An Atheist’s Faith – Part 1 of 2

My faith as an atheist lies in two areas. The first will be one in which many atheists will disagree with me. The other, though, will probably have more widespread acceptance among atheists. This blog though is about the first one.

First Statement of Faith: God does not exist.

Now that I have admitted that I believe this on faith and made some conservative religious types very happy, let me expand on that and make them unhappy.

I do not believe that an omnipotent, omniscient, moral being exists due to the fact that there is no evidence for his existence and to the fact that there are problems, both philosophically and ethically, with such a being creating what we see around us. However, I cannot prove that he does not exist.

In regards to a lack of evidence, this alone is not proof. I know that the standard (and correct) counter-argument to this is that you cannot prove a negative and, therefore, those claiming something exists have to prove that it does. My problem though, and why I say it is a statement of faith, is twofold.

First, just because a belief may be the most rational one to hold does not mean that it is correct. Our evaluation of what is rational to believe and what is irrational to believe can, has, and does change as we learn and experience more. Continental drift was rejected by the vast majority of scientists for many long years, and with good reason. Evolution was not believed to be valid for many long years too, and the reasoning for its rejection were also logical and rational for a long time. The same with the heliocentric model of our solar system. All of these, based on what was known at the time, and using perfectly good logic and reasonings, were correctly rejected. However, their rejection by most did not mean that they were not true.

Second, and related to the first, for this lack of evidence to be a strong argument against the existence of God, or of anything, it should be linked to other problem that makes the reality of God impossible. To phrase this another way, some existences in the line for proof are more likely than others.

For example, an invisible hippo living in my swimming pool would violate the laws of physics and economics (I would be even more broke than I am now if I had to actually feed a hippo). However, the existence of a unicorn is not physiologically impossible, does not violate any known laws. And, who knows, perhaps we will eventually genetically engineer one or one might evolve due to a changing environment. The point here is that some posited creatures whose existence is without evidence are impossible, while others are possible but lacking in evidence.

God’s possible existence is more like that of the unicorn than the invisible hippo. He is a possible creature rather than an impossible one.

Now, I know many will point to God’s attributes, such as omniscience and omnipotence (which includes the ability to violate the laws of physics, chemistry and all the other sciences) and say that such a creature is clearly impossible. However, that is overlooking one of the basic traits of such a God – he/she/it exists outside of time and space. Since God is not part of our universe and did not derive from it then he/she/it is not bound by its laws and regularities. This trait of God’s is as essential to God’s definition as the horn is for the unicorn. Remove either and the creature no longer exists.

Since God exists outside of space and time and is therefore not limited by natural law and, in fact, created them, then the violation of natural laws are not prima fascia evidence against his existence. Again, unless such a lack of evidence is linked to an impossibility then the lack of evidence is lacking in force as proof against something existence. It does not support the idea of God’s existence, but neither does it, by itself, constitute evidence that God does not exist.

After all, at one time we had no evidence coelacanths existed and they were widely, almost universally, believed to be extinct for 66 million years. But they do exist, as was discovered in 1938. Until it was found scientists were perfectly correct in doubting its existence since there was no evidence of it still existing. However, as the discovery of it in 1938 shows, they would have been incorrect in stating that this lack of evidence constituted proof that the coelacanths no longer existed. Perhaps God, like the coelacanths, exists in a remote and inaccessible place.

Then there is the problem of free will. How can free will exist if God already knows what you are going to do (part of being omniscient). Even if he/she/it does not control your actions and thoughts something obviously shapes them so that he/she/it is capable of knowing all. If free will really existed then God should not be omniscient.

Of course there are a couple of ways around that. One I will discuss a bit later. The other though is to concede that free will may not exist and modify God’s plan for salvation, heaven and hell. Or, for that matter, modify the claim that God is omniscient to have it limited by a certain element of uncertainty. In other words, knowing everything God can make very informed guesses at what a person will do and be right ALMOST all of the time. I have seen both of these arguments used by theologians and believers.

