Welcome back! lets dive right into Part 2 of my Blog on why you should abandon your faith: Positive affirmations for the existence of God.
You might ask, "What exactly is a positive affirmation for the existence of God?" Well, basically it is an argument that intends to prove that God exists. There are a range of these arguments and they're not very well known to the general public, so lets take a look at some, and see how they fail. The first argument worth dealing with is the 'Cosmological Argument' and even though the name might be unfamiliar, I'm sure you've heard of the phrase "every action has an equal and opposite reaction" before. This is a physical principle that has somewhat of a stake in the Cosmological Argument, the logical form is as follows:
P1: Everything that exists has a cause of it's existence
P2: The Universe Exists
C1: Therefore, the universe has a cause of it's existence
As you can see the phrase we all know, and this argument, both deal with chains of causality. In this case though, we take the fairly reasonable premise that "everything that exists has a cause of its existence" and combine that with the logical impossibility (according to some) of an infinite regress of causality and voilà something must have caused the universe to come into existence, and the best explanation for that something is "God".
You may have already noticed, even if it is logically sound, it still fails to prove the existence of a personal God. There is no link here between 'the phenomenon that had to occur for the universe to have come into existence' and 'the divine, omni-benevolent force that gives purpose and morality to life'. This is the first flaw with the argument. ie even if all the premises and the conclusion were true, it still doesn't mean anything remotely like the Christian God exists.
The second flaw in the argument also happens to be painfully ironic: According to P1 "Everything that exists has a cause of it's existence", so if God exists then God has a cause of its existence. The cause of this God could therefore only be another God (sparking an infinite regress of 'who caused the causer of the universe') or we can say 'oh well some things have just always existed'. This means there is a logical flaw in the argument. Either P1 isn't true and some things (the universe maybe?) can exist without a cause, or P1 is true and if God is your cause of the universe, then you cannot give God the property of existence otherwise God too, will require a cause. Either way you look at it, there is a paradox here which actually prevents the proof of God's existence.
Now I must be charitable here. The Argument has been modified slightly to include the property of 'beginning' to exist. This is attempt to make God exempt from the regress of causality, if God has always existed then He didn't 'begin' to exist and we don't need a cause for him. The universe on the other hand almost definitely did begin to exist. That's a scientific fact. So how do we deal with this problem? The answer lies in why God is allowed to have always existed: because He is unique in that area - He is the only thing that could have always existed. But, this is the same reason why the universe could logically have come into existence without a cause: it is unique in that area - the universe is the only thing that could come into existence without a cause. Once the universe exists, our laws of causality and reactions must apply to everything in it, but if these laws don't exist yet, then (as unfathomable as it is) the universe doesn't need a cause to begin existing.
The best advice I can give to help conceptualise the universe coming into existence without a cause is to think in terms of preconditions rather than physical objects. As the temperate of a gas drops it eventually becomes a liquid, and although we're not getting something from nothing in this chemical reaction, the analogy shows us that external conditions (rather than intentional inputs) can be the factor that changes something from being intangible to tangible. Hope that helps.
I intended to cover two arguments for God's existence in this article, but once again, the word count is creeping up. Next time I will definitely cover two: Anselm's Ontological argument (the biggest joke in trying to prove the existence of God ever) and the Teleological Argument (the infamous Argument from Design!) so stay tuned for some soul-crushingly refreshing logic. Cheers.
Thursday 12 January 2012
Thursday 5 January 2012
Why you should abandon your faith (logically). Part 1.
First things first; Welcome to my Blog! This is my first post, so some introductions are due. I am a philosophy grad from Auckland University, I work a white-collar '9to5' and have radical ideas about pretty much everything I'm interested in (a common trait amongst philosophers).
My most nagging 'radical idea' concerns theism, or more accurately, Atheism. I've studied this subject in and out of tertiary environments and I've come to one conclusion: No matter how hard I try to be unbiased and charitable, you should still give up your theistic belief. Nietzsche said it before me, but I'll say it again, there is no God. Don't take me for a hype man though, what I really mean to say is that there are many reasons to not believe in God, and no reasons to believe in God.
