This is an argument I conceived today against gnostic theism. I do not recall ever hearing anyone make this argument before, though I am sure I am not the first to think of it.
For clarity's sake, a gnostic theist is someone who does not claim to simply believe a god exists, but claims to know a god exists. A prime example of a gnostic theist is Ray Comfort. As a side note, gnostic theists often claim to know specific characteristics of their professed deity, such as how he/she/it feels about certain issues and what he/she/it can or cannot do.
As much as I can know anything, I know my wife exists. Short of convincing me I am schizophrenic or demonstrating to me that I have long be under the influence of powerful hallucinogens, no one will ever convince me my wife does not exist. Furthermore, I have never doubted the existence of my wife. Even in philosophical discourse where the very nature of reality and the reliability of sense datum is questioned, I have not doubted. The testimony—if I may borrow a popular religious term—of my experience of her is simply too convincing to give me cause to doubt.
Most the people attending my parent's fundamentalist church, my parents included, claim to know their god exists. They justify this knowledge through their "experience of God" and the "testimony of the Holy Spirit." At the same time, my parents and many others have admitted they have occasionally doubted God's existence. In fact, the Sunday after I told my father I was an atheist, in an event he chalked up to divine intervention, the pastor at his church preached a sermon on doubt, acknowledging that doubt is perfectly normal.
This whole situation strikes me as remarkably peculiar. My father knows my mother exists. Likewise, my mother knows my father exists. Do you think they have ever doubted each others' existence? Do you think they have ever doubted the existence their parents, children, friends, acquaintances, or that stranger who accidentally bumped into them in aisle nine at the Kroger? No, of course they have not. Their experience of their god, whether they admit it or not, is not even as convincing as their experience of strangers on the street, and certainly not as convincing as their experiences of each other. Is it not bizarre and unusual to think they also profess their religion is more important to them than they are to each other? Furthermore, is it not odd to think that this attitude permeates throughout fundamentalist thought despite the fact that most honest believers will admit they have doubted their god's existence at one point another?
Look at William Lane Craig. He knows "Christianity is true." The man has all but blatantly admitted no evidence could ever convince him God does not exist, yet a few breaths later acknowledges that doubting god's existence is typical and normal, even going so far as to outline a strategy for overcoming that doubt. Can you imagine William Lane Craig outlining a strategy for overcoming your doubt of the existence of your parents, hometown, or the soda in your refrigerator you plan to drink tomorrow? Such a commentary would be absurd to the highest degree because you actually do know those things exist, and you do not need any further convincing.
This argument need not apply only to Christian theism. Those who claim to know a supernatural agent exists in the same capacity they know things which manifest in reality exist face an interesting problem with the issue of doubt for those willing to admit experiencing it. I think the honest ones would have to admit the certainty of the existence of their couch is, in fact, stronger than the certainty of the existence of their deity (or whatever).
Long story short, in my estimation, gnostic theism is not an intellectually honest position.
Following on from my previous post which makes reference to moral philosopher, Peter Singer, I have embedded an interview with Richard Dawkins where they discuss some of Singer's ethical positions. As it happens, I am presently reading one of Singer's books, which I find interesting and thought provoking. I don't say that I agree with all his ethical stances, but acknowledge that he has put a lot more thought into them than I have mine. Besides, I'm not going to give up my love of meat that easily.
I really enjoy listening to stories of how people leave their religions. A YouTube user called Evid3nc3 has been telling the story of his lost faith, and thus far it is very good.
I think these stories are good for the religious and irreligious alike. For the religious, it demonstrates that the path to freethought, whether that path leads to atheism, agnosticism, or deism, is paved with reason. The decision to leave religion is not based upon appeals to emotion or "transcendent" experiences, as paths into religion often are, but upon careful consideration and logical thinking. For the irreligious, the stories are relatable and interesting, but maybe that is just me.
Falsifiability is one of the most important and yet seemingly most misunderstood elements of the scientific method. For many individuals, commonly skeptics and freethinkers, falsifiability is so significant it is adopted as an ontological cornerstone. In order to understand how it is applied, we need to understand what it is and why it is useful.
falsifiability: confirmable: capable of being tested (verified or falsified) by experiment or observation
Princeton.edu
I am not a fan of this definition as I find it a bit vague, and for once, I think Wikipedia's definition is more concise.
