Andrew Zak Williams’s piece on atheists and their reasons for godlessness has finally appeared in The New Statesman. (This is a companion piece to Williams’s survey in April of why prominent religious people believe in God.)
The new piece is in two parts. First are the short explanations written by public atheists, called “Faith no more.” All the usual suspects are there, including Richard Dawkins, A. C. Grayling (whose statement is a model of terseness), P. Z. Myers, Sam Harris, Philip Pullman, Stephen Hawking, Steven Weinberg, Ben Goldacre, Dan Dennett, Maryam Namazie, and me.
For almost all of us, it comes down to one thing: lack of evidence. That’s true even for P. Z., who has previously argued that there is no evidence for a deity that he’d find convincing, since the whole idea of a god is incoherent:
I am accustomed to the idea that truth claims ought to be justified with some reasonable evidence: if one is going to claim, for instance, that a Jewish carpenter was the son of a God, or that there is a place called heaven where some ineffable, magical part of you goes when you die, then there ought to be some credible reason to believe that. And that reason ought to be more substantial than that it says so in a big book.
To me, at least, this part of P.Z.’s statement presumes that there could have been some evidence.
Others, like Sam Harris and Andrew Copson, adduce the palpable fact that religions are obviously human inventions.
A few highlights: Richard Dawkins’s note on Cherie Blair:
Equally unconvincing are those who believe because it comforts them (why should truth be consoling?) or because it “feels right”. Cherie Blair [“I’m a believer”, New Statesman, 18 April] may stand for the “feels right” brigade. She bases her belief on “an understanding of something that my head cannot explain but my heart knows to be true”. She aspires to be a judge. M’lud, I cannot provide the evidence you require. My head cannot explain why, but my heart knows it to be true.
Why is religion immune from the critical standards that we apply not just in courts of law, but in every other sphere of life?
Michael Shermer:
“In the last 10,000 years there have been roughly 10,000 religions and 1,000 different gods; what are the chances that one group of people discovered the One True God while everyone else believed in 9,999 false gods?”
Bioethicist John Harris:
A rational person does not waste time believing or even being agnostic about things that there are no good reasons to accept.
I was quite puzzled by Ben Goldacre’s statement, which asserts that he simply has no interest in the question. It almost seems like an attempt to avoid taking a stand, except that Goldacre is no coward. After all, there could have been a deity responsible for the universe—at least most humans think so—and that belief has conditioned a huge segment of human culture and behavior. Why is it uninteresting? If there’s no evidence for gods, well, then that’s a good reason to cease caring, but to not care a priori?
I think probably the main answer to your question is: I just don’t have any interest either way, but I wouldn’t want to understate how uninterested I am. There still hasn’t been a word invented for people like me, whose main experience when presented with this issue is an overwhelming, mind-blowing, intergalactic sense of having more interesting things to think about. I’m not sure that’s accurately covered by words such as “atheist”, and definitely not by “agnostic”. I just don’t care.
I was deeply puzzled by Stephen Hawking’s statement:
I am not claiming there is no God. The scientific account is complete, but it does not predict human behaviour, because there are too many equations to solve. One therefore uses a different model, which can include free will and God.
“The scientific account is complete”? Account of what? It’s not even complete in physics! And why on earth would our failure to make “equations” to solve human behavior (God help us, what an ignorance of biology the man has!) somehow allow models including not only free will, but God? The statement is largely incoherent.
And, after laboring a long time on my own statement, I can only envy how well Anthony Grayling says it all in a single sentence:
I do not believe that there are any such things as gods and goddesses, for exactly the same reasons as I do not believe there are fairies, goblins or sprites, and these reasons should be obvious to anyone over the age of ten.
Several people, including me, mention the problem of evil, which can be “solved” by theologians only by the most circuitious and unconvincing logic. Others take the Laplace stance: we don’t need God.
But go read them all, and take comfort that so many rational people have converged on the same reasons for atheism. I haven’t had time to read the comments (I’m off to the Hermitage), but perhaps readers can highlight some of the better or funnier ones.
In a separate piece called “The invisible Big Kahuna,” Andrew Zak Williams summarizes the answers. Although I don’t know his own stand on religion (I didn’t ask him when he interviewed me), it seems that he’s sympathetic to atheism. This is based on the peroration of his piece:
But if you rely on blind faith, what are the chances that you’re going to see the light?
For others, their religion satisfies them intellectually. Yet when they can’t reason their way past specific problems (say, suffering or biblical inconsistencies), their faith comes riding to the rescue. But faith is hardly a white horse: more like a white elephant, trumpeting a refusal to engage in debate as though it were something about which to be proud.
