By Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller) has an essay up on NPR about why he believes there is no God. He says:
I believe that there is no God. I’m beyond atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy — you can’t prove a negative, so there’s no work to do…. I’m saying, “This I believe: I believe there is no God.”
I think similarly. There’s no way to prove there is no God, but there is no evidence for one. So I live like there is no God — and am pretty convinced there is none.
How far do you go — do you not believe in God, or do you believe there is no God?
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I believe there is no god. If there was a god, the world would be a lot different to the way it is. In fact, I have publicly stated several times that if there is a god, the default position for any moral person must be opposition to that god, because any deity which presides over a world such as this one must be malevolent. We do the best we can, but the world seems to be created to be painful for those who live in it for no purposeful reason. A freshman philosophy student can concoct a better world system than the one that exists.
Depends on which god you want my opinion on. At one end of the spectrum are the clear absurdities, which I actively deny (sometimes called “strong atheism”). At the other end are vague philosophical gods, which do not seem confirmable or refutable even in principle. About them I am formally agnostic. In the middle are a bunch of gods not obviously and decisively proven false, but with no positive evidence for them. I do not actively deny them, but I assume as a matter of practice that they do not exist (“weak atheism”).
As far as I can see, all the gods of popular religion fall between the middle and absurd end of the spectrum. So “atheist” is the most useful self-identification.
Pretty good essay by Penn!
This question seems to be dividing atheism into two different sections. Isn’t not believing in God, and believing there is no God basically the difference between being agnostic and atheist?
I know that being agnostic means one does not deny the existence of God, but doesn’t it mean that they do not believe in him?
So, an agnostic doesn’t believe in God, but doesn’t deny the existence. An atheist doesn’t believe in God, and DOES deny his existence.
Correct me if I’m wrong.
Anyway, I’m atheist. I don’t have any reason to be unsure.
@Wazza:
Excellent point.
I was disappointed in 2005 when I missed Penn presenting his essay on NPR. I did, however, immediately find it written out on the website and found that it matched my sentiments quite closely.
http://dergeis.livejournal.com/199716.html
Richard Dawkins has already addressed this I think. Obviously you can’t prove there is no god just as you can’t prove there aren’t invisible purple unicorns. Is not about absolute certainty but probability. More like, is highly unlikely that there is a god. Given that is very improbable, just like you, I live my life assuming there is none.
I believe plenty of scientific, historical, philosophical, and psychological evidence proves there is no god. The evidences in support of theism and deism are highly interpretable at best and weak at worst
I am an “agnostic atheist”. Agnostic = I don’t KNOW if there’s a god, and atheist = I don’t BELIEVE there’s a god either. I only include “agnostic” because, by default, NOBODY knows if there are gods or not… But how can I believe in something when all signs point to “no”? I love what Penn says about this:
“Anyone with a love for truth outside of herself has to start with no belief in God and then look for evidence of God. She needs to search for some objective evidence of a supernatural power.”
That’s good advice for EVERY subject, not just religion! Sing it, brother!
Anything of a “supernatural” nature is just mythology, our imaginations running wild… It’s all just a way to explain the unexplainable. (See a weird shadow? Must be a ghost!) Well, maybe that was the case up until 100 years ago, but today it’s a different story. Through technology, we’re beginning to learn that potentially ANYTHING can be understood, mastered, and ultimately controlled… (Something our superstitious predecessors weren’t counting on!) That screams “NO GOD” to me.
I just find it impossible to go all the way and say that there is no God. I look around the world and everything seems so complex that I feel there must be a creator of some sort. I am not sure that it is a Christian creator or any other faith system but I hesitate to believe that the world was not created that it was just there.
Lance: science has pretty much shown how everything can develop from only a few simple rules. It’s only so complex now because it’s been twisting in on itself for the last 15 billion years.
@Lance:
So what do you propose as an alternative?
There are some very accessible books and podcasts out there which may help firm up your agnosticism. It’s exciting and beautiful stuff–far better, for my money, than ancient fables from dusty books of shepherds’ tales.
Me, I believe there is no god. Nothing in my experience requires that a god exist or be present. Nothing in the authenticated experience of others requires the operation of supernatural agents. And science is doing very well at taking god myths, creationism, near-death experiences, and similar wishful thinking to pieces.
How wonderful to be alive in such a time!
