A Shot in the Dark
There’s something that’s always bugged me about religious arguments; the absolute certainty of both sides. On one hand you have the standard theist who says ‘Without a doubt, my god exists and is the singular correct god.’ Obviously that’s ridiculous, but isn’t it equally ridiculous to say, ‘Well I don’t know what the answer is, but it sure as hell isn’t that.”
What is faith, really? Believing something without question, right? A while ago I was speaking with someone who was very much an atheist and, as they were ranting about how stupid religious people are, I realized that they were as fervent and adamant in their belief about the non-existence of god as the very people they were insulting. I got to thinking, isn’t it the very same faith? On one hand you have unbacked, unsupported belief that one thing is true. On the other, you’re making a claim that has some circumstantial evidence but no direct proof and believing that is true, often without a doubt. And often with an awful lot of contempt.
I consider myself an agnostic, and unlike most atheists I don’t consider it “fence sitting” or “being a pansy”. Being agnostic to me is simply saying “It is impossible to know whether or not God exists.” Now, I’m not talking about religion mind you. Religions can be disproved because they make claims centered in our world. The earth was created 6,000 years ago, for example. This claim, regardless of the efforts of radical Christians across America, has been proven false. All of that aside, the central claim that there is a divine entity that created the universe and governs it with its almighty will can not reasonably be proven to be false.
There’s plenty of arguments against this and all are logical fallacies. The bottom line is that the argument makes claims that are outside the bounds of our universe, and thus outside of our capacity for perception. “Haha, but Ryan,” you might say with a broad, condescending smirk, “Does that mean you believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Or what about Santa Claus and fairies?” Of course not, but what are you claiming? That a magical fat man flies house to house and drops presents into fireplaces? You can disprove that by finding the parents receipt. That is not the same as claiming that god created and runs the universe, a claim that cannot be either proven or disproved.
I believe that any reasonable minded person will have to admit to both possibilities, that god may or may not exist. To say with scientific certainty that God, without a doubt, does not exist means that you must have some evidence to prove that statement. And when it all comes down to it in the end, science simply is not at a point that it can provide that. When confronted with this argument, most reasonable scientists will agree (much like Dawkins), but reply with “Well, I’m 99.999999% certain god doesn’t exist.” This allows for the possibility, technically, while saying that they’re almost certainly right. That is also incorrect, or at least not logically viable. How can you come to a figure of 99%? The definition of probability is: “the relative possibility that an event will occur, as expressed by the ratio of the number of actual occurrences to the total number of possible occurrences.” When coming to a figure of objective probability, you need some factual data to quantify that figure. What possible data can contribute to this assessment? Whether religions have been proven false? That some other Gods have been proven to not exist?
Probability doesn’t have a memory, my friends. It doesn’t care that no gods live at the peak of Mt. Olympus, or that the sun does not orbit the Earth. Does the Judeo-Christian God exist as the divine creator of our universe? It’s a shot in the dark folks, 50%. Yes or no.
Save to Browser Favorites
Ask
backflip
blinklist
BlogBookmark
Bloglines
BlogMarks
Blogsvine
BUMPzee!
CiteULike
co.mments
Connotea
del.icio.us
DotNetKicks
Digg
diigo
dropjack.com
dzone
Facebook
Fark
Faves
Feed Me Links
Friendsite
folkd.com
Furl
Google
Hugg
Jeqq
Kaboodle
kirtsy
linkaGoGo
LinksMarker
Ma.gnolia
Mister Wong
Mixx
MySpace
MyWeb
Netvouz
Newsvine
PlugIM
popcurrent
Propeller
Reddit
Rojo
Segnalo
Shoutwire
Simpy
Slashdot
Sphere
Sphinn
Spurl.net
Squidoo
StumbleUpon
Technorati
ThisNext
Webride
Windows Live
Yahoo!
Email This to a Friend
If you like this then please subscribe to the 
This was a very well thought out post Ryan, great job! I’d have to say that I agree with a lot of what you said. I think it’s important to clarify my own personal stance on atheism.
I am atheist against most gods (Zeus, Christian God, Muslim God, Native American Gods, etc…) because they have a definition. You can look at the bible (or whatever appropriate religious text) and read claims about these gods and disprove those claims. The earth is 6,000 - 10,000 years old is a good example. The bible says god did this and it is obviously and one hundred percent incorrect. You take all these statements about the gods, put them together and determine a probability based on the collective knowledge of science. These gods are are false and I am absolutely atheist against them.
Now, lets say thats not what you mean and I actually think you do mean this. But lets say you define god as some omnipotent being that exists in the universe and we haven’t seen him or her or it because it’s powers are so vast that we cannot comprehend it. Well in that case I would be less certain because you are defining a very abstract god and thats where Dawkin’s comparisons to the flying spaghetti monster come into play. You can’t disprove a lot of things but you can say that they are unlikely. I still find an abstract god unlikely though because science understands so much about the inner-workings of our universe that god is no longer necessary in explaining natural occurring phenomena. But like you said it’s impossible to disprove but then again we could all be living in the matrix right now and you would have no way if disproving that either. However, I’m sure you find that scenario very improbable and thats because, whether you know it or not, you have assigned some chance to that being a truth.
And another thing about probability… when I say something is improbable or not, it’s based on current human understanding and knowledge. Obviously the answer is either a yes or a no but when you take the entirety of human understanding, mix in a little common sense and a dash of personal bias you come up with probability of the subject in question. And yeah I know I had to say “bias” because even if you take everything that science knows about reality, you still have to come up with a number based on some personal opinion about what the data points to, especially in such an abstract case like this.
That was supposed to be just one sentence long but I got carried away. Anyways, like I said earlier, I agree with most of what you said and look forward to more thought provoking posts from you in the future.
Actually, faith is deciding to believe something to be true regardless of what any evidence related to the question might tell us. To believe something through reason means to believe in some conclusion arrived at due to evidence. There is no justification to simply assert that someone who decides that god (as he understands the term) doesn’t exist is being dogmatic. He may well have asked many questions related to the issue and come up with nothing, and so he believes there is no god.
It is easy to assert that there might be a god, just as it is easy to assert that there are pink elephants on the dark side of the moon, that Saturn’s moon Titan is populated by Care Bears, that the Earth has an underground population of gremlins living their lives unknown to us, and so on and so on, ad infinitum. You can assert anything to be true, and nobody can prove you wrong, but you do not deserve to be taken seriously if you cannot provide any evidence to justify such belief. Such claims like these, that cannot be proven nor disproven, are neither true nor false; they are arbitrary and as such cannot qualify as knowledge.
George H. Smith deals with issues of what can and cannot constitute knowledge in great detail in his book “Atheism: The Case Against God.” I am planning on writing a short review of the book for my first post here, when I get the time.
Add A Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.