The atheists that I spoke to are the products of what happens to many intelligent people who aren’t prepared to take important decisions purely on faith, and who won’t try to believe simply to avoid familial or societal pressures. And as philosopher Daniel C. Dennett put it: “Why try anyway? There is no obligation to try to believe in God.”
And then, after quoting P.Z.’s very strong attack on religion, Williams simply says, “Amen to that.”
I think for Ben Goldacre it’s just so obvious that there’s no god that a person has to be a special kind of idiot to waste time thinking about it – a bit like AC Grayling’s comment about how anyone over 10 and with any brains should know. I’m guessing Goldacre was infuriated and not at his most intelligible.
Hawking’s response also seemed bizarre to me; I’m afraid I can’t say much about it without resorting to the religious tactic of inventing/divining what the author “really means”. I’ve thought about what he means by “the science is complete” and I can come up with several ideas – for example, science now has at least a small understanding of everything which the bible claims to have explained and there is no need for a god anywhere – or perhaps he imagines (and this is in agreement with other statements he has made in the past but with which I absolutely disagree) that the most basic interactions of matter are understood and if only we knew everything and had a conceptually impossible computer, we could predict everything and thus have no need for a god to explain anything. In this list of only 2 possibilities, I tend toward #2 as being Hawking’s intent. However the divination that the basic premise is that the bible+religion explain nothing but science does and has no need for god is my own.
His stance is exactly the same as that of Jonathan Miller. Search “Jonathan Miller – On the ineffectiveness of ‘New Atheism'” on Youtube.
I share the sentiments in both Goldacre’s and Grayling’s responses. To me, they are pretty much the same. The reality of fairies or unicorns or gods simply isn’t interesting.
I don’t think Grayling’s and Goldacre’s statements make similar points.
Grayling highlights the immaturity and reluctance to let go of wishful/magical thinking theists demonstrate, but does nit go so far as to say the matter doesn’t deserve attention.
I really can’t wrap my head around the attitude that such matters are boring and prompt a “next, please!!!” response. Everywhere around us theists are dragging us back to the stone-age or closer to an apocalypse, or just meting out their every-day bigotry and maltreatment of “the other.” How can we NOT want to get involved?!
Grayling certainly does NOT belong in the “uninterested” camp.
Read Goldacre again: he’s answering a question about the existence of God, not about religion as a human activity.
Well, ok. It seems I’m guilty of equivocation between “Do you believe in god, and why or why not”, and “Do you think we should actively oppose religion?”
Even so, Grayling’s response doesn’t indicate he doesn’t want to deal with the issue. Only that the correct conclusion should be obvious.
I still can’t see why high-profile thinkers shouldn’t want to explain their non-belief. People need to hear the arguments for atheism. That’s part of dealing with religion as a human activity.
Additionally, Goldacre’s response doesn’t seem to say: “Come on, there’s no god. Let’s move on.”
It seems more to say: “Maybe there’s a god, maybe not. I can’t be bothered to think about it either way.”
I won’t pretend that I know for certain what he’s talking about, but it is complete on the everyday scale that we live in, at least in principle. More on that, with this in mind:
Here it’s a little clearer what he’s referring to: if we know how to calculate what particles will do on everyday scales, then in principle everything can be solved through the equations of how those particles interact. He’s talking about a deterministic universe, including human behavior, which is probably more aligned with your own views than was clear through his physics-speak. It doesn’t come down to equations in practice because it’s just too complicated – you gain another set of equations and 6 dimensions of phase space for every particle in your system, and something macroscopic like a person has a crapload of particles. But in principle, in a deterministic universe, everything is calculable if only we had enough processing power.
He lost me there, too. I think he meant to say that the disconnect going up to the macroscopic scale (where it gets too difficult to solve the equations and thus show the determinism explicitly) is the wiggle room that allows people to believe in contra-causal free will and god. I don’t think he meant to endorse that as his own view, though.
Yeah I’m thinking something along those lines too. That the practical impossibility of solving particle equations in the macroscopic world will always lend itself to the idea of “god” possibly being “there”, when the religious are looking for an excuse.
I think maybe he meant that since we can’t calculate the answers to practical questions from first principles, we have to make do with concepts that aren’t directly “justifiable”. Russell Blackford has been arguing for the everyday causal effacacy of free will, even if it is illusory. Russell doesn’t argue for the usefulness of God as an organizing principle, but perhaps Stephen might.
Jerry and all weren’t confused as recently as May 16: “So let’s not have any more palaver about Hawking’s ‘mind of God’ remark indicating a deep religiosity.” Not cherry-picking, are we?
No, that’s not cherry-picking.
Stephen Hawking does not believe in a personal god of any sort, he has made that clear on a number of occasions.