If Dan had even the slightest understanding of evidence he would know that evidence is interpreted based on presupposed biases. Saying “there is no evidence for God” is nothing more than a statement of “I don’t want to admit that I’m a bigot.”
I’m thankful, however, that some atheists are willing to admit that they believe atheism. Belief is nothing more than intellectual assent, so I’m humored by some atheists who think they’ve taken a jab at irrationality and superstition by proclaiming that they “lack belief in gods”.
What kindness and charity! You must be a Christian. Welcome!
Daniel…It is amazing that atheists can take potshots at theists and chortle at their ignorance and superstitions; then, when the tables are turned, sarcasm is the response.
What arrogance, condescension and elitism! You must be an atheist. Welcome!
@Lance: Have you studied evolution at all? I think that would be the place to start understanding how complexity and design can come about through natural selection. We all see lots of complexity and design, but that is the byproduct of evolution, not a designer. Otherwise, you have to explain all the crappy design everywhere along with the good design. :)
Lance writes: I just find it impossible to go all the way and say that there is no God. I look around the world and everything seems so complex that I feel there must be a creator of some sort. I am not sure that it is a Christian creator or any other faith system but I hesitate to believe that the world was not created that it was just there.
There is this “gee-whiz” quality about the world that encourages the intuition that there must be an intelligent agent behind it. However, it seems that this intuition inevitably does not survive the attempt to place it on a rigorous basis. Witness the failure of “Intelligent Design” to provide anything beyond recycled (and long-debunked) creationist arguments against evolution.
Keith writes: If Dan had even the slightest understanding of evidence he would know that evidence is interpreted based on presupposed biases. Saying “there is no evidence for God” is nothing more than a statement of “I don’t want to admit that I’m a bigot.”
Well, that looked like the beginning of an exposition of Presuppositionalism, but it seems to have been short-circuited by an attack of bile. No matter: presupp’ism is still crap.
@Dwight
It appeared that Keith took the first “potshot” here.
I’m sure everyone that frequents this blog would welcome theist point of views, but when people such as Keith come out of nowhere and attack Daniel for his “beliefs” and suggest he is lacking in intellect, I think it very much warranted a sarcastic response.
Keith’s comment contributed nothing to the discussion, let alone the topic of this post.
When you have absolutely no evidence to support your beliefs, you fall back on word games.
Semantics is the theists favorite toy. It can be made to do anything!
Thanks for the pleasant responses from everybody. I do not have a problem with evolution I believe it works and I think it can be compatible with the idea of a creator. For me it goes all the way back to when the universe started to expand outward. Did that just happen on it’s own or did a “creator” put things into motion? I find it impossible for me to say definitively either way.
Lance,
As a completely serious question, do you think that maybe the reason you find it impossible to say definitively either way about evolution is perhaps because you don’t understand it well enough?
Think about all of the things that humans throughout history attributed to a “higher power” that have since been proven to be completely natural scientific occurrences.
Of course this fact does not prove evolution, but at least there is countless evidence that shows it to be true, whereas the argument of a divine hand has zero evidence to back it up. It’s only evidence is that the people that are unable to understand the incredibly complex science of evolution believe that God is to thank.
McBloggenstein,
That is a valid question. It is very possible that I do not understand the concept of Evolution will enough. But I do not know if that hurts me in this discussion. If hypothetically I have chosen to believe in an all powerful being with no limits on his power then can’t I just say it doesn’t matter the “all powerful being” did it. I can fall back then on my blind belief or faith if you will. My position is that I am having a hard time believing either position. I am not convinced that is was Evolution just like I am not convinced that a “higher power” created everything.
Lance,
Do you mean to say that because most of us are not evolutionary scientists, people that believe in evolution are essentially putting faith in it because they don’t really understand it? Just as others put faith in the idea that God had a hand in the way things are?
I will say this… remember that atheism is based on rational thinking and reason and skepticism. All of these virtues are great for finding out the truth (basically the scientific method).
The definition of scientific is “a method of inquiry that is based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning”.
Of course I don’t know the intricate details of evolutionary science, but the method for which people much more educated on the subject than I am have come up with the theory, found evidence for it, and proved it, sounds much more plausible to me than attributing the cause to something highly implausible of which there is no evidence.
Ah, Keith, the wrong just piles up behind you wherever you go …
If you have evidence that you interpret as supporting the theory that there’s a god, you’d best produce it, don’t you agree?
