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I Expect More

Entry 2273, on 2023-05-15 at 20:45:05 (Rating 3, Religion)

Religion is one of the most controversial subjects I participate in debates on, although I do that a lot less now than in the past, because I now mainly object to the modern "religion" of political correctness (AKA wokeness) which is the most harmful trend in modern society.

But I still come across religious material on-line that I feel I need to respond to. Some of it is just really silly, and easy to refute, but occasionally I come across material which is more rational, and requires more effort.

And that's what I want to do here. Specifically, I want to reply to a recent blog post I read, called "Top 10 Most Common Atheist Arguments, and Why They Fail". I don't want to repeat the whole text of the original post, but I will try to list the main points, in summary, then respond to them.

Claim: 1 There is no evidence for God’s existence.

This is the most common reason I give for being an atheist, but the blogger seems to think this point can be contradicted quite easily, by proposing an immaterial god. He claims that atheists tend to look for physical proof, but that is a category error, because god is not physical. The fact that no physical proof exists does not disprove god, so shouldn't be used to support atheism.

First, I really don't know what a non-physical god would be, but it doesn't really matter, because almost all religious believers claim that their god either has, or still does, interact with the real world in some way. For example, he might answer prayers, or help his followers when they need it, or he might have created the universe, or designed living things, or something along these lines.

If a god interacts with the real (physical) universe in some way, then we can use the tools of science to detect that interaction, even if it was only in the past. If he doesn't (and never has) interacted with the universe in any way then he effectively doesn't exist, and all claims for existence or non-existence are pointless.

Claim: 2. If God created the universe, who created God?

I do use this question sometimes to counter the "first cause" argument I get from religious people. They claim that everything needs a cause, meaning the beginning of the universe needed a cause, implying an eternal presence which must be a god.

The blogger claims this is a "peculiar argument" but I really can't see why. He claims god is understood to be "the source of His own being" and only a god can have that characteristic. But why? It's very convenient to make this claim, but it's really just a case of special pleading. In other words, he is saying everything needs a cause, except god, who can be his own cause.

Well, I can play that game too. I can say that the universe can be it's own cause. Causation proceeding backwards in time is not completely ruled out by the laws of physics, but I can make an even simpler argument than that: the universe we live in is just part of a larger multiverse, which is infinite in space and time. Sure, this is speculative, but it is an idea being taken more seriously by cosmologists, and not because it solves that tricky origin problem, but because it is a natural atribute of some theories, including string theory.

Claim: 3. God is not all-powerful if there is something He cannot do. God cannot lie, therefore God is not all-powerful.

The blogger makes a vague ontological argument here, but it's really just playing with semantics. However, it doesn't really worry me too much, because this is a claim that I, and few other atheists I know, make, so there's really nothing to defend here.

Claim: 4. Believing in God is the same as believing in the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

The blogger claims that anyone making this claim is really proving the opposite, because claims about the existence of god and the mythological figures he listed are really very different in terms of their sophistication and the commitment of the believers. In fact, I think I would agree. There is a difference between these, and it's not an argument I would usually make. So, again, I don't feel as if I need to defend this claim.

Claim: 5. Christianity arose from ancient and ignorant people who lacked science.

Here he claims here that the ancient people weren't unsophisticated or ignorant. For example, the virgin birth was well understood to be a miracle by these people, because they understood how conception and birth work. He also claims that other (unspecified) stories in the Bible (because this is primarily about Christianity, not religion in general) show the same level of knowledge.

I really can't agree here, I'm afraid. For every story which is claimed to show a level of sophisticated knowledge, there are others which show the opposite. And I know there are excuses for all the obviously false stories in the Bible, but that really is not a strong position to argue from. It's like saying when the writers (whoever they were) get something superficially right, they are geniuses, but when they get it wrong it's because we are misinterpreting it, or it is metaphorical.

Sorry, but you can't have it both ways, and simple knowledge of the birth process leading to surprise when a virgin birth occurs (which we have no good reason to believe even happened) is a lot different than knowing about the origin of the universe, the basic structure of the cosmos, relativity, quantum theory, and all the other truly sophisticated knowledge we have today.

Claim: 6. Christians only believe in Christianity because they were born in a Christian culture. If they’d been born in India they would have been Hindu instead.

In this instance the writer claims this is insulting to religious people, who atheists claim cannot see past their own upbringing, which he seems to see as insulting. He goes on to point out that there are exceptions to this rule, for example Jewish communities which exist in countries where other religions are dominant.

Whatever the exceptions, there is no doubt that, for the vast majority of people, the religion which is prevalent in the community they were born into (and that could be a smaller community within a country) is the one they tend to follow for the rest of their lives. The vast majority of people born in the Middle East are Muslims, the majority in India are Hindus, and in the US people tend to be Christians.

How anyone can argue against this simple fact is quite astonishing, because the trend is so clear, and some exceptions, especially amongst more sophisticated believers, like Jews, doesn't significantly weaken the overall argument.