This particular response of his in curiously oblique for him, he usually writes very clearly. It seems he was explaining why he thinks people posit gods at all, which was a bit off-topic. It is not, as you seem to be implying, a demonstration of his belief in deities.
Whatever, evidently he doesn’t want to be called an atheist.
I read an article recently by Hawking, and I think I know what he’s on about. He’s just become Carnap.
Carnap thought there were two types of ‘existence’ questions one could ask: theory-internal and theory-external. From within a theory, questions about existence are obvious: they’re entailed by the theory. If my theory talks about phlogiston, then the theory-internal question about whether phlogiston exists is yes. That is, the question whether phlogiston exists according to my theory is yes.
Carnap thought that theory-external existence questions were meaningless. The choice between theories is one of their relative usefulness, not one of ontology (which one talks about the *real* things that *really* exist). If the best theory talks about phlogiston, then you should adopt that theory, and once you adopt it, phlogiston exists (internal to your theory).
So what Hawking is saying here, and has been saying elsewhere (I really wish I could produce a citation for you but it was a magazine article I read on a plane) is that we sort of see how to explain all of reality in terms of fundamental physics (yeah, it’s not *complete* in the sense of “it’s time to fire all the theoretical physicists”, but it’s complete in the sense that there’s nothing we think we can’t handle with the toolkit we have). But physical theory is not very useful in day to day applications so, while it is the case that when we are physicists, duh, there’s no God (he’s not in the theory), the most useful day-to-day explanatory theory might well include God, or free will, or space aliens with mind control rays, or whatever.
Yeah, it’s stupid (not the Carnap but the application of it)– God really is a spinning wheel, even in macroscopic theories. But I think that’s what Hawking’s driving at.
Here is a third description.
[Which I prepared before seeing this thread which makes at least as much sense as my analysis. The “everyday scale physics is complete” works too, and is a safer basis.
However, Hawking _do_ like to push his pets.]
Naturally Hawking is referring to his new pet theory of gravity being necessary for and then constraining cosmology.
It isn’t odd from his idiosyncratic perspective.
That seems to be a description of effective theories, like free will. That is eminently coherent, even working; that is (much of) our chemistry, solid state physics models, et cetera.
He leaves open whether that god is a social or physics theory. However, in this view gods aren’t necessary nor fundamental, which will leave little solace to actual believers. (Though I assume some theologists would entertain ideas of “emergent gods”.)
The analogy between gods and fairies is obvious (and a good point to make). But I don’t think the reasons to reject both are _that_ obvious, so I’ll try to spell them out.
1. Past experience (particularly in science) has shown that invoking supernatural entities in our explanations is counterproductive. Reductive explanations, on the other hand, have worked very well.
2. Intelligent entities with human-like characteristics are just the sort of thing that we would expect people to invent.
3. Given #1 and #2, the claim that such an entity exists is an extraordinary one, requiring extraordinary evidence. But the evidence for such entities is extremely weak.
Personally, I’ve never been an active believer. I was never indoctrinated into belief. I suppose there was probably a time as a very young child when I believed in gods and fairies, but I can barely remember it. For most of my life I was agnostic and uninterested, feeling that, even if there was some sort of god, we had no credible evidence of what he was like, and therefore no reason to let his existence affect us. There was a period when I really _wanted_ to believe and went looking for evidence, but never found it. That was probably what led me to relabel myself an atheist.
Some of my favourite bits.
Polly Toynbee
Journalist and president, British Humanist Association
The only time I am ever tempted, momentarily, to believe in a God is when I shake an angry fist at him for some monstrous suffering inflicted on the world for no reason whatever. The Greeks and Romans and other pagans probably produced the most convincing gods – petulant, childish, selfish – demanding sacrifices to their vanity and inflicting random furies. At least that’s a logical explanation. But an all-powerful God of goodness and love is evidently impossible. He would be a monster. Voltaire said so after the Lisbon earthquake.
PZ Myers
The whole business of religion is clownshoes freakin’ moonshine, hallowed by nothing but unthinking tradition, fear and superstitious behaviour, and an establishment of con artists who have dedicated their lives to propping up a sense of self-importance by claiming to talk to an invisible big kahuna.
It’s not just fact-free, it’s all nonsense.
Philip Pullman
o that extent, I’m an atheist. I would have to agree, though, that God might exist but be in hiding (and I can understand why – with his record, so would I be).
Sam Harris
In fact, the notion that any ancient book could be an infallible guide to living in the present gets my vote for being the most dangerously stupid idea on earth.
Steven Weinberg
It is past time that the human race should grow up, enjoying what is good in life, including the pleasure of learning how the world works, and freeing ourselves altogether from supernatural silliness in facing the real problems and tragedies of our lives.
