Demonstrations, tenability, reasons
So now we’re disputing whether or not goddy claims can be untenable even if they’re not, technically, demonstrably false.
I think they can. It’s true that it’s not possible to demonstrate that goddy claims are false. (When Russell first met Wittgenstein, the latter drove the former crazy by refusing to agree that there couldn’t be [or that he couldn’t know that there wasn’t?] an invisible rhinoceros in the middle of Russell’s study, or some such thing.)
But that doesn’t make goddy claims tenable. It doesn’t make them plausible, either. There are myriad reasons that are short of demonstration but are still good reasons not to believe “God” exists.
To repeat the bit I quoted from Georges Rey:
Now, it doesn’t seem to me even a remotely serious possibility that such a God exists: his non-existence is, in the words of the American jury system, “beyond a reasonable doubt.” I am, of course, well aware that plenty of arguments and appeals to experience have been produced to the contrary, but they seem to me obviously fallacious, and would be readily seen to be so were it not for the social protections religious claims regularly enjoy.
It doesn’t seem even a remotely serious possibility that such a God exists. That’s not a demonstration that it doesn’t, but it’s a very compelling reason not to believe that it does. And this is no small thing. It rests on the idea that one should have good reasons to believe things (where possible, other things being equal, etc). It has traction.
Not sure this is pertinent, but some of the reading I’ve been doing lately concerns religious explanation. God, if it exists, cannot be a good explanation for anything.
Bart Erhman (sp?) gives an argument that there can be no historical reason to believe in God or miracles because historians give the most probably explanation of the data and miracles by definition are the least likely thing. So, the resurrection, creation of the universe are all poor historical explanations because they are miraculous.
There is also an argument that explanations about how things happen are causal explanations. I.e. A caused B. Religious explanations don’t make good causal explanations because we don’t have any idea of the A. So even though God might exist, it’s not a good explanation. This sounds Humean, but I read it in another guys book. Sadly it all escapes me now and I’ve probably fluffed the argument.
Anyway, it seems somewhat pertinent to the idea that there is no compelling reason to believe in God.
We are expected, as some point, to judge any proposition and act accordingly. If a mutual acquaintance proposes that you wish to murder me, I may want to look into that, but at some point I’m going to conclude that the proposition is wrong. The possibility remains, but it would not be good for me to refuse to work with you on that account. Likewise if a respected member of my community proposes that a supernatural agents plans to torture me through eternity if I don’t believe in its existence.
There’s no reason to even ask the question “Does God(s) exist?” As LaPlace told Napoleon, there is “no need for that hypothesis.”
I agree with Ken Pidcock. Using vague terms such as “tenable” doesn’t disguise the fact that the only way we can judge such things is through evidence and probability. However, the argument is usually couched in polar terms, akin to “possible” and “impossible.” Supposedly, it’s a major coup to get something like a god classified as “possible,” and this is done by ensuring that the choices are narrowed down to just two. No recognition is made, naturally, of how hard it would be to classify something (especially with such vague definitions as gods are given, when they are even defined at all – yes, I didn’t miss that either) as “impossible.” Dare I say it just to confuse people, but it might actually be impossible to render something as “impossible”…
Once you’ve stopped playing by narrow rules, though, you’ve changed the game to reflect reality. For instance, what degree of possibility, or tenability, can we assign? How likely should we consider a god to be? These are the questions that are never asked, with very good reason – the answers are already known.
Thus, the argument over what is “untenable” is pointless, until you accept a common definition. I certainly see the extremely low possibility, plausibility, and tenability of supernatural beings, regardless of power, as fitting well within “untenable” – the world is not black & white, and I won’t bother with people who insist that this is the only way to address issues. In these cases, it’s worse than that – the issue is either “black” (absolutely impossible) or “not-black” (everything else, all shades of grey, blue, and chartreuse.)
At any point in time, I can throw out something I just made up, and the very same arguments can be made over it – “Can you prove it’s impossible?” But what possible use is this to anyone? Until it has some bearing on the real world – what we do, how things work, what will happen – it is nothing but hot air. Religious arguments virtually always consist of “what ifs” and not “here’s what happens.” And they can never understand why others don’t give a rat’s ass about “what ifs.”
I must admit, I am either becoming more confused or I’m working out something new. But as in the previous thread, both Ian MacDougall and I agree that “Unicorns do not exist” is not an argument, but part of an argument. And the same would apply to the claim “God exists” or “God does not exist” because there is no line of reasoning going on, nor is there an explanation. Although an argument is not the same as an explanation, an explanation is also part of an argument.
Science does not make arguments as such, but makes explanations. Therefore, in order for a proposition to be scientific, it does not need to be an argument but must at least be an explanation.
Claiming God exists is neither an argument nor an explanation, and so it is not a scientific hypothesis and nor is it a logical argument. Hence why it is untestable and unprovable. In order for the claim to make actual sense, it wiould have to be either logically an argument or scientifically an explanation (hypothesis).
Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but this is rather new to me too (dusting away cobwebs).
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Well, indeed. That’s part of the noticeable difference between real explanation and goddy explanation. The former is detailed and the latter is just empty – it’s just saying. I read someone expanding on this just in the past few days, but naturally I can’t remember where…It might have been Rey, again, or someone else in that book.
That’s one reason “faith” is cognitively harmful – it promotes laziness. “God as explanation” is as lazy as it gets.
