What Do New Atheists Actually Believe?

Discovery Institute has Michael Egnor asking this question...

What Do New Atheists Actually Believe?

And he has some specific questions...

1) Why is there anything?

2) What caused the Universe?

3) Why is there regularity (Law) in nature?

4) Of the Four Causes in nature proposed by Aristotle (material, formal, efficient, and final), which of them are real? Do final causes exist?

5) Why do we have subjective experience, and not merely objective existence?

6) Why is the human mind intentional, in the technical philosophical sense of aboutness, which is the referral to something besides itself? How can mental states be about something? 

7) Does Moral Law exist in itself, or is it an artifact of nature (natural selection, etc.)

8) Why is there evil?

Well, here are my answers...

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1) Why is there anything?

We don't know.

It's not that this question is nonsense, it's simply that we don't have access to the data that would answer it. From a philosophical perspective we have no firm response to the solipsist. The best we can do is say that what appears to be the case most forcefully to our minds and senses (given our senses might be an illusion of the mind) is that the material world is so convincing that we might as well use it as a model for reality until we figure out a better one that actually fits with those facts that the 'apparent' material world imposes on us.

For example, if we were entirely mental phenomena (or a single phenomenon) why can't we get past the apparent material death of another mind (or my illusion of another mind)? The material non-supernatural explanation fits this and many other problems so easily that it's a sufficient model for now.

The rest of the answers are given with respect to this point of view.

2) What caused the Universe?

We don't know.

So far we, and our instruments, haven't had physical presence far beyond our solar system, and in person not beyond the moon. So, all our observations of this universe are restricted to hypotheses based on remote (in time and space) observations. Some hypotheses have mathematical reasoning to lend them some weight. But really, we don't know.

3) Why is there regularity (Law) in nature?

We don't know. We'd need to resolve problem (2) to get any further with this. We observe regularities, but we can't explain them in any deep sense.

4) Of the Four Causes in nature...

We don't know.

This is philosophy going beyond the bounds of available or accessible knowledge and is more akin to theology. 

Specifically, do final causes exists? Well, if we could answer some more questions on causality that would be a start. But