Jim al-Khalili
Theoretical physicist
It is often said that religious faith is about mankind’s search for a deeper meaning to existence. But just because we search for it does not mean it is there. My faith is in humanity itself, without attaching any metaphysical baggage.
I think Ben Goldacre’s response is a result of atheism which is still oppressed by a sort of ‘belief in belief’. This is my husband’s attitude and he can get quite tetchy about not wanting to be bothered by god or atheism. He doesn’t believe in any gods but I think there is a kind of residual feeling that proper people don’t discuss religion in the first place and certainly don’t go around telling the peasants that god doesn’t even exist! It’s just bad form.
There are many people like that – many of my friends would probably be in that area.
The way I read Goldacre’s response, is also my feeling sometimes: were it not for the historical/cultural inertia attached to the notion of “god”, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. So could we talk about something interesting, please?
A BUNCH of atheists. So that’s the description for more than one atheist. I’ve always wondered about that. Judging from the above post and some of your comments, would a crock of atheists not be more appropriate?
Nope. That collective noun is reserved for theists, astrologers, homeopaths, and so on.
Although the generic term is woo rather than sh—!
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Oh, you can type “shit” here. Especially when referring to the product of those you mentioned.
Oh, I know: I just thought it was funnier not to.
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Michael Shermer:
“In the last 10,000 years there have been roughly 10,000 religions and 1,000 different gods; what are the chances that one group of people discovered the One True God while everyone else believed in 9,999 false gods?”
Yup. In high-school I had put together a similar idea. Sort of the inverse of Pascal’s Wager. If there have been thousands of religions and only one can be right, what are the chances of choosing the right one? That’s where I parted from the church and it was all down hill from there.
Shermer: “1000 gods…what chance you got the right one?”
Theist:”Easy, 1 in 1000, and I got the right one. Q.E.D.”
Surely, that’s only 999 false gods… 9,999 false religions… ?
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“Why are you an atheist?” is a funny question, since many answers are possible. In my case, the most important thing was probably that my parents were agnostics. When at eleven I discovered that I didn’t believe in God*, my thoughts were “it’s just like Santa Claus”, something obviously made up. If asked now, though, I’d reply like most and adduce the lack of evidence or necessity for magical beings.
* Moving from Maryland, which had school prayer, to California, which didn’t, may also have played a part.
Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. Since Viagra did not exist until recently, God would have remained impotent. If on the other hand God is omnipotent then he would have an infinite number of erect penises, which is absurd. Therefore there is no God.
That is taking the subject in hand and massaging it.
I see the New Statemen’s aloof position of trying to stay balanced between reason and unreason as absurd. But I guess it pulls in the readers.
Actually, the original article “I’m a believer” in the New Statemen was far more interesting, as people attempted to rationalize their insanity and silliness.
Do rational or sceptical people really need a reason not to believe? I do not think so. However, this is because we’re viewing belief as opinion, while the religious see belief as faith.
Clearly faith is antithetical to scepticism, and so the sceptic has no need to explain themself. A proper sceptic simply rejects all dogma and faith by default.
Not all atheists are sceptics of course, and herein lies the problem and confusion of the New Statemen’s approach–asking famous people’s opinions is not rational nor a debate.
“To you I’m an atheist; to God, I’m the Loyal Opposition.” — Woody Allen
I never understood the “It doesn’t matter” or “I don’t care answer”. Whether or not there is an omniscient and omnipotent being who created this universe and intervenes in our life is fundamental question of the nature of the universe and human life. I don’t understand not caring. I understand thinking it through, coming up with a decision, and not worrying about it after that. But, I don’t understand not caring at all.
Also, I thought part of PZ’s evidence argument was that he’s had 50+ years of evidence-free living, and any evidence at that this point he would find more easily explained by aliens or mental disorder. He could picture having been born in a world with evidence for a god (i.e., one with miracles, answered prayers, etc.) but that clearly isn’t the world he lives in and at this point there is no evidence that would convince him better than the alien or delirious hypotheses. That’s at least partially how I read his argument.
That isn’t my understanding of P.Z.’s argument, though I may be wrong. He said that no evidence would ever count, because the whole concept of a divine being is incoherent. And why does 50 years of “evidence free living” suddenly make evidence for a god more easily explainable by other factors.
Our back-and-forth on this was a while back, but I do remember giving several scenarios that I thought would constitute evidence for a divine being, and P.Z. rejecting all of them.
I’ll have to re-read the exchange. I do remember PZ making an argument about the incoherence of most definitions of gods. But, I had thought that his argument for why no evidence would convince him now was somewhat premised on the idea that any evidence would have to include a very good explanation of why it just appeared now. Why did the world look godless for decades or even centuries until today? I know Greta Christina directly addressed that argument in one of her posts at the time (she agreed with you), so I may just be mixing up ideas.