You claim to have studied the philosophy of science. Your studies, by your comments here, have simply led you to conclude that science is wrong, by virtue of being “biased”. A bias to which you, yourself, as the observer, are presumably immune?
Yet you haven’t offered the alternative, the evidence-based method of discovery that, presumably, Big Science is concealing. What is that method, please?
When I drop a rock, it falls to the ground. There are only so many ways I can interpret that, no matter what my supposed biases are. Further scientific experiment will eventually get me the Theory of Gravity.
Which presumably you will point out is just a theory?
If atheism is somehow biased, it is because it doesn’t respect intellectual assertion over evidence.
I believe there is no God. I think we create God out of a necessity to fill the gaps in our knowledge. As we get smarter and fill the gaps, it turns out to have not been God after all. I think that is a reliable trend.
And as far as the “first cause” argument goes (aka: “someone had to have created all this”) Lance’s apology for God is a self-conflicting mental pretzel.
If you *insist* that nothing can exist without having been created, then why don’t you insist that something must have created God? That’s an inconsistent level of query. Your inquiry simply stops when you get to the puffy clouds and harp music.
Dan: What kindness and charity! You must be a Christian. Welcome!
Indeed, Dan, since you are so well-versed in scripture you know that kindness and charity means agreeing with your opponent (however that is possible). Good job. I’m sure that if I used “nice” words you’d suddenly fall on your knees and repent.
Dwight: then, when the tables are turned, sarcasm is the response.
If you want to see some good Christian sarcasm you should really read Christ’s dialogues with the pharisees or Elijah’s interaction with the Baal-worshippers.
Eamon: Well, that looked like the beginning of an exposition of Presuppositionalism, but it seems to have been short-circuited by an attack of bile. No matter: presupp’ism is still crap.
Even if I was an atheist I’d be a presuppositionalist. Presuppositionalism is simply the belief that everyone reasons according to assumptions. You’re assumption is that you are the authority, mine is that God is the authority. Hence we’re both presuppositionalists. The term is used so often by Christians, however, that people tend to think that only Christians are presuppositionalists.
Metro—thanks for the response. Good questions.
Regarding my evidence for God—my criteria for evidence is entirely different than yours so I doubt you’d be impressed with my evidence, just as I am not impressed with your evidence. That’s why presuppositions matter.
I claimed that science is “wrong”? I believe science works—as in, allows us to achieve our ends (pragmatism). But I do not believe we can ever know whether something is true using science since the scientific method uses induction and asserts the consequent—both are logically fallacious and can never guarantee the conclusion.
My arguments for God don’t use scientific evidence, consequently. Rather, the premises come from revelation (the Bible, specifically). I’m sure you are familiar with the transcendental argument for the existence of God, which is an argument based on the premise that the Christian God is the precondition for knowledge. (Hence for the atheist to argue against God he must presuppose the very thing he wishes to deny.) Anyway, you’re probably familiar with TAG so I won’t ramble on about that.
Even rocks falling to the ground involve philosophical biases, but these biases are so latent that we don’t stop and think about them.
Jim, I *insist* nothing. I in fact didn’t claim anything. I was just noting that the world seems to have been created because of what I view as it’s complexity. But, I am not a scientist or a theologian so I really can’t claim to know anything. My observation is that of a layman. It has always seemed to me that Atheist’s believe as strongly or more strongly then people of Faith when I think it is hard to actually “know” anything. We all have concepts and ideas that we cling to in the face of “evidence” or against all rational perception. I was just pointing out that if a believer feels that their “God” is all powerful then Evolution is not a threat to them. For that believer their “God” is all powerful and can do what ever he likes and they may even feel like they are not supposed to understand it.
Like some of the other commenters here, I am both an atheist and an agnostic. I identify as agnostic out of a desire to be philosophically honest. The very concept of totally disproving the god hypothesis is an exercise in futility, as the imagination can always conjure a magical being capable of avoiding our scrutiny. However, I agree with Dawkins and others that we can assess the relative probabilities of “god” or “no-god” based on our observations of the world and whether they fit better with either of these two assertions.
Since I have never found any convincing evidence for the existence of any kind of god, much less the gods professed by the more popular religions … and furthermore since many of our observations about the world are in opposition to what one would expect given a god of the types most people would evoke … my pragmatic stance is atheism.
So, my answer to Daniel’s question is “yes” to both. I don’t believe in god. And, I’m convinced that there is no god. Mind you, this is a tentative conclusion and I’m always open to evidence that might lead to me changing my mind. But, until and unless that evidence is brought forth, I see no more difficulty in saying “there is no god” than I do in saying “there is no tooth fairy.”
