I often hear from agnostics claiming their position is more rational as the "existence of god cannot be proven or disproven". I find that position weak, if not illogical. One problem wit agnosticism is that there is virtually an unlimited number of statements of this kind. Does Santa Claus exist? Who knows? It cannot really be disproven, can it? And we can always come up with an imaginative ad hoc explanation for any supernatural phenomenon. This is well exemplified in Russell's famous example of the tea pot.
Thus, agnostics should not be simply undecided about god's existence. What about fairies? What about gremlins and leprechauns? What about many gods, instead of just one, the Valhalla, the Hindu deities, what about Zeus and Aphrodite? The true agnostic should be undecided on all of them. How would the agnostic go around his or her day? Would they buy Christmas presents or expected them to be delivered? Really, the theory of chimney delivery cannot really be disproven, so there's a conundrum to torment them throughout shopping season. Also, they should probably they should take out a new insurance policy every time they break a mirror, just in case, ponder if to walk or not under ladders, and, by all means, always wear extra-clean underwear: of course they don't believe in anal probing alien abductors, but the occurrence cannot really be discounted!
However, this usually doesn't happen. Most agnostics will refer to some abstract notion of god, but would be laughing at the possibility of believing in Santa Claus, and while I hope most stick to clean underwear daily, it's probably not for the reasons outlined above. So why would they be so selectively applying their logic to god, rather than all other fantastic creatures?
There are probably many reasons, but the first one that comes to my mind is peer pressure. While there are not many strong advocates for the existence of faeries anymore, several insistent advocates of various one true gods exist. Facing insurmountable pressure, many intelligent people take refuge in the wimpish position of agnosticism.
Yet, when many of these intelligent people make intelligent choices in life, they using a very different kind of logic. They might check airline accident statistics before traveling, but they would not care for reports of gremlins eating away at airplane parts during flight.
Why is this? Because, in one way or another they have internalized the way knowledge progresses in our current era. First of all, many of these intelligent people would use some form of Occam's Razor. William of Ockham in the XIV century asserted that "entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem," that is, one should not make up unnecessary entities. In other words, if one finds unmatched socks after laundry, they could sure choose to believe that little green men in the basement are eating them. On the other hand, a more rational position could be to go downstairs and look in the dryer. There is usually no need to invent entities when a simpler explanation is possible. This does not make the existence of the little green men any more or any less possible, or simply amusing: but rational people would not be concerned about their role in the mysterious phenomenon of unmatched socks.
Religious assertions are generally made about non falsifiable entities. Any statement referring to metaphysical or supernatural entities is built in such a way to be unfalsifiable. In other words, describing a concept as escaping our common ability to perceive it, define it or comprehend it, clearly moves the discourse to an arena where debate is impossible. Anything can be made up and any of these creations would have exactly the same ontological value. A funny and indisputable example of this is Pastafarianism.
One common problem that I see, is people considering the existence of "some god" as the default condition. What they seem to be forgetting is the fact that likely that appears to them as a natural condition just because of how they were raised. It is indeed very common for Catholics to have catholic children, for Hindus to have families who share their beliefs, and so on. The issue here however is not cultural heritage, but rational thinking, at least in the sense of thinking which is coherent with everyday behavior (see the example above about the choice of an airline regardless of gremlins, for instance).
What would happen if one morning someone came up and told us a dragon was laboriously swallowing all the southbound 101 traffic? Most of us would not take the agnostic position and ponder if it's indeed the case to stay home from work for the day. Our default would be the atheist position: is this a falsifiable statement? Probably yes, if a dragon were present and doing what described, several news helicopters would be on the scene documenting the hottest story since OJ's slow chase. You can easily falsify it by turning on the TV. Case closed.
"But the dragon is invisible" might then say the self-appointed prophet, "and no one realizes that this is happening but me, because the dragon speaks to me through high frequency radio waves."
Now, be nice to the guy and call your local social services. But unless you are quite impressionable, his non-falsifiable statement is pretty much irrelevant to your life, wouldn't you say? Congratulations, then: you are an atheist!
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3 comments:
You make some good points, alright. But, I'm not sure that you've converted me!
I'm a believer in Occam's Razor (I think it should be the scientist's equivalent of the Hippocratic oath for doctors!), and so don't see the need to construct convuluted theories to explain experimental results, if a simpler theory can fit all the available data.
So, I find it relatively easy to discard notions of "gremlins eating my socks", Russell's tea pot, "the devil is planting fossils to trick us into believing evolution", etc.
That's because, in the examples you gave, we HAVE simpler alternative theories.
I also respect Stephen Weinberg's approach of trying to disprove specific religions where he can show fault with their theories that they base their religion on. e.g., Fundamentalist Christianity or Islam, etc.
It seems a reasonable scientific pursuit to show intelligent people that their theories might have flaws in them.