“Whether or not there is an omniscient and omnipotent being who created this universe and intervenes in our life is fundamental question of the nature of the universe and human life. ”
I disagree. I simply do not care about such questions, and my reaction to Dr. Goldacre’s response was “yes, can we talk about something interesting, now, please?”
Questions about the creation of everything, the maintenance of vast, complex systems, the problem of evil… none of these are issues I ponder except when prompted to by discussions such as this one. These questions are distractions from the actually important things I need to think about, and have no bearing on my life.
This is the paradox of the apathetic: I have to care *just a little bit* in order to gather the motivation to respond to these questoins, even though my argument is that I care not at all. I’ll just leave those little “notify me” checkboxes unchecked.
“Questions about the creation of everything, the maintenance of vast, complex systems, the problem of evil… none of these are issues I ponder except when prompted to by discussions such as this one.”
That doesn’t actually refute my point. Do you not ponder them because you don’t care, or do you not ponder them because you believe you’ve already found decent answers to them therefore they don’t interest you? The fact that you read and comment in posts such as this indicates that you don’t find the topic entirely uninteresting.
Whether or not there is an omniscient and omnipotent being who created this universe and intervenes in our life is fundamental question of the nature of the universe and human life. I don’t understand not caring. I understand thinking it through, coming up with a decision, and not worrying about it after that. But, I don’t understand not caring at all.
I would be one of those who used to care a lot, then thought it through and rejected it. I now don’t care, because in retrospect I see the question as not worth the enormous amount of time spent on it (ie. in itself — the classic arguments are still interesting as abstract exercises in logic, and unfortunately the apologists still have to be challenged in the public field).
For example: if I claim to hold the keys to Heaven and Hell, and that you must give me all your money to gain admission to the former, how much time do you spend worrying about that question? The fallacious logic of Pascal’s Wager would say you should at least pay serious attention, as the stakes are so high. But if you’re sensible, you’ll dismiss me out-of-hand as an obvious con-man and/or nut. So, what have the claims of traditional religion got that I don’t? Nothing but the tradition, that’s what. You should dismiss them with the same ease and speed as you dismiss mine.
So I find the apatheist reply an attractive one, as it subverts the evangelists’ pretensions to be saying something Vitally Important.
Goldacre redeemed himself somewhat with the chuckle-inducing line, “I wouldn’t want to understate how uninterested I am.” Still, I don’t understand how in 2011 someone could be a non-believer and also not care. The other side cares, and cares a lot, and is aggressive about pushing their agenda. This kind of complacency is what allowed bigots and hatemongers to co-opt the phrase “family values.”
You’re conflating “God” with “religion”. It’s quite possible to regard the former concept as massively uninteresting, while taking the latter very seriously as a sociopolitical issue.
It’s also possible to take (some particular thoughts about) “God” as a personal moral guide, while taking religion as party politics as usual: essentially secular.
As somebody who is essentially in agreement with PZ on this subject, permit me to attempt a defense.
If the simple claims of theists were true, there would be inescapable evidence — just as with Sagan’s garage dragon. If a zombie horde had descended upon Jerusalem at the moment of Jesus’s death on the cross, each and every piece of paper with writing on it from that moment on would mention it. That we have libraries of such pieces of paper and the only one to mention it is a copy-of-a-copy from at least several generations removed is all the proof we need that there’s no “there” there.
But the theists have not-so-simple claims, as well — namely, that Jesus is a personal manifestation of an entity that transcends logic itself: he can both make the un-liftable rock and simultaneously lift it. And the fact that he can do so, despite the fact that it’s impossible, just adds to his super-ultra-mega-hyper powers.
These claims are sheer nonsense, the incoherent babblings of childish dolts impressed with the sophisticated-sounding blather they spew. Not only is there no evidence for their claims, not only can there be no evidence for their claims, but their claims are just meaningless words strung together.
Never mind the evidence required to support a claim of a married bachelor. What evidence do you need to confirm or deny the existence of a vkjhe fasjkg dkgsheo?
Such, at least, is my position, and I’m pretty sure PZ shares it with me.
Cheers,
b&
The most sensible thing said in this article is the last sentence: “Why try anyway? There is no obligation to try to believe in God.”I’ve always wondered why atheists are so interested in God. IMHO if he does not exist simply do not talk about Him. Why talk about something that is nothing? Why whine and decry the fact that other people do? One person’s medicine is another person’s poison. If this God exists he obviously does not force himself on anyone.All the theorists and philosophers in the world have never been able to prove that he does not exist. True most religionists have used their belief to fleece the flock or instill fear in others. Yet that “outdated” book’s fight to survive is remarkable to say the least. It will never go anywhere. “All the usual suspects are there, including Richard Dawkins, A. C. Grayling (whose statement is a model of terseness), P. Z. Myers, Sam Harris, Philip Pullman, Stephen Hawking, Steven Weinberg, Ben Goldacre, Dan Dennett, Maryam Namazie, and me.” seem very consumed by God to have spent such a great part of their lives trying to convince others he does not exist.