Claim: 7. The gospel doesn’t make sense: God was mad at mankind because of sin so he decided to torture and kill his own Son so that he could appease his own pathological anger. God is the weirdo, not me.

The blogger acknowledges this is an effective claim against some classes of believers (he says "certain Protestant sects"), but he claims it is not effective against "the Orthodox Christian faith" because they have "no concept of a God who needed appeasement in order to love His creation".

I really cannot understand what he is getting at here. I do find the story of God's sacrifice of Jesus to "save" us sinners to be incredibly bizarre, and nothing he says in his material makes it any less bizarre to me. However, this is really a theological claim, so anything goes, and one opinion is as good as any other.

Claim: 8. History is full of mother-child messiah cults, trinity godheads, and the like. Thus the Christian story is a myth like the rest.

He correctly points out here that many fake stories don't prove that everything of that type is also fake. It could be that the Christian story is true, while all the others are myths. As an analogy, a hundred counterfeit coins don't prove that a real coin has no value.

He also claims that the myths could be imitations of the great, true story, and "anything beautiful always has replicas". The fact that many of these myths pre-date the Bible stories he tries to explain through some vague notion of "permeating through the consciousness of mankind on some level regardless of their place in history". Is he saying the idea travelled backwards in time?

It is entirely possible that all the myths are fake except for the one he prefers, but what justification does he have for saying that? To go back to the analogy: if I handed you 10 indistinguishable coins, and told you one was real, why would you believe me, especially if another person, who happened to like a slightly different coin, assured me with equal certainty that his coin was the real one?

Claim: 9. The God of the Bible is evil. A God who allows so much suffering and death can be nothing but evil.

He tackles the classic "problem of evil" after admitting it is one he finds the most legitimate. This is interesting, because it is a very philosophical or theological argument, rather than one based in science, empiricism, or rationality, and this might show us how he thinks (a more "emotional" style, rather than "rational").

He uses the old trick here of saying that the atheist invoking the idea of good and evil (words which he correctly points out, have religious overtones) here sort of implies that there must be a source of those judgements, which is logically (according to him) a god.

But there are other ways that these might rise. For example, people living in social groups tend to agree on certain norms which make their lives run smoothly. Note that there is no absolute good and evil here, and we might expect those to change over time, unlike a pronouncement from god, which is likely to stay the same.

So the fact that religious texts often allow or even encourage slavery, and don't treat women as equals to men, and have very little to say about "modern" issues like environmentalism really support my view that good and evil are agreed on standards arising from societal norms, rather than absolute dictates of a god.

Claim: 10. Evolution has answered the question of where we came from. There is no need for ignorant ancient myths anymore.

The blogger claims this might be the most popular argument against religion today, and generally speaking that is probably right. But he finds the creation versus evolution debate extremely boring and makes no real comment on it, so he goes on (quite rightly) to discuss the bigger underlying picture: whether the advance of scientific understanding reduces the need for religion.

He claims that science has no answers to the "big" questions: "what does it mean to be human, why are we here, what is valuable, what does it mean to love, to hate, what am I to do with guilt, grief, sorrow, what does it mean to succeed, is there any meaning and what does 'meaning' mean, and, of course, is there a God?"

This is a fair point, but I would point out that there is a branch of human endeavour which is more suited to those than either science (which mainly concentrates on the physical world) and religion (which starts with the idea that god is real and that he has certain known attributes, so is unlikely to arrive at any truly useful conclusions).

That is, of course, philosophy, and these questions are exactly what it is for. I would say that religion might be able to contribute in some way too, but it isn't necessary. And science can make useful contributions to these questions. For example, the meaning of being human depends on our origin. If we are god's unique creation it implies a lot compared to being the product of evolution, and being one species amongst possibly billions of similar ones throughout the universe.

Additionally, he claims that science's answers leave further questions open. For example, science discovered the Big Bang, but what caused that? Unfortunately (for him) saying it was god is just playing the old "god of the gaps" game. Many other gaps have been filled by science, and this one probably will one day too, leaving one less reason for god to exist.

So, even though this person is worthy of some respect, in that he gave fairly cogent arguments compared with many others I have come across, it is still ridiculously easy to dismiss them either as not being one a skilled atheist debater would use (and therefore being a straw man attack) or lacking any genuine persuasive power apart from for other believers, which might be his target audience.

He might be able to fool them, but I expect more.

Comment 1 (7438) by Anonymous on 2023-05-20 at 20:52:57:

I don't follow your argument for point 1. How would science find an immaterial god if his interactions are immaterial too?

Comment 2 (7439) by OJB on 2023-05-20 at 21:10:35:

If the interactions aren't material, what are they? If they are immaterial they don't exist, or if they are immaterial and don't have any material action, how do we know they exist at all? If a believer can claim that an effect has objective existence then science can examine it, otherwise it is just an opinion based on nothing.

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