Shades of Gray: The Atheist Challenge (or, as I like to call it, an inning with a Creationist)

14th December 2011

Link reblogged from Randomnymity with 90 notes

Shades of Gray: The Atheist Challenge (or, as I like to call it, an inning with a Creationist) →

wonderfullydefined:

liberalchristian:

goodreasonnews:

Maybe I just miss baseball season.

rudeministries:

You haven’t actually made any argument, nor even successfully countered his.

-If one belief requires evidence, then all other beliefs also require evidence. If you…

The stupid, it burns. It’s hard to counter a nonsensical argument, so s/he’s just explaining with what’s wrong with the argument.

I think there’s been a misunderstanding about what atheism is. It’s not a belief, it’s an absence of belief. It’s not a belief in a negative.

I don’t know for sure that leprechauns don’t exist, but there’s no reason to believe that they exist. Until I see pots of gold at the end of rainbows or tiny men dressed in green who can grant me wishes, I don’t see any reason to go on believing them. You could argue that they exist. They are written in books and depicted in drawings. The default “belief” is non-belief. I mean, people don’t have to prove why they don’t believe we aren’t really plugged into the matrix by robot overlords, or that dryer monsters are stealing our socks, or the existence of invisible pink unicorns, so I don’t see why people have to prove they don’t believe in gods. We don’t have to prove non-belief, believers have to show why we should believe.

Assuming that atheist don’t believe “out of sheer desire to disbelieve” is ridiculous. It seems there are a number of atheists who became atheists out of a desperate desire to find something to believe. (There are a number of posts on Pharyngula’s “Why I am an atheist” series that show at least some atheists have had this experience.) When in doubt, they’ve often immersed themselves in the religion, trying to learn as much as possible to reconcile the beliefs of the religion with the reality that we live in. Some people do desire that a caring supernatural entity exists, but experiences have shown the contrary (innocents suffer, evil goes unpunished; and simply hoping that things get balanced unseen in some afterlife only makes people lazy about achieving justice in this life we live). Reality isn’t what we wish were true, but simply what is.

Gravity isn’t the be-all and end-all to the forces we observe. We could be wrong, but it’s the best possible explanation we have at the moment. That’s what theories do, they offer the best explanation possible with our present means. We can use it to make predictions. “Goddidit”, on the other hand, offers no useful understanding of the world.

Just because there’s order in the world and certain things fit together is not evidence that it was supernaturally organized. The water of a puddle fits perfectly in the hole that contains it, but there’s no reason to think someone put exactly the amount of water to fill it (though it is hilarious to think of a nymph making sure that puddles are filled just right). It’s enough to consider how holes work: whatever fits will fit, and anything extra won’t. Why tack on supernatural agency when a naturalistic explanation is sufficient? Gods are unnecessary.

Assuming there’s an argument that does show that there’s supernatural agency behind phenomena, why should we think it’s one god and not another? Other gods are not a distraction, but an appropriate comparison. I don’t see how anyone can give Yahweh more credit than Apollo for the awesomeness of modern medicine. It seems like most arguments Christians use for their God can be applied for any other, the only difference is personal preference. Because it can be applied to all supernatural entities, it makes the argument for any specific god useless.

Here’s also a video I feel is relevant to the discussion about making claims about the universe (it’s 10 minutes long, you only really need to watch the first 2 minutes): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wV_REEdvxo

Either there is meaning in the universe, or there is not. If I claim the evidence before me suggests there is meaning, ie, some sort of meaning-creator that existed before I had that idea, then I can define what that creator is. If I claim there is no meaning, and it’s all a product of an overactive imagination, then… well, there’s no way to prove either idea. As there are apparently no theological assumptions in common between the two sides, arguing the merit of one to prove the other is idiotic.

This ‘absence of belief’ doesn’t answer any of the issues addressed. I can give you reasons for why I don’t believe elves or unicorns or nymphs exist if you really want to know, and I can give you reasons for why I believe God exists. I can’t prove God exists, because that’s impossible, just as I can’t prove that elves don’t exist. But you don’t want to have explain why your view of the evidence of the universe suggests it is without meaning, so you shove your head in sand and adopt a purely theoretically word game that makes it impossible to debate anything.

That’s great and all, but it means it’s completely useless to engage in debate at all. In which case, why depend on logic to make ANY case, if it’s unreliable? I could argue that the assertion that math is true for the entirety of the universe is insufficiently proven, because we don’t know the entirety of the universe. As mathematicians are the ones asserting that math is true, it falls on them to prove it, and I refuse to accept it at face value until they do.

Either the universe was created by something, or it was not. Justify the ‘or it was not’ position. If it’s impossible to know, or there’s not enough evidence yet to make a decision, fine- but I fail to see how that’s any difference from agnosticism.

Some people do desire that a caring supernatural entity exists, but experiences have shown the contrary (innocents suffer, evil goes unpunished; and simply hoping that things get balanced unseen in some afterlife only makes people lazy about achieving justice in this life we live). Reality isn’t what we wish were true, but simply what is.

That reasoning depends on making a particular set of assumptions about the nature and desires of a caring supernatural deity. Experiences do not show the contrary of all possible assumptions of that nature- that would be impossible. We could argue about what the ‘problem of evil’ actually means, and why it would exist, which strikes me as more worthwhile. What you can’t do is use the existence of innocent suffering to claim the absence of God. Reality is more complex than you’re trying to make it.

Source: rudeministries