The first thing that really needs to be addressed concerning Theistic Belief is the burden of proof. For those of you who don't know what the burden of proof is, it's this: If I claim something to be true then I need to able to to show you why it's true. If I claim gravity exists, I cannot prove it to you by saying "you can feel it". I need to able to demonstrate that in every circumstance the law of gravity holds, and so long as no true counter examples arise, then you must take it as true. That's not a hard stretch. If someone claims something is true, and it is, every time you test it, then you really should just believe its true. I could get into a long debate on epistemology and how belief structures work, but I'll save that for another Blog. So, anyway, what have I accomplished? Basically, if someone makes a claim (including claims like "God exists") then they need to be able to assert its proof logically.
This is where the first major flaw in theistic belief arises. If you claim there is a supernatural force, dictating everything, which is responsible for the creation of the universe, then you need to be able to show it. Russel makes an (in my opinion, good) analogy of belief in God to the belief in a Celestial Tea-pot. He claims there is a tiny tea-pot orbiting the Earth. Normally we could take empirical evidence and prove there isn't a tiny tea-pot orbiting the Earth, but Russel qualifies his belief by asserting that it is too small to ever be observed by man. This then shows how ridiculous it is to claim that I (the non-believer in the celestial tea-pot) must be the one to disprove his belief; we can't disprove it because it's invisible, therefore I should believe in it? Obviously this is nonsense. We know there is no celestial tea-pot. Just like we know there isn't an invisible Elephant in the room. The ability to qualify and re-qualify a belief is one of the main reasons the burden of proof is on the believer.
The 'Invisible Gardener' analogy is a perfect example of this (credit to Antony Flew). The story goes something like this: Two people are out traversing a forest when they come across a clearing in the wood. In it is a vast array of beautiful flowers, no weeds, everything is perfect. One of the people states "there must be a Gardener". A logical assumption. So they make camp at the clearing and wait a couple days for the Gardener. No one shows. At this point the person who believes in the Gardener states, "There is a Gardener I know it, He's just invisible". So now the second person sets up a fence with bells and such on it. If there is a Gardener he must make a sound when he enters the clearing. They wait. No sound is heard. The believer states "The Gardener is immaterial, he passes through the fence and makes no sound". So the second person brings some dogs along to the camp. Surely they will be able to smell the invisible, immaterial, inaudible Gardener. But alas, more days pass and the dogs barely stir. They smell nothing. Now the second person says "If your Gardner is immaterial, inaudible, invisible and odourless - how is he different from an imagined Gardener, or no Gardener at all?". And I think this is a good point. The second person concedes, he cannot keep proving that the Gardener doesn't exist in the face of all these qualifications, instead he asks the question of what 'does' exist? And the answer is nothing. The more points we raise to try and prove that God doesn't exist, the more qualifications are added to His essence to counter this, and the less He becomes. I saw this story once named 'Death by a thousand qualifications' and as we can see, there is nothing left of the Gardener, if He cannot be empirically proven. So in order to establish the truth of something we must work in the positive, showing how it is true, rather than assuming it's true and forcing others to try and prove it wrong.
Very few believers will be able to show that God exists, but the few people who do accept the burden of proof is on them, and attempt to make these arguments, are worth looking into. I'll go into each positive affirmation for the existence of God next time, and show how they fail. In upcoming blogs I'll cover the argument from evil and move onto some non-logical (not illogical!) reasons to not believe in God.
Thanks for reading and I hope this was some tasty food for thought.
Your friendly neighbourhood philosopher.
nb. check out http://www.guerrillaradioshow.com/ for some amazing audio on many different philosophical topics. I don't have anything to do with these guys, but they're funny and there is definitely something there for everyone. Cheers!