Are you completely oblivious about the number of horrors that have been done in the name of God, by people who believe in God? Why talk about something who is nothing? Because that “nothing” has been the cause of endless murders, persecutions, subjugation of women, and child rapes.
I can’t believe you’re really that ignorant about the reasons why many atheists are activists about their nonbelief.
And if belief in Santa Claus also poisoned everything, I’d be an anti-Santaist, pointing out constantly that there isn’t any such person.
<AOL>Ditto.</AOL>
If religion were a personal matter, like taste in music or an eccentric hobby, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
But religion is what drove the Nazis, with “Gott Mit Uns” on their belt buckles and Mein Kampf being indistinguishable from one of Martin Luther’s “sophisticated” theological essays. Religion is what inspired the 9/11 attackers to alter the Manhattan skyline. Religion is what drove Torquemada to do his evil deeds — better that one suffer a month of Earthly torture than an eternity of damnation, after all.
And religion is what’s driving people to replace sound science with idiotic faery tales in the classroom. And religion is what’s dividing people along pointless fault lines every time some jackass invokes one of his imaginary friends at a public gathering. And religion is what’s powering some of the nastiest forms of bigotry popular today.
So, yeah. I’ll talk about this “something that is nothing.” And I’ll keep talking about it until it really is nothing, too.
Cheers,
b&
You made a very good point there. One that I am not oblivious to . Yes folks have done horrible things under the guise of religion, but let’s not ignore the elephant in the room…no one has killed more innocent people than the Atheist dictators of the 20th century…no one. Therefore willing God out of existence will not make this world a safer place. I cannot believe that just because some religious zealot claims that they are committing a crime in the name of God that you would actually assume that he is the cause of it. Believe me he does not approve of such actions and will deal with the case in due time.
idiot
This nonsense? Again?
Hitler was a devout Christian; Mein Kampf is indistinguishable from one of Luther;s “sophisticated” theological screeds.
And it’s no more possible to “will God out of existence” than it is to “will Quetzalcoatl out of existence” or any other fictional character. Your imaginary friends and the monsters under your bed may seem real to you, but they’re still childish fantasies with no bearing on reality.
Cheers,
b&
I agree with you to a point on this. Yet your saying that religion is responsible for this and that does not negate the existence of God. Mankind has always looked for an excuse to justify their atrocities. So you attribute everything bad in the name of religion to God and what about the good? And if there is not good in religion why are
still here? How come religion has not murdered all of us? My point is..if God does not exist, forget about him and move on with your lives. I find atheists to be the second biggest promoters of God and religionists of gods. Atheism jolted my mind years ago and made me do some serious searching. I too hate the religions that commit atrocities under the guise of the faith. However I believe the atheistic arguments to be very weak and filled with petty fogging.
okay, Abiden, my policy on this website is to ask those who profess belief in God, such as you, to give us the reasons why you think God exists. Evidence, please, or else find yourself a nice religious website.
Thank you guys for taking the time out to respond to my arguments.Sorry I am not trying to come across preachy here. I am trying to gain insight by being argumentative. Reason being I want to find out if Atheists can give convincing credible evidence of God’s non existence. My motive is information gathering only for reference for future debates. To me the argument of God does not exist because religions do this and that is a notable one. Atheists believe God does not exist because of the atrocities committed in the name of religion. It actually shows that there are some deep compassionate people in atheism. People often paint the picture that atheists are purely evil. That is why I brought up that atrocities in the name of atheism argument. However your clear statements (though at times insultive.):) proves a point I was recently debating..hypocrisy in religion blinds people mentally and can desensitize persons perceptions of what is right and wrong. At least atheists are bold enough to speak out about it. Evidently the debate about whether was Hitler a christian is still very heated. Also saw some info on Stalin on another site. Will do the research on Mein Kampf. I guess I have to go to another website to get the rest of my information on why atheists believe in evolution since I am being kicked out. LOL. Believing in God or not, to me it’s a matter of choice. As human beings we have different inclinations. Well, off to another blog.
And don’t say good riddance I will be very hurt! LOL.
First, you’ll note that you’re welcome to stay if you can provide evidence for the existence of your gods. That you choose to leave rather than provide evidence should be all the commentary necessary for why one would be an atheist.