Another issue is justice. Life is unfair and unjust and how can a good and just God create and sustain such a universe? However, this one is a two edged argument against God, cutting against the atheist as much as the theist. This lack of justice in this life can be taken as evidence of some sort of an afterlife and a God. After all, we have an inborn need for justice and fairness. Life does not give us either fairness or justice. Therefore to satisfy this need, to right this wrong, there has to be something more than just this uncaring universe and this lone life.

Just as our need for food indicates that food does exist, even if we cannot find any now, so too does our need for justice and fairness indicate that something must exist to provide them. God provides just such a remedy for that hunger in the next life.

From there though we move to the related problem of contradictions between the traits of God and what we see in the universe. God is moral, and yet there is great evil in the universe; very bad things happen to good people all the time. Although those believers who have dealt with the Problem of Evil have come up with many different answers, all of them except one fails. The one that does not fail – the Book of Job’s answer. God is too great for our understanding, so great that he sees the good in what is happening or the reasons for why evil is necessary when we are unable to. And, truth to tell, this is a reasonable and rational possibility. One that also holds up for the question of God’s omniscience and human free will.

During my many debates with creationists when explaining why an unknown that has no scientific explanation (as of yet) does not constitute evidence for God. I pointed out that there are actually three other possible solutions to the question besides God did it. I won’t go over what the other two are (those who are interested can check it out at my blog “Turning Science Into Non-Science”). However, the third possibility is the one of interest in regards to the problems of God’s existence and why some element of faith exists in stating that God does not exist.

3) There is a natural explanation but we will never be able to solve it because we just do not have the intelligence to do so. For example imagine one of our early ancestors – possibly Homo Erectus – sitting on the shores of the ocean. She notices the tides and wonders what causes them. However her intelligence is too limited for her to ever understand how the gravitational effects of the moon and sun cause the tides. Because of this even though there is a natural explanation she might conclude a god caused the tides when taking baths.

This same argument holds for the question of evil and of free will. We are limited creatures and, perhaps, unable to see the very real solution to reconciling evil and free will to God’s omnipotence and omniscience.

Let me also say that while the existence of God has many different issues, I do not know of any belief system or outlook on the universe that does not have issues and problems – even atheism.
One such problem is that of existence.

Why does anything exist rather than nothing? I am not talking of the existence of the universe, which could be answered by some of the many different multiverse hypotheses floating around; but why does anything exist at all? An uncreated being might be one answer. Of course, then the question comes up of how did God come about. But note the definition of God as uncreated and eternal. So, it is a possibility that cannot be ruled out solely by logic and reason.

Also there is the question of what constitutes evidence? Most atheists (including myself) use science, reason, and logic in regards to answering the question of God’s existence. However, does all evidence have to be empirical and scientific or are other sorts of evidence of equal importance in areas outside of how the universe works? In which case, science and logic and reason would limit how God could and has manifested and worked within the universe, but does not eliminate the existence of such a being.

Personal experience and emotions are often used (and often justifiably so) in making decisions in our lives. Martin Gardner, one of the primary founders of the modern skeptic movement, believed that the emotional reasons were enough for him to make a leap of faith and believe in God. And, while I can bring up some arguments against this, they do not rise to the level of absolute proof.

Consider the limitations to reason and logic contained in the fact – the fact – that I cannot absolutely prove that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow. It always has, but that does not mean that it always will. Perhaps it will go supernova on us. Perhaps the laws of the universe will change. There is really no logical proof that this will not happen..

There comes an end to all logic and all reason. A point by which we have to take it on faith. Even reason and logic tells s this is true when you use these tools to seek an answer to whether they will always work. Just because they have in so many areas does not mean they always will. A bridge before it collapses may have had millions of cars and trucks cross it, yet despite that history of success, it still failed. Without access to look beyond or beneath reason and logic we have no way of determining whether their girders are still strong enough to support our endeavors or whether they are on the verge of collapsing

So, bottom line for me – it is a leap of faith to not believe that God exists. However, this leap of faith is a much much smaller leap than the one involved in believing God does exist. Whereas the biggest unknowable question for me is that of why something rather than nothing exists, for the theist it is the multiple questions of evil and free will and why there is no evidence for God’s existence. My leap of faith in regards to not believing in God is a bigger leap than my belief that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow, but still smaller for me than believing in a God with all of these problems and issues. In fact, my leap is just a short hop compared to the large leap of the believer.

