did you notice what you just said ("within error bars")? Error. "Truth" is not found in error. Any measurement based upon radiological dating is the closest we'll come to exceeding our existence, and measure what is beyond our experience or reach. But, the volatility of the earth's crust and its continual reformation brings to the surface newly formed radiological materials (borne in the bowels of the core). Readings using these sources will lead us to suspect different aging than that material we currently have. The dating scheme is misleading.

Why should we assume ID is true? It has no explanatory power, it makes no empirically testable predictions, and there is no empirical evidence that even suggests that ID is a better description of how the world works. It is not even a sound hypothesis, let alone a theory.

Doesn't the extreme complexity of the current universe in which we live, from the sub-microscopic to the macroscopic, and its exceptional orderly behavior cause you pause? And you expect me to swallow the idea that it happened by random probability, in a few billion years no less?

“It was Boltzmann who long ago realized that the Second Law [of Thermodynamics], which says that the entropy of a closed system never decreases, isn’t quite an absolute ‘law.’ It’s just a statement of overwhelming probability: there are so many more ways to be high-entropy (chaotic, disorderly) than to be low-entropy (arranged, orderly) that almost anything a system might do will move it toward higher entropy. But not absolutely anything; we can imagine very, very unlikely events in which entropy actually goes down. In fact we can do better than just imagine: this has been observed in the lab.” [My emphasis.]

"...in the lab." Again, you refer to contrived, isolated conditions set - unnatural conditions.

Yes, Big Bang theory is a human attempt to explain the beginning of the universe (not just all universal matter) – and actually, it does it rather well.

Including the singularity?

Just like the other theories mentioned above, it is so comprehensively validated by empirical evidence, that to regard it as untrue is irrational.

WHAT emperical evidence? Red-shift? I believe that concept has come into contention, recently. The current supposition is stating that celestial dispersion is accelerating - order toward disorder, with no "rubberband" resilience to perpetuate the current universe.

The total energy of the universe is zero: The energy of all matter (which includes rest energy as well as kinetic energy) and radiation, all dark matter and dark energy, is offset by the “potential” energy of gravity. This is very well understood (see Hawking and Mlodinow’s The Grand Design for a popular account).

Since we've not seen all the material (Hubble telescope only sees just so far), how can we say that we've accounted for ALL contributory energy? Wishful thinking - thoughtful, but wishful.

Victor Stenger and others have argued that physics demands that there is something rather than nothing since nothing is highly unstable, so it seems to be almost inevitable that the universe exists.

Are you telling me that the 'absence of anything' is less stable than a universe full of matter?

And of course human beings were not present at the beginning. But there are witnesses – us! – and we do have at least some answers! A huge number of astrophysical observations that have been made in a human lifetime – most famously the motion of galaxies and the cosmic microwave background radiation – predicted and subsequently validated the theory.

We've had the ability to sample the universe with these tools for how long? Less than a century? Taking sampling in a narrow window of time - and we think that this is statistically reliable? We're in trouble now...

On keeping an open mind
Scientists do not ignore the “answer” that a god exists, out-of-hand. (And clearly you do not mean all scientists as some scientists do have faith in a deity.) Yet, quite simply, there is not one shred of empirical evidence that one does, nor is one necessary to explain how the world works. Laplace (early C19): “Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là.” Ingersoll (1872): “‘But,’ says the religionist, ‘you cannot explain everything; you cannot understand everything; and that which you cannot explain, that which you do not comprehend, is my God.’ We are explaining more every day. We are understanding more every day; consequently your God is growing smaller every day.” (And think how much smaller God is now than he was Ingersoll’s day!)

But, though some scientists are theist, the explanation of "how" without answering the "why" just feeds a human-centric view which is in conflict with the universe. Human beings reside on a tiny speck, chasing around an unremarkable star, in the arm of an average galaxy, on the apparent fringe of the visible universe. To think human-centric only is egotisical, in the extreme (if there is no WHY to accompany the HOW).

If any “supernatural” entity exists and intercedes in the natural world, then it must have natural effects that are amenable to scientific inquiry. The fact that we see no evidence for such effects anywhere in the world or cosmos, at any time, does not falsify the hypothesis, but makes holding the hypothesis valid irrational.

See my earlier comments on complexity.

[Cyberman]

Peer review is the whole point! Any scientist worth his/her sodium chloride wants their papers to run the gauntlet of peer review - that's how errors are found and corrected. It's one of the great triumphs of the scientific method. To illustrate, here's Potholer54 to explain (why do I get the feeling that you won't even watch this?):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcavPAFiG14

[yoda55]

Peer review is the whole point! Any scientist worth his/her sodium chloride wants their papers to run the gauntlet of peer review - that's how errors are found and corrected. It's one of the great triumphs of the scientific method. To illustrate, here's Potholer54 to explain (why do I get the feeling that you won't even watch this?):

Fear not! I did watch it through... I also participate in the analytical method, having to coach a number of folks who think subjective "group grope" passes for analysis of subjects that require objective modeling/simulation and field testing.

Relying on a scientific method to observe and report (as I said, above, to Ant) only answers "HOW", it doesn't address "WHY". And in "HOW", it only confirms behaviors extant. It doesn't explain intial conditions.

[Cyberman]

I was responding to your claim that scientists "squirm and complain when their "discoveries" are disassembled by the peer reviews". Before going off on a tangent, do you acknowledge that this claim was in error?

[Minimalist]

It doesn't explain intial conditions.

I'm going to take a wild guess here and speculate that you think an invisible, all-powerful, sky-daddy does.

[Phaedra]

I have yet to hear a good argument for god...

[Atheist Anna]

Hiya I'm new to this forum and have only recently decided I am an atheist. I can't really talk to many people about it as they think I am catholic and not sure how to deal with people like my mum-she will go insane if I tell her!!!

What I find frustrating is my friends weak answer when I asked why he believed in god. He said it was because without god life would be meaningless!!! I find this quite insulting as I feel my life has plenty of meaning-in fact more so than when I was a catholic (due to upbringing). Why are so many arguments for the existence of god based on fear?

[frankiej]

Hiya I'm new to this forum and have only recently decided I am an atheist. I can't really talk to many people about it as they think I am catholic and not sure how to deal with people like my mum-she will go insane if I tell her!!!

What I find frustrating is my friends weak answer when I asked why he believed in god. He said it was because without god life would be meaningless!!! I find this quite insulting as I feel my life has plenty of meaning-in fact more so than when I was a catholic (due to upbringing). Why are so many arguments for the existence of god based on fear?

Hello and welcome. I advise making an intro thread... That way we can get to know you better and understand your situation.
But, to answer your question, it is because the whole thing is built from fear.
Fear of death. Fear of loneliness. Fear of insignificance.