Jaylow Wrote:
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> I would be interested in hearing your
> philosophical reasons then instead of me trying to
> parse those out of your posts.
I've mentioned two, but there are others. Let's start with the argument from non-cognitivism, which also gets meshed in with incompatible attributes.
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I wrote this up over four years ago and I think I need to expand on it a little.
What follows is a critical examination. It’s fairly long and probably not suitable for everyone. I’ve incorporated cites where appropriate and in some cases I’ve quoted a sizable amount of text because I feel the author has done a far more admirable job of explaining the concept then I would have been able to. So I hope you’ll bear through the quotes.
Okay, I want to state up front that I’m by no means an expert on atheism or atheistic argumentation. If you want what I consider the best tomb on atheistic argumentation, then I suggest you pick up the book “Atheism: The Case Against God†by George H. Smith. Additionally, I’m not seeking to convert or sway anyone towards atheism. I do not denigrate religious belief nor do I find it ‘wrong’ in any sense. What I’m attempting to do is provide a reasonable justification for atheism.
I think this is a particularly relevant and interesting issue, no matter which side of the ‘pew’ you line yourself up with. Religiosity and church attendance are at an all time high, in fact, belief has never been so common place in America-this is why the topic of God belief is an important issue. According to Michael Shermer:
“For the past two centuries American church membership rates have risen from a paltry 17 percent at the time of the Revolution, to 34 percent by the middle of the nineteenth century, to over 60 percent today.†[1]
With that said, I will introduce some of the arguments either against specific arguments in favor of God or in favor of the non-existence of God. I will be addressing the arguments one at a time, and with proper reference links/cites when appropriate. I’m not going to rattle off a litany of arguments because I feel that more will be gained if we explore them one at a time and in greater detail.
Before I begin, I’m going to define some terms for the purpose of this discussion. These are by no means concrete and we can define them further if need be.
Atheist: Someone without the belief in God. It is not necessarily a position where the person says affirmatively that God does not exist. Atheist is a general statement about a non belief in any God concept.
Hard Atheist: This is the person who says that God does not exist, affirmatively.
Weak Atheist: This is a person who does not feel that there is any quality evidence for the existence of God. They do not rule the concept of God out definitely, but they see no reason to believe in any of the Gods they know of.
Agnostic: Agnosticism is not a position on whether one believes in God or not, it is a position on whether one believes that it is possible to know positively whether God exists or not. Additionally it’s a position on whether God can be known through experience.
I’m fairly certain that everyone will agree with the above-at least to some extent. The next definition, that of God, begins the discussion and the first argument for the non-existence of God.
Before I begin examining the concept of God, I feel justified in asking the following question: Does God require faith? From what I’ve read, most incarnations of God want their believers to believe based off of faith, instead of based off of empirical evidence. If this is true, then atheism is justified-because without doubt there is no faith-only certainty. Now then, onto a bigger problem.
Defining God and the problems therein.
The very first question that should be asked before we can either affirm or deny the belief in an entity is what is the entity in question?
I think we can all agree that if the entity in question is ill defined to the point of utter arbitrariness that it doesn’t make much sense to affirm a belief in the entity; after all, what would we be actually affirming a belief in? A mystery? An abstract concept that has no basis in reality?
In order to be clear on this point, I’ll rely on the words of W.T. Blackstone:
“Until the content of a belief is made clear, the appeal to accept the belief on faith is beside the point, for one would not know what one has accepted. The request for the meaning of a religious belief is logically prior to the question of accepting that belief on faith or to the question of whether that belief constitutes knowledge.â€[2]
So without a foundation on which to rest a belief, that belief is by definition nonsensical. I think we can all agree on this. The problem with relating to commonly accepted definitions of what God is, is that since the dawn of time there have been many different definitions of God. Some included the more traditional anthropomorphic God, such as Zeus, Mithra, El, Isis, Horus, etc. These Gods were basically big magical ‘men’, so to speak, in that they were aggrandized versions of humanity. They had human form, emotions, and other characteristics. For the most part Gods of these sorts can be dismissed for the purpose of this discussion as they are not believed in by anyone here, and have been, for the most part, relegated to the dustbin of history.
The other versions of God that are often brought up are the Gods without physical substance, these Gods include, but are not limited to, the God of Abraham (includes Hebrew/Christian/Islamic religions) and Ahura Mazda (granted even these can be argued against). These Gods are often described as omnimax Gods; i.e., all powerful, all benevolent, all knowing, and omnipresent (in most cases). These Gods are the type of God I am concentrating on. They are not defined outside of abstraction, which means they do not have a valid, workable, definition.
It is sometimes argued that God is ‘being itself’. I do not think this is a rational statement however, because it blurs the definition of what we already know with what we do not know in an effort to sustain a belief in something for which none is warranted. If we say that existence or ‘being’ is God, then what is existence? What does ‘being’ mean? These terms become nonsensical when they are relegated to the attributes of God.
As George Smith puts it:
“To divorce the idea of a supernatural being from the concept of god is to obliterate the basic distinction between theism and atheism. If the so-called “theist†or “Christian†is willing to admit that a supernatural being does not exist, then he has capitulated to traditional atheism, and his continued use of the word “god†carries no metaphysical significance.†[3]
So God can not be redefined to mean existence or being, because it confuses the concept and destroys the concept of what it means to have a supernatural God. In short, there is nothing to believe in, other then existence, which is a fundamental axiom already.
To continue on, the other position a theist takes is that God is part of the supernatural. This too has the appearance of definition, but when inspected closely falls apart. When something is claimed to be supernatural, it means that it doesn’t follow the natural laws of the universe. It is somehow outside of the natural world, it is outside of any possible understanding that we, as natural and physical beings, can be privy to-logically/rationally speaking.