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Why I Am an Atheist

Looking over my blogs I see that I have dealt with various aspects of the various issues that caused me to become an atheist, but I have never tried to provide a concise, one blog summary of those reasons.   So, while this might or might not fit the definition of concise, it is just one blog.  Besides which, I have twice in the last week been accused of being a Christian.   While I do not necessarily consider this to be an insult, it is very inaccurate.

1) Problems with the idea of an omnipotent, omniscient, and moral being.   

This was actually the starting point for my journey to an atheistic position. I had some severe problems with the morality of God as depicted and understood in a literal reading of the Old Testament.   A more liberal reading and interpretation helped for a time.   But I still had problems with the whole heaven and hell thing.   A universalist view helped some with that, but I was still left with the question of why is there so much evil in the world if there is a moral all powerful and all knowing being?

The whole problem is made even greater by the problem of free will.  If God is omniscient, if God already knows what you are going to do then in what sense can you be said to have free will?   And without free will, then how can it be moral for God to hold you accountable for your sins?   And why create us and the world with so much suffering if he already know how it all comes out; why not just skip straight to the desired result?

Now, while this is a problem and is part of the reason I became an atheist, I will admit that it is not proof that there is no moral, omnipotent, omniscient being – God. The reason for this is that, in religion just as it is in science, it is permissible to say “I don’t know” to a question. Especially since we are talking about the reasons of a being whose intelligence, foresight, and power dwarfs ours by many orders of magnitude.   After all, this message was the essence of the book of Job.

In my blog “Turning Science into Non-Science” I discuss why God did it is not a good answer when science does not understand or have an answer for some aspect of the natural world.    The reason is that God did it is not the only possible answer to a lack of knowledge.   In this blog I laid out three other possible answers.

 

“1) There is a natural explanation but we have not come up with the evidence needed to show us how to answer it or come up with the right way to look at the problem to solve it.  Some examples would be Plate Tectonics and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

2) There is a natural explanation but we do not have the tools needed to solve it.  Examples are the Germ Theory of Disease (microscope) and most of Astronomy (telescope).

3)  There is a natural explanation but we will never be able to solve it because we just do not have the intelligence to do so.  For example, imagine one of our early ancestors – possibly Homo Erectus – sitting on the shores of the ocean. She notices the tides and wonders what causes them.  However her intelligence is too limited for her to ever understand how the gravitational effects of the moon and sun cause the tides.  Because of this even though there is a natural explanation she might conclude a god caused the tides when taking baths.”

Please note possible answer number three.   That same reasoning I used here also can apply in regards to God and the problem of evil.  So, because of this, to my mind, the moral problems inherent in an omnipotent, omniscient God is indicative, but not definitive.

2) Lack of Evidence For God’s Existence  

In addition to the moral and other problems with an omnipotent and omniscient being, there was also the problem of a lack of evidence for his existence.   I knew that people cited many different evidences for his existence, but I found none of them convincing.   Of course, a popular and widely used one is the existence of the universe and of the many gaps in our understanding of it.   In fact, this is so widely used that I will deal with this particular “proof” separately.

Other evidence often cited for God’s existence is prophecy.   This is especially prominent within Christian circles.  However, other than a very few easily made “prophecy”, I have yet to find a clearly stated prophecy made and written down before the event prophesized. In regards to my statement about the easily made prophecy, I say this because they involve prophecies about the destruction of Judah by Babylon. Any person living then who was aware of what was happening to the north of Judah – Babylon expanding their way – would have been able to prophesize this. Further, I would imagine that those prophecies made by the less astute about God saving Judah were then quickly forgotten after Judah’s conquest and their writings neither saved nor remembered.