Second, since you’re hung up on religious people being inadequate proof of the nonexistence of gods, consider the Catholic child rape scandal. Here we have, allegedly, the human representatives of your gods, authorized to regularly serve one of them out piecemeal and to perform all variety of acts in their names — baptism, marriage, last rites, the works. And, yet, your “love” gods did absolutely nothing to stop the priests from raping children wholesale. Worse, the entire hierarchy, all the way to the top, acted to enable the atrocities. Benedict asked Fr. Maciel to take early retirement in the American midwest rather than hand his file over to the Mexican police, for example.
The only possible conclusion can be that either your gods wholeheartedly endorse child rape or they’re impotent to stop any of their own from engaging in it. Either way, of what good are they?
This is but one subcategory of the evidential problem of evil.
Consider, for a moment, the world’s greatest surgeon. He’s driving down the road when he sees a car wreck off to the side. Rather than stop, call 911, and render aid, he keeps on driving because he thinks it’ll be a better learning experience for the victims if they try to sort it out on their own and he doesn’t want to interfere.
If word of the surgeon’s negligence ever got out, his reputation would be ruined, his career ended, and he’d probably (hopefully) face criminal negligence charges.
Now, imagine that the wreck involved his beloved daughter driving an unmistakably distinctive car. How much worse would the rage against him be?
Such is the position you would claim of your gods: they love us, they’re perfectly capable of immediately healing our most profound and deepest hurts, and yet they’re perfectly absent.
Those mass murders of the 20th century you blaming atheists for? Why did your gods leave it to other humans to clean up the mess?
Let’s stick with Hitler. He had a passion for painting but wasn’t very good at it. Why couldn’t Jesus have done as the least of a Greek Muse could have and inspired him to greatness? He then would have gone on to become a great (but perhaps disturbed and disturbing) Austrian painter, never entered politics, and we would have been spared WWII and the Holocaust. No “free will” would have been violated, and where there was death and destruction on an unimaginable scale there would have been art and beauty. And no ostentatious displays of power, either.
For another more current example, rather than divert the planes from the towers on 9/11, all Jesus could do was cause a superstructure t-junction to stand upright in a manner suggestive of his own favorite instrument of death-by-torture. Why bother to leave his calling card buried in the rubble when he really should have visited the Angel of Sleep upon the hijackers the moment they pulled out the boxcutters?
This post is already too long, so I’ll wrap it up here. But the Problem of Evil — one which Epicurus first made famous centuries before the Caesars — is hardly the only ironclad proof against the existence of your gods.
Cheers,
b&
Some misconceptions here that need correcting:
Reason being I want to find out if Atheists can give convincing credible evidence of God’s non existence
It is not up to atheists to give credible evidence of God’s non-existence: that is reversing the onus. Rather it is up to theists to give evidence of God’s existence — because, as pervasive as the god-meme has been throughout Western history, it’s not obvious that it represents anything real.
Atheists believe God does not exist because of the atrocities committed in the name of religion.
That would be only one of the reasons, the most important reason being in my view the lack of positive evidence *for* gods. To my mind, the atrocities done by any particular sect only demonstrate that that particular sect fails to give its adherents contact with any transcendent source of moral guidance or strength — it does not rule out the possibility that some other sect does have a pipeline to the One True God.
I guess I have to go to another website to get the rest of my information on why atheists believe in evolution since I am being kicked out.
The reason most knowledgable atheists (note the qualification) believe in evolution is because the scientific evidence (there’s that word again!) is entirely in favour of it. I suggest talkorigins.org.
As significant is the lack of supportive positive evidence, it’s the mountains of negative evidence that seal the case.
For example, the Theory of Evolution by Random Mutation and Natural Selection is overwhelmingly supported by empirical evidence, perhaps more so than any other scientific theory.
Famously, but one single rabbit in the precambrian would cast the whole theory into doubt.
Or, in contrast, there’s the Higgs Boson. Right now, there’s no evidence either way (though there are rumors of some early hints of statistical significance). It’s most reasonable to remain agnostic with respect to the Higgs. It is not, however, reasonable to remain agnostic with respect to the solar system atomic model (though it retains a bit of utility in introductory classes).
The failure of the theists to present evidence supporting their propositions is damning but ultimately inconclusive.
The existence of incontrovertible evidence contradicting their theories is what slams the coffin lid closed, nails it down, superglues it in place, and buries it in a subduction zone.
Specifically, all theists claim the existence of at least one superhuman agent with an active interest in human affairs, generally benevolent — and, yet, we see innumerable events where such an agent could not have helped but to have stepped in and yet failed to do so.
