How Religion Hides from Reason

Religious ideas hide themselves in cloaks of obscurantism, ignorance, and incredulity.  Here's how:

When asked what the word 'god' means, a religious person will usually appeal to other similarly vague ideas like, a "higher power," "love," "an immaterial mind," and, equally nebulous, as I suggested in my last post, a "creator of the universe." (This is not an exhaustive list)

Also, the subject will often shift to perennial philosophical questions to which god is supposed to provide some explanation like, "Is it rational to be moral?", "What should our purpose be?", and, "What should we value?"

This is how religion hides under a cloak of obscurantism.  None of these questions are necessarily affected by there being a god.  To explain, I can imagine a god who is amoral.  I can also imagine a god who is indifferent.  I can imagine a god who used to exist and no longer does. If we prove tomorrow that there is a god it will answer no other question than the question, "Is there a god?"


Or the subject will swiftly and almost imperceptibly switch to the gaps in our current scientific knowledge like, "How do you get life from non-life?", "What caused the big bang?", "Why is there something rather than nothing?", and, "How do we explain consciousness?"

This is how religion hides under a cloak of ignorance.  The person who begins exploring the meaning and truth of religious claims ends up confronted with some of the most interesting questions we know how to ask.  If they are not very careful, they become diverted from the fact that these questions may not be affected at all by the claims of the religious; and many fall into the trap of thinking that ignorance is a way to argue the truth of something.

i.e. Premise 1: God is that which explains the unexplained.  Premise 2:  There are things that are unexplained. Conclusion: God exists. 

or Premise 1: We don't know how to get life from non-life.  Conclusion: God.

The formal problem with these is called the argument from ignorance.

I've often heard apologists say something like, "I just can't imagine there being no intelligence behind it all." This is an argument from incredulity.  It should be pretty clear to most that this is not a sensible form of argumentation.

What I'm advocating here is that we be clear about our terms, and that we argue logically.  If god is logical then I'm sure he would appreciate it.  If not, he's not worth my time anyway (which there's some chance he would appreciate since he wouldn't be logical).  Let's discuss one topic at a time instead of heaping all of our ignorance and incredulity onto the table.

It Takes More Faith to be an Atheist

 

 

The very first problem I notice with this statement when religious people say it is, up until this statement, faith is supposed to be a good thing.  And yet, all of a sudden the religious want to eschew faith as much as possible.   Personally, I hope to be more consistent than that. I do call faith bad. The main difference is that I don't change my mind when it protects some belief I cherish.

 

The second problem, admittedly minor, is that in the statement's most generous interpretation, it uses a misapplication of the term 'atheist.'  It assumes that 'atheist' means an active disbelief in god when it is better characterized as a lack of a belief.  Someone who puts forth a definition of the word 'god' and then says that they actively disbelieve it would be better described as an anti-theist.

 

The next problem is that it's just false.  Let me illustrate this by listing the assumptions that atheists have to make, next to those of most theists.

 

Atheist assumptions:

• My senses are generally trustworthy to the extent that the consistencies they generate are representative of an actual, cooperatively experienced reality.

Theist assumptions: (these are usually made, not always)

• My senses are generally trustworthy to the extent that the consistencies they generate are representative of an actual, cooperatively experienced reality.
• There is a god. (whatever that could mean)
• God is omnipotent '''
• God is omniscient '''
• God is omnibenevolent ""
• God cares about what happens in our world
• God intervenes
• A particular "holy book" represents god better than the others
 
 

Some may be thinking that the separate god assumptions should be lumped together, to which I would point out that it's conceivable that there could be a god who doesn't care, and yet has all of those other attributes, but that's usually not what theists believe. Not all theists make all of these assumptions, but most make most.  It's pretty clear to me that theists make many more assumptions than atheists tend to make.

 

Faith is belief without evidence and reason. Stated differently, the more reason you have to disbelieve something, the more faith it takes to believe it.  I also would quibble a little on the idea that it takes faith to make that first assumption. I don't hold that position dogmatically and if challenged am happy to admit that I am making an assumption there.  Can the same be said for a theist for any of their assumptions. I think not.

 

 

 

 

 



What created the universe?

In response to the question, "What created the universe?" which is usually the end of a series of such causality inquires and meant as a 'you-can't-explain-that,' from Christian apologists.

Setting aside for the moment that the point wouldn't get us anywhere even if it made sense, let's illustrate the inanity of this question first by defining our term.

Universe: the set of all things that exist.

This is the way I use it. If you don't agree with that definition then we need to find a term we can agree with to proceed.

If you ask the question, "What created the universe?" with this definition in mind, you can clearly see that the question no longer makes sense. The word 'what' must refer to some 'thing', and would therefore belong in 'the set of all things that exist.'

What's more, time is a thing. We are looking for a creator or causer of time. But these concepts don't make sense either. The word 'create' is meaningless outside the context of time. And even if you can somehow force yourself to believe that some 'thing' 'created' time, doing so requires you to ignore the problem of causality which was the very problem we were trying to fix in the first place.

In my view, it is deeply mysterious. Either some thing always existed, something came from nothing, or causality itself can be broken. Each of these seem ridiculous and are impossible to believe, yet, here we are.