Christians often talk about the many prophecies related to Jesus, yet there are several problems with this evidence. First, were the stories about Jesus – such as his birth for example – created in order to “fulfill” those prophecies? If so, then it is not a case of Jesus fulfilling the many prophecies made about the Messiah, but rather, a case of well meaning and true believers filling in the blanks and smoothing out the difficulties with stories that, while not true, they believed must be true.

An equally serious problem, if not more so, of these prophecies is do they mean what Christians think they do.   When I started investigating and questioning my Christian beliefs many, many years ago one of the first questions I had in regards to these, and other, prophecies is “what did the Jews believe these passages to mean”.   In looking into this I found out that there are several disagreements with what specific words mean as well as how they should be translated.   Many of these prophecies were believed by the Jews to be referring to the nation of Israel for example and not to Jesus at all.    For those interested, two good books on this are The Meaning of the Bible:  What the Jewish Scriptures and Christian Old Testament Can Teach Us by Amy-Jill Levine and Douglas A. Knight and The Jewish Annotated New Testament, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler.

A final evidence often cited is that of personal experience. For me, the fact that all religions, and even many atheists, experience the mystical but differ on  how to interpret that experience was evidence that, while this might be good for the individual concerned, it did not constitute evidence for anyone else; nor for someone who was seriously questioning his beliefs and faith.

Again, though this lack of evidence is strongly indicative I do not consider it conclusive. While less than many believe, there is some truth to the saying that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

3)  No Necessity for God to Explain the Universe and Its Workings  

Arguments for God’s existence based on something about the universe and how it works usually take two forms. The first typically involves some aspect of the universe that we do not fully understand. Both the origin of life and consciousness are two that are frequently cited.    However, just because we do not know how something came about does not mean that we will never know.   Ignorance is not evidence of anything other than ignorance.   To use this as evidence for something is flawed logic and puts a person in the very precarious position of basing their beliefs on ignorance; talk about a foundation of shifting sands! My blog “Turning Science into Non-Science” that I referenced above deals with this in more depth

The other form this question often takes is “what came before the big bang?” When asked there is usually the assumption that if you don’t know, then God must have done so. However, remember that ignorance is not evidence for anything other than ignorance. Further, in this case there are several ideas how our universe could have started (most involving some variant of multiple universes) that are totally consistent with our current scientific theories, in this case quantum theory and relativity theory.

When this is pointed out, those who would defend and continue to use this argument for God often reply that there is no evidence for these alternative ideas being correct. And they are right, there is none. However, when making this observation they are overlooking its true importance. The mere fact that there are viable scientific ideas about what existed before the big bang and what caused our universe to come into existence shows that there are alternatives to the God did it; and since that is so, then ignorance of what came before the big bang does not constitute evidence for God’s existence.

And, again, this is strongly indicative, but not conclusive in regards to God’s existence. There are ideas about God that would fit with all of the above that cannot be ruled out.

4)  Existence

There is, however, one other question used as evidence for God’s existence. It is a question about the universe, but one that I do not believe science will ever have the answer for- why does something exist instead of nothing? This is not the same as how did our universe come into existence. It is a question about something much more basic-why does anything exist at all?

To my mind, I think this to be an unanswerable question. However, the problem I have with this question being used as evidence of God is that the question then comes up of who created God? Usually the answer winds up being one of definition – and I thoroughly distrust word definition arguments whether for or against God (and there are some for both). Unless the definition is grounded in something empirical, it is, to my mind, more a word game than a reality.

Summation

In the end, there was not just one reason why I came to the conclusion that God did not exist.   It was the combination of these several problems with the idea of God, that while each by themselves are not conclusive, taken in total seem to strongly indicate that God does not exist.

And, if in the end, I turn out to be wrong, that he did exist then I can take comfort from the fact that if God had placed any importance on people believing in his existence then he would have made the evidence of it much clearer and more open to rational inquiry.     And if he is a moral being as most believers say, then I will not get too heavily dinged for my unbelief.

 

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