However, my problem with atheism, is that I don't seeing it as being a "simpler, alternative theory" as is required for Occam's Razor. It certainly seems to fit the experimental data better than a LOT of religions (especially the older polytheistic ones, e.g., Zeus & Aphrodite, etc). For instance, to me, Occam's Razor easily chooses evolution over intelligent design, or the 5000 year old Earth "Bible" theory.
But disproving one particular "God", or even several different religions, does not prove that the conjecture that there "is NO god" is valid.
At present, the theory that "there is no god" seems a reasonable one to me. It certainly seems more reasonable than a lot of mainstream religions. But, I don't actually see that it is necessarily a simpler theory than "there may be some form of a creator or guiding force at work in the universe that we don't fully understand". I know it might be quicker to say ;), but as a concept they both seem fairly comparable in simplicity.
For me, it's kind of like a fudge factor. The atheism theory is not able to fully describe the universe yet. Admittedly, neither is the agnostic notion. There is a LOT that we don't know yet about the universe (possibly we never will).
For the philosophical questions like "what was there before the universe existed?", "how was the universe created?", etc, both the agnostic approach and the atheistic one seem to get stumped, but the agnostic one seems to me to be more ready to admit that the theory is incomplete (which I think is necessary for us to understand the universe better) than the atheist one.
I see what you are saying and I promise a more articulated response. I think there is one important point: let's not get lost in definitions.
My "atheist" is actually quite close to your "agnostic." I admittedly have a very personal definition of atheism (given tongue-in-cheek in the post) which might differ from the traditional one in the fact that it does NOT posit the nonexistence of god, but simply says, if you are there let me know (and bring adequate documentation) otherwise don't bother me, by default you don't exist.
You choose to fill your "knowledge vacuum" with "god". I prefer a question mark. God is a slippery slope: you create one to explain the unexplicable, and all sorts of people spring up attributing dubious ethical choices to this entity, including dress code, ritual mutilations. No thank you!
Perhaps you are right, and we do have a similar belief system. For me, I prefer to use the term agnostic.
Many vocal atheists like Richard Dawkins (who I consider a "fundamentalist" atheist!) seem to be of the belief that "religion" can be dangerous to society, citing examples such as terrorist attacks, etc. This does have a ring of truth, especially when fundamentalists are involved. But for me, atheism IS just another form of religion [specifically one believing # gods=0, as opposed to monotheism: # gods=1 or polytheism: # gods>1!].
(By the way, if you don't like me using the word "religion", you can substitute "belief system", though to me they are largely synonomous from a practical point of view.)
From a logical point of view, if a particular belief system believing in a specific god can be potentially dangerous for civilisation, surely a belief system believing in an absence of god can also have a similar potential.
To me it seems, that often the problem seems to be with religious people that are convinced that they are right, often with a missionary zeal that makes them impose their belief system on others. Is this not exactly what "fundamentalist" atheists, like Richard Dawkins are doing?
I'm reminded of one of my favourite quotes:
"For every complex problem, there's a simple solution and it's usually wrong." – H. L. Mencken (1880-1956).
Isn't saying "there is NO god", just as simplistic as saying e.g., "there is a God, and his name is Yahweh..."? Isn't it just as non-falsifiable a belief?
To me "atheism" is too definite. I prefer "agnosticism". I know there are different forms of atheism, just like there are different forms of agnosticism, but it seems to me that the word agnostic is less explicit, and more tolerant of other belief systems.
As a specific example of how atheism can be harmful, I imagine it can be very distressing to many mourners to listen to an atheistic view at funerals. Most religions seem to be of importance especially when it comes to matters such as life and death. If atheism is to be a truly useful alternative to other mainstream religions, how come it is so distressing at such a critical time (as mourners attempt to overcome their grief and become productive members of society once again)? How is that helpful?
Personally, when I have been at funerals, I might be personally comfortable with a relatively atheistic view for myself, as are many of my friends, but it took me a long amount of philosophising to reach that view. I don't think it is fair or helpful to try & impose such a view on others.
Atheism can be a depressing religion if you have not reached that view slowly & thoughtfully. I'm not sure that imposing atheism, as part of Communism, on the people in the Soviet Union was a good plan. It's possible it caused (is causing still?) a great deal of harm to morale. (Perhaps in China, it hasn't been as dangerous, because a lot of Chinese belief systems weren't as explicitly theistic as Christianity)
I think atheism missionaries may be capable of great harm to society,
in the same way that the Christian missionaries caused a lot of harm (as well as good) over the last few centuries.
As an aside, I think it's interesting that most of the "missionary"-style atheists come from a Christian background.
If atheism is a better description of the "truth", how come it doesn't appear to spring up as readily from other backgrounds?
In a sense, is not atheism (as opposed to more generic nontheism) a "Christian cult"??? ;) Dawkins et al seem to have adopted the missionary approach of Christianity at any rate!
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