the logical possibility that an assertion can be shown false by an observation or a physical experiment
Wikipedia
The key point to take away from either of these definitions is that falsifiable suggestions possess the potential to be proved wrong. When no criteria exists that can demonstrate an idea incorrect, the idea is not falsifiable and is therefore not scientific. A prominent example of this fact is the "theory" of intelligent design—it is not a scientific theory despite what its proponents claim. While intelligent design suffers from many scientific shortcomings, one of the most damning failures of its adherents is their inability to produce a falsifying condition. Even when scientists manage to explain why certain systems are not irreducibly complex, intelligent design proponents can simply proclaim, "that's the way the designer made it." This out can apply to all biological systems, be they the evolution of the eye, the fusion of two primate chromosomes in Homo sapiens, the consistent patterns of non-coding DNA and ERVs, or any number of a plethora of observable facts. On the other hand, Evolutionary Theory, the main target of intelligent design proponents, is falsifiable and, in proper scientific fashion, has survived despite the existing potential that it could be demonstrated wrong, but even if revolutionary new data were discovered that overturned Evolutionary Theory, the IDists could still apply the same rationale. The actual data itself is irrelevant with respect to their proposition.
Hopefully the comparison of intelligent design to Evolutionary Theory has highlighted the reason why falsifiability in science is so important. Falsifiability keeps us, as observers, out of the realm speculation. As the definitions state, falsifiable claims can be tested, and those tests can either support or refute that claim. An idea necessarily cannot be tested if it cannot be potentially be disproved, because tests require both pass and fail conditions. A test is not a test if the only possible outcomes are affirmative or inconclusive.
While the previous example examines falsifiability with respect to science, its usefulness can be extended to philosophy in a more general sense. Let us examine for a moment the unfalsifiable claim that God—and for the sake of the demonstration, let us say the Christian God—answers prayers. How might we test this claim? The seemingly obvious answer is to make some request of God through prayer. We will ignore the passages Matthew 18:18-20 and Luke 11:9-13 as many have argued these passages do not mean what they evidently say they mean (fair enough, as the acceptance of those arguments allows to work within common theology anyway). If the god of the Bible exists, then he can answer prayers however he desires. Whatever the outcome of a prayer request may be, that outcome will be indistinguishable from a chance outcome or outcome due to natural forces. As a result, we can only speculate whether or not God has actually answered the prayer. For those responding in the affirmative, their affirmation is ultimately rooted in personal faith which has no empirical value and is deeply unconvincing to those lacking a similar faith bias.
On the other hand, say an alchemist told you he had successfully created the philosopher's stone which can turn lead into gold if both are submerged in a bucket of water simultaneously. Unlike the prayer claim, this one can be adequately tested because the test will undeniably support or refute it. Even if the test fails and the alchemist claims the elements were too unbalanced to have the proper effect, that test still produced a negative result and can be used as evidence that the alchemist's claim is wrong. If, however, the alchemist is able to adequately explain why the test failed and accurately predict under what conditions the test would pass, then his claim would be validated with the understanding that certain criteria must be met in order for the philosopher's stone to properly operate. In this instance, the logical application of falsifiability not only allows us to decide whether or not the alchemist's claim is truthful, but also establish the underlying details of the process, thus his claim is far more useful in the expansion of human knowledge than the prayer claim.
So how do god claims fit into the skeptical atheist's philosophical framework? The answer is quite simple. God claims are generally framed in such a way that they are unfalsifiable. Gods are typically portrayed as existing outside of human understanding, and if they are not omnipotent, they are far more powerful and clever than mere mortals. Concealing themselves from our prying eyes in perpetuity would be an absurdly simple undertaking for such beings, and working within our universe through natural forces would likewise be well within their power. Due to the nature of these claims, religious adherents typically admit their belief is, once again, a matter of personal faith. Skeptical atheists see little merit or use in dedicating their belief to a being who is ultimately unproved and unprovable, so we simply do not believe.
The skeptical atheists' unbelief should not be confused to mean we necessarily affirm the claim "there is no god." The positive affirmation that god does not exist is reserved for strong atheists only, though many agnostic atheists might be willing to say "there probably is no god." Some argue this mentality is unreasonable, and that the only reasonable response to unfalsifiable claims is strict agnosticism: treating the likelihood of existence versus non-existence as 50/50. To address this criticism, I will go back to an argument I have made before.
All of humanity may be, at this very instant, trapped inside The Matrix. All the sense datum we perceive may be the result of a complex computer algorithm designed to keep us naive to the true nature of the universe. Unfortunately for us, all that we know of the universe we learned through our senses. If our senses are unreliable, we have no way of knowing it, so we possess no way of determining whether or not the universe we are in is natural or artificial. If we are trapped, we will never figure it out.