Just Al (nothing “just” there, at least nothing mere) has an excellent relevant post on Wilkinson and BioLogos.
http://wading-in.net/walkabout/2011/01/dealing-with-the-real-world/
So far as I know there is no proof of nonexistence for entities that can’t be detected by any means. But why should there be? If they are undetectable, and play no role of even a hypothetical nature in scientific theories, then their “existence” is indistinguishable from nonexistence. There is nothing to disprove. It’s another question if the entity has impossible or illogical attributes. In such cases the impossibility or illogicality is the disproof. So depending on how a god is defined one of these approaches is the correct one.
If they are undetectable, and play no role of even a hypothetical nature in scientific theories, then their “existence” is indistinguishable from nonexistence.
But why scientific theories? We accept logic and mathematics.
There is nothing to disprove.
But that gets us nowhere. If we are playing by the rules of science, we’ve already won. If we’re playing by the rules of magic (i.e. religion), we’ve not even troubled the scorer.
But the rules of magic require that some kind of effect be demonstrated: the invisible rhino must at least make the sheet poke upwards. In that respect, it is very like science, only different. Religion tries to tell you that god is there, even when no effects are visible – no horn, nor even the space where a horn would be, just a story about how there’s a horn there really, even if it doesn’t look like it.
Brian, it get’s us nowhere, yes. That where we should be with empty propositions. What’s the difference between an undetectable entity that “exists” and a nonexistent entity? Russell made this point with the “Celestial Teapot”. I think it applies to gods but doesn’t apply to undetectable subatomic particles which feature in theories that can be confirmed or falsified. That’s why I mentioned scientific theories. God propositions might be considered scientific theories, too, as Victor Stenger says, in which case they are failed theories. Though in the case of impossible/illogical attributes they’re just false. Logic and mathematics are accepted as tools, not entities. They don’t “exist” either.
As for not troubling the scorer with magic, I agree. I’m just taking the trouble to say why, and why scientists frequently say no issue is actually raised which would cause them to accommodate. You don’t have to prove impossibility, that’s double jeopardy! Defining an entity in impossible terms doesn’t cause the issue to be relitigated unless new evidence throws that impossibility into doubt.
Forgive me, but I don’t see a difference between proof-that-god-doesn’t-exist and no-evidence-that-god-does-exist. To me, it’s the same thing, and either scenario makes god an equally untenable position. Here’s what I mean:
If you can prove that god doesn’t exist, then the odds are zero that it exists.
If you can’t prove that god exists, but you have no evidence whatsoever that it does, then the odds are, well, one in as many other things we can think of which can’t be proven false but have no evidence for. That’s one in infinity.
What’s the difference between zero and one-in-infinity? No difference at all, as far as I can tell. (A mathematician may tell me I’m wrong about that, but I think we can all agree that, even if there was a difference, it would be so minuscule as to be utterly insignificant in this case.)
Yes, yes, this is where Christians rush forward with claims that they do have evidence that god exists. And then we’ll jump all over their claims and show that they’re false, and they’ll retreat again. And next week they’ll go right back to telling us, “you can’t prove that my god doesn’t exist” like it’s groundhog day all over again…
Yes, Accent Aigu, it amounts to the same result, and I think I was trying to show how these god propositions fail in more then one way. No evidence, no affirmative case, illogicality and impossibility will each be part of the response to theist claims either together or separately, depending on the case. But if the arguments don’t interest you the extreme implausibility and historic failure of theism is enough to convince a reasonable observer that theism is false.
I’m proposing we take a different tack altogether:
I’m tired of trying to explain to cloudy-headed believers why their god is possible but improbable. I’m stating flatly that god is equal to impossible.
As I see it, the “zero-vs-one-in-infinity gambit” shows clearly and concisely that “not proven false” really is the same thing as “proven false” when there’s no evidence.
If you disagree, you–the believer–have to do the work: explain how a one-in-infinity chance of your god existing is not the same thing as zero chance, or bring me evidence to bring god’s likelihood down from infinity to the level of plausibility.
The beauty is, both moves are unwise. If you try and convince me that a one-in-infinity chance is better than zero, (if you can do it at all) you can’t without emphasizing how infinitesimal the difference is–you’re in the awkward position of having to elaborate on how unlikely your own beliefs are. And if you’d rather go the other route–bring forth some hard evidence that makes your god hypothesis more likely–well, good luck to you! Practically every atheist is so familiar with the tawdry old exhibits of “evidence” believers trot out that we can debunk them in our sleep.
Like Just Al says (#4), believers often act like
So let’s not concede that ground so readily. Let’s be done with awkward “possible but improbable” explanations. Believers invariably ignore the “improbable” part anyway. Let’s just say god is equal to impossible. Let the believers try and convince us otherwise.
It’s worth noting that when Wittgenstein claimed not to know that there was no rhino in the room…
He was lying.
This kind of cutesy hyperskepticism is only tenable verbally; so long as we stay in our comfy armchairs and swap words, anyone can claim that there might be a rhino in the room.
But rhinos are huge, territorial, aggressive. If there’s a rhino loose in the room with you, you are about to die.
Did Wittgenstein act like a man who thought there might be a rhino in the room?
He did not.
Accent,
Well I think that’s more or less what I’m doing in pointing out that there is still no good reason to believe god does exist. But it saves time and futile back-and-forthing to agree that you can’t demonstrate that it doesn’t. Or at least it should, but in reality of course theists just think of other ways to waste time and effort.