It’s like the herd of angry hippos stampeding through my living room right now. The furniture couldn’t possibly survive such an assault, and Baihu would be hiding under the bed. Yet Baihu is sleeping peacefully and the furniture is intact. Ergo, no stampede of angry hippos in my living room.
Cheers,
b&
There is actually a word for people like Ben Goldacre: he’s an apatheist.
Deen beat me to it. I can’t speak for Mr. Goldacre, but I don’t care much about debating propositions like ‘God exists’ or ‘God doesn’t exist’. I am, however, very offended by people who use religion as an excuse for murder or oppression or inserting nonsense into the teaching of science. These are two distinct areas.
Yes, this. A better response than mine, and I agree.
Religion = nonsense, not worth discussing.
Activities of people in the name of religion = very worth discussing.
One woman. What is the ethnic breakdown of this group? Kind of sad. If we are going to stick to white men why not get Neil Armstrong and Bill Anders, Buzz Aldrin and Frank Boorman in there? Those already famously god free are unlikely to even be read – selective attention, at play. Surely Gloria Steinem, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein or Julia Sweeney could have been prevailed upon as could have Amartya Sen, Simon Singh and Jamila Bey. But why would the New Statesmen care about changing the image of atheists as a bunch of white scientists dudes if we don’t care about it?
Huh? I count 5 women:
Maryam Namazie
Susan Blackmore
Paula Kirby
Polly Toynbee
Jennifer Bardi
I think you are missing the point/nuance of Ben’s reply. He is viewing it from a strictly scientific point of view. To me his reply combines Laplace and Sherlock Holmes
Laplace gave us
Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là. (“I had no need of that hypothesis.”)
Sherlock Holmes when Watson informed him about Copernicus’ sun centred solar system replied interesting but it doesn’t help me in my work so I will promptly forget it.
To me Ben is saying about God, I don’t need that hypothesis and it doesn’t help me in my work so why bother thinking about it. It is just a waste of time.
This is off topic, but I wanted to point something out about Sherlock Holmes.
Holmes tells Watson that he didn’t know the Earth went around the sun right after the pair first meet. However, in the later stories, it is clear that Holmes understands astronomy and is interested in all sorts of trivia. While the change was probably due to Arthur Conan Doyle’s changing conception of the detective’s character, the standard in-universe explanation is that Holmes is just messing with Watson.
I wonder if Lord Martin Rees was asked for a statement ?
I suppose he’s difficult to get hold of now ~ he must be near the top of every telesales list ~ at least I hope so 🙂
I may have missed someone else mentioning this about Dr. Hawking’s comment, but when I read it I thought he meant:
People (lay-persons) have trouble understanding scientific models and therefore use “simpler” models of “it must be god” and “I have free will” to understand human behavior.
Perhaps (probably?) I’m wrong, but that is how I interpreted it when I read it.
Regarding Dr. Goldacre’s response: As a Brit who moved to the USA 20 years ago and became a US Citizen : in the UK, where I lived for 30 years, religion is simply irrelevant. It is not a part of public life. It is not a question or discussion that comes up. Irrelevant. There was never any question that I had to decide whether I was atheist or religious, the question was not worth asking and there was no pressure to answer it. I completely understand where Dr. Goldacre is coming from. Dawkins in the God Delusion alluded to this I believe when he talked about how he grew up in the UK. I remember a line in there about state religion innoculating you against “true religion”. Unfortunately this is not the case at all in the US
I wonder if atheists get tired of saying the same shit!!!!!!!!! I am!
If we were tired of discussing religion and its adverse societal effects, we wouldn’t be ardent atheists.
However it is tiresome to hear erroneous strawmen about atheists repeated. That stuff leaves anyone cold.
I wonder if self-aggrandizing idiots ever tire of using multiple exclamation marks?
Silly Goldacre, the word is “indifferent”. This word has been in use referring to persons in written sources older than I am, if the libraries of my youth not be fradulent.
(Err, I think one of the books had a greenish cover, if that helps. A biographical little thing.)
Thank you Eamon. It’s interesting that people would label me an idiot etc because I am searching for answers and expressing my opinion. However it is refreshing to actually get some solid information. That website you gave me was loaded with information I will definitely be able to use.
Also I found this video about an Antony Flew. What do you guys think about his arguments? Do you have any information?
Flew was a bit wobbly towards the end, and was taken advantage of by people who should know better, given their claims of being xians.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/02/antony_flew_goes_to_heaven.php
…and more…
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/11/roy_varghese_and_the_exploitat.php
…and more…
http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2007/11/antony-flew-bogus-book.html
it’s quite sad, really.
do hope you learn from that example.
… if those representing your religious tenents work SO hard to coerce and spread false information…
what does that tell you about your religion, Abiden?
they’ve been lying to you all along.