Thanks for your response, Keith. However, from my perspective, which is biased by a need for evidence, basing one’s philosophy on the Bible, the Koran, or Meat Loaf’sBat Out of Hell is purely a matter of taste.
I’ve never experienced a divine revelation, and I believe that what people call revelation is not evidential. Rather it is a need, a desire to believe. A desire so overwhelming that it finally refuses to accept evidence and relies instead on what Stephen Colbert refers to as “truthiness.” Or, in other words, inductive reasoning.
However, could you show me an instance of good, well-done science in which a consequent is asserted and then preserved as true when not borne out by experiment? That’d be interesting. It would also, to me, encapsulate faith in the divine fairly well. The point of scientific examination is to avoid the pitfalls of inductive reasoning.
The TAG is invalid, because it consists, in essence, of arguing that one cannot open the box without the crowbar inside. It’s hard for me to understand your argument that science is inductive and presuppositional when your philosophy appears to rest on one hell of a presupposition.
I got lit up by a lot of you guys for saying the same thing coming from the theist’s perspective.
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” — Aristotle
God bless all of you. OOPS!
Mazel tov to straight up atheists.
I wish more would just come out and say that they will positively affirm God’s non-existence because there is no evidence.
Most atheists today are agnostics but don’t know it, or don’t realize it, or don’t admit it, or I don’t know what.
By the way, what does it mean to “live like there is no God.”
Thanks,
Mariano
Mazel tov to straight up atheists.
I wish more would just come out and say that they will positively affirm God’s non-existence because there is no evidence.
Most atheists today are agnostics but don’t know it, or don’t realize it, or don’t admit it, or I don’t know what.
By the way, what does it mean to “live like there is no God.”
Thanks,
Mariano
I’m not here to argue. I’m absolutely sure that there is no god.
Nothing happened to me to cause this point of view as fundamentalists have suggested.
Even as a child, I noticed the things I was being taught did not add up. When questioning this, I was told it was a “mystery”, or just to shut up and believe.
A mystery it is! It’s a mystery to me as to why people refuse to come to their senses.
I don’t feel the need to disprove the existence of any god(s), because I know there are no gods. If anyone is worried about it, I suggest they prove the existence of a god or gods.
By the way, the existence of trees, the number of species on Earth, the perceived “complexity” of life or the fact that fundamentalists reject science is not evidence.
Religious faith is tantamount to slavery. The first thing the faith mind virus does is remove the believer’s ability to reason. Everything must be strained through a special faith-filter.
I would go to war and fight for anyone’s right to believe whatever they want to believe. However, the current American version of Christian fundamentalism has become a particularly virulent political disease.
People infected with this disease become automatons, performing as they are commanded—as their “god” sees fit. This is not only dangerous, it’s unconstitutional. It’s also make-believe.
Do I understand you correctly: you know that there is no god because you believe that there is no god—sounds link the very same faith which you claim to have rejected.
I have a likewise story: whenever I ask an atheist about anything and everything in the universe their ultimate answer is “It just is.”
Even as a child, I noticed the things I was being taught did not add up. When questioning this, I was told it was a “It just is”, or scientists are working on it.
In fact, atheism is tantamount to slavery. The first thing the atheist mind virus does is remove the believer’s ability to reason. Everything must be strained through a special materialist-filter.
As far as “prove the existence of a god or gods” I am not sure how one can “prove” but what would you consider proof?
@Mariano: What proof do you require to believe that the Flying Spagetti Monster exists? I am anxious to convince you of His Monsterness, for he has revealed to me that you are a Chosen One.
Daniel Florien;
I appreciate your comment but have found that your statement is typical modern day pseudo-skeptical pseudo-erudite atheism.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster does not pass the test of natural theology and therefore negligible. Atheism are impressed and amused with correlations between God, the God of natural theology, and imaginary creatures such as the FSM because generally the are not curious, scholarly nor skeptical enough to ensure that they understand that which they are arguing against.
Thus, atheists are only successful in arguing against caricature straw-men of the own making.
“goin2hell” is likewise indicative of modern day atheism: that person simply states “I’m not here to argue” then positively assert God’s non-existence and then move on to do another drive by pseudo-intellectual remark elsewhere.
I find it quite sad.
aDios,
Mariano