My most nagging 'radical idea' concerns theism, or more accurately, Atheism. I've studied this subject in and out of tertiary environments and I've come to one conclusion: No matter how hard I try to be unbiased and charitable, you should still give up your theistic belief. Nietzsche said it before me, but I'll say it again, there is no God. Don't take me for a hype man though, what I really mean to say is that there are many reasons to not believe in God, and no reasons to believe in God.
The first thing that really needs to be addressed concerning Theistic Belief is the burden of proof. For those of you who don't know what the burden of proof is, it's this: If I claim something to be true then I need to able to to show you why it's true. If I claim gravity exists, I cannot prove it to you by saying "you can feel it". I need to able to demonstrate that in every circumstance the law of gravity holds, and so long as no true counter examples arise, then you must take it as true. That's not a hard stretch. If someone claims something is true, and it is, every time you test it, then you really should just believe its true. I could get into a long debate on epistemology and how belief structures work, but I'll save that for another Blog. So, anyway, what have I accomplished? Basically, if someone makes a claim (including claims like "God exists") then they need to be able to assert its proof logically.
This is where the first major flaw in theistic belief arises. If you claim there is a supernatural force, dictating everything, which is responsible for the creation of the universe, then you need to be able to show it. Russel makes an (in my opinion, good) analogy of belief in God to the belief in a Celestial Tea-pot. He claims there is a tiny tea-pot orbiting the Earth. Normally we could take empirical evidence and prove there isn't a tiny tea-pot orbiting the Earth, but Russel qualifies his belief by asserting that it is too small to ever be observed by man. This then shows how ridiculous it is to claim that I (the non-believer in the celestial tea-pot) must be the one to disprove his belief; we can't disprove it because it's invisible, therefore I should believe in it? Obviously this is nonsense. We know there is no celestial tea-pot. Just like we know there isn't an invisible Elephant in the room. The ability to qualify and re-qualify a belief is one of the main reasons the burden of proof is on the believer.
The 'Invisible Gardener' analogy is a perfect example of this (credit to Antony Flew). The story goes something like this: Two people are out traversing a forest when they come across a clearing in the wood. In it is a vast array of beautiful flowers, no weeds, everything is perfect. One of the people states "there must be a Gardener". A logical assumption. So they make camp at the clearing and wait a couple days for the Gardener. No one shows. At this point the person who believes in the Gardener states, "There is a Gardener I know it, He's just invisible". So now the second person sets up a fence with bells and such on it. If there is a Gardener he must make a sound when he enters the clearing. They wait. No sound is heard. The believer states "The Gardener is immaterial, he passes through the fence and makes no sound". So the second person brings some dogs along to the camp. Surely they will be able to smell the invisible, immaterial, inaudible Gardener. But alas, more days pass and the dogs barely stir. They smell nothing. Now the second person says "If your Gardner is immaterial, inaudible, invisible and odourless - how is he different from an imagined Gardener, or no Gardener at all?". And I think this is a good point. The second person concedes, he cannot keep proving that the Gardener doesn't exist in the face of all these qualifications, instead he asks the question of what 'does' exist? And the answer is nothing. The more points we raise to try and prove that God doesn't exist, the more qualifications are added to His essence to counter this, and the less He becomes. I saw this story once named 'Death by a thousand qualifications' and as we can see, there is nothing left of the Gardener, if He cannot be empirically proven. So in order to establish the truth of something we must work in the positive, showing how it is true, rather than assuming it's true and forcing others to try and prove it wrong.
Very few believers will be able to show that God exists, but the few people who do accept the burden of proof is on them, and attempt to make these arguments, are worth looking into. I'll go into each positive affirmation for the existence of God next time, and show how they fail. In upcoming blogs I'll cover the argument from evil and move onto some non-logical (not illogical!) reasons to not believe in God.
Thanks for reading and I hope this was some tasty food for thought.
Your friendly neighbourhood philosopher.
nb. check out http://www.guerrillaradioshow.com/ for some amazing audio on many different philosophical topics. I don't have anything to do with these guys, but they're funny and there is definitely something there for everyone. Cheers!
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