Were we to ask people whether or not they believed they were trapped in The Matrix, we could reasonably predict the most common answer will be no. Is this answer reasonable? Strictly speaking, The Matrix proposition is unfalsifiable, so perhaps strict agnosticism is the only appropriate response. Most people realize, of course, that nonbelief in the proposition is entirely reasonable. For one, like all unfalsifiable claims, it is restricted to the realm of speculation. Furthermore, The Matrix is clearly a product of human creativity with roots in ancient philosophy (mainly the pertinent truth that we cannot affirm the reliability of our sense datum). Were someone to profess their strict agnosticism with respect to that question, giving equal weight to its probable truth or falsity, many would deem that individual irrational or insane.
For skeptical atheists, the god claim carries similar problems, as it is strictly speculative and religions based upon it carry all the usual symptoms of a man-made concoction.
What should be taken away from this entry is not how I have applied falsifiability to arrive at an atheistic state, though this is relevant for anyone interested in the philosophical justifications for disbelief, but rather how falsifiability works and why it matters. When we understand falsifiability and how it keeps our proverbial feet on the ground, I think we can better progress scientific, philosophical, and theological dialogues, and therefore improve our ontologies in general.
I always do my best writing in response to other users. In this instance, I was responding to a user called JBodine. He asked me how I came to be (implicitly suggesting I am specially created by God), and I liked my response so much, and I am so arrogant to suspect you may like it, too, that I decided to post it formally.
I came to be through a very long sequence of natural events beginning as early as we can tell with the rapid expansion of spacetime from a tiny point called a singularity. Within the universe that emerged due to this expansion, cosmic dust settled in a portion of spacetime that would come to occupy our solar system. Through the force of gravity, this debris was pulled together into concentrated bodies of matter which became the sun, planets, and moons.
The third planet from the sun began as a hot ball of molten rock, but as the planet cooled, its atmosphere changed, and through the process of chemistry a molecule formed with the unusual ability to replicate itself. The replications were imperfect though, and through the various iterations of this reproduction, the molecule began to look very different. Eventually a highly primitive cell formed. The cell was particularly resilient because it possessed protective qualities which shielded it from the changing environment. When all other traces of the original molecule had been destroyed, the cell and its copies remained.
The cells, however, were still subject to imperfect replication. Some mutations helped the cell survive long enough to create viable copies of itself. Other mutations impeded the successful reproduction of the early life-form or were simply poorly suited to the surrounding environment; such early organisms would not survive into later generations.
This process continued until lifeforms were commonplace on the planet. One mutation in particular allowed for the creation of chlorophyll and would prove remarkably impactful on the environment. Organisms used chlorophyll to aid in their survival, and as a byproduct, they produced oxygen. Eventually the planet's atmosphere was filled with oxygen, which made the prospect of multicellular life especially probable. Millions of years later, an event known as the Cambrian Explosion occurred, and from the organisms who emerged from this explosion, the diversity of life on the planet we know today emerged.
Eventually, through the ongoing process of natural selection, human beings evolved. They were capable of great introspection and were concerned with questions of reality. They created art and culture. They shared experiences with their fellow man and formulated stories to explain their unknown origins. Using their advanced brains, they became the dominant species of this planet that some would come to call Earth. They developed philosophy, science, and industry, and used these creations for the benefit of themselves. Due to the good fortune of technology, medicine, and agriculture, my recent ancestors survived well enough to proliferate, until eventually a particular sequence of genes were matched together, and I was born.
And thusly, here I am.
[edited for spelling and grammar]
Today is "Evaluate Your Life Day." So, tell us: how do you think you're life's going so far?
Being as young as I am, I have yet to enter a point of stasis in my life. I am still significantly developing intellectually, morally, and philosophically, and for now, my desire to learn and grow is unabated. I have changed as much these past ten years as I did the ten years before that, so I am excited to see how I will change this next decade. Thankfully, I still enjoy several of my juvenile adolescent pleasures: comic books, video games, etc.
I have retained my dearest friends from adolescence, and we remain close to this day. They even handled my dramatic philosophical shift in stride, accepting me as both a Christian and an atheist (true friends, indeed). In recent years, I luckily found a woman with whom I have a great rapport. We are now striving to build a life together, and I am happy to say I look to my future with her with hope and optimism.
All in all, I would say my life is going well. If I could change one thing, I would have begun my earnest college education earlier, but the regret is small in light of the big picture.
May I never stop growing, learning, and loving.
]]>何か、真っ赤な物の写真を見せてください。
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…with a .com, a comments section ceases to become the reason why you’re there and becomes a relatively dispensable opportunity for others to add to one’s observations. All you need to know is that other .coms are being equally versatile as opposed to being part of communities where such others do not exist.
Complete article at according2ed.com
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