Once again, George H. Smith sums it up:
“The first problem with the designation of supernatural (or any equivalent term) is that it tells us nothing positive about a God. “Supernatural†tells us what a god is not-that it is not part of the natural universe-but it does not tell us what a god is. What identifiable characteristics does a god possess? In other words, how will we recognize a god if we run across one? To state that a god is supernatural does not provide us with an answer….the entire notion of a supernatural being is incomprehensible. The theist wishes us to conceive of a being exempt from natural law-a being that does not fall within the domain of scientific explanation-but no theist has ever explained how we can conceive of existence other than “natural†existence. “Natural existence†is a redundancy; we have no familiarity with “unnatural†existence, or even a vague notion of what such existence would be like.“[4]
To claim that god is subject to natural law is to unmake god and to apply limitations to god. Additional claims of omnipotence then entail a logical contradiction and do not hold. Furthermore, since god has to be supernatural, that means that it can not possess determinant characteristics, these characteristics would automatically limit god to the natural (and obviously out of the omnipotent).
So what is god? Well, in order to exist, an entity has to exist as something. Existence can not exist without something to exist, and similarly anything that exists must necessarily be something. The trouble is, god can have no defining determinant characteristics and necessarily must be in the realm of the supernatural. As such, to claim that god exists is to claim that something with no characteristics exists, which is nonsensical.
Ludwig Feuerbach said:
“To deny all the qualities of a being is equivalent to denying the being himself. A being without qualities is one which can not become an object to the mind, and such a being is virtually non-existent“[5]
What is there to believe in? What qualities does the believer believe that God possesses? The standard reply is that God is omnipotent, omniscient, etc. Unfortunately this is not a proper answer, as this tells us what the God is not. These are not positive attributes. Omnipotence tells us that God is without limits in power. It does not tell us how this omnipotence manifests itself, nor how it can be achieved in the knowable world. It in effect, an empty statement, an aggrandizement of what human beings perceive. It is similar to the concept of ‘perfection’, in that it’s an ill-defined subjective term and not part of objective reality. The other ‘omni’s fall because of similar objections. God is without ignorance and there is no place where God isn’t.
Francois Tremblay states:
“To understand how the god-concept is meaningless, I need first to explain what negative defining, and substance, mean.
Something is negatively defined when the identification critically lacks specificity because it tells us what something is not, instead of what something is. For instance, the following identification lacks specificity
“I am not Arthur Daniels Jr.â€
While it is true that I am not Arthur Daniels Jr., the identification tells you almost nothing about me. All it tells you is that I am not one particular person. It still leaves the possibility of me being any other person on Earth, or even any other sentient entity in the universe. As such, it critically lacks specificity.
Some categories of attributes interest us specifically, such as : substance, secondary attributes, and relational attributes. The substance of an existant is the basic nature of the material it is composed of. Secondary and relational attributes can only be meaningful insofar as the substance is meaningful and pertains to those specific attributes.
The following propositions can express this clearly.
1. The ball is red.
2. The sound is red.
3. The soul is red.
Proposition 1 is perfectly possible, since we know that balls are made of material which can have colour, such as plastic. Proposition 2 is not possible, as sound arrives to us in the form of sound waves, which cannot have colour. Proposition 3 is meaningless, since souls are “supernatural", which means non-material. All we know is that the soul is not made of matter, but we do not know what it is made of. If we do not know what it is made of, we cannot say what attributes it can take and what attributes it cannot take. Consequently, proposition 3 is meaningless.
If we look at the attributes given to the word “god", we find the same problems. All of its attributes are either negatively defined, secondary or relational. If a god is Creator, then it must be immaterial, as nothing can cause itself. But as we have seen, “immaterial†is a negatively defined term. Therefore a god’s substance is undefined.
This lack of definition is fatal to the meaningfulness of the god-concept, as secondary or relational attributes can no longer apply either. It makes no sense to apply attributes like “unicity†or “loving", or even “personal being", to a being when we do not know the substance of that being.
The other core attributes of the god-concept suffer from the same problems. Gods are Creator, but this is a relational attribute, as it concerns a god’s relationship with the universe. Gods have infinite powers, but the word “infinite†is negatively defined, and therefore ontologically meaningless. Gods are personal beings, but personality is meaningless without knowing whether the substance of a god is capable of intelligence or personality.†[6]
All of this is to say that the god concept is incoherent. If this indeed turns out to be the case, then positive belief in such a concept is not possible. I realize that what you’ve probably just read can be seen as the same argument, drawn out in aggonizing detail. I’ve tried to keep it short-believe me (I’m rather long winded and could go on and on)-and I’ve tried to keep it coherent and on point as much as possible.
With that said, in order to validate a belief in an entity (God) the theist must first define the entity. The definition must include whether the entity is material or immaterial, supernatural or non-supernatural, etc etc. Unfortunately an entity that is material and non-supernatural is not a new entity at all, it’s just a new term for the universe-which is why the pantheistic argument fails. An entity that is supernatural and non-material can not exist because that entity lacks specificity and is empty. A supernatural materialistic entity is a contradiction in terms.
Works Cited:
1. Michael Shermer, How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God (New York: Owl Books, 2000), p. 25.
2. William T. Blackstone, The Problem of Religious Knowledge (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963), p. 2.
3. George H. Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God (New York: Prometheus Books, 1979), p. 35-36.
4. George H. Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God (New York: Prometheus Books, 1979), p. 39-40.
5. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, translated by George Eliot (New York, 1957), p. 14.
6. Francois Tremblay,
http://www.objectivethought.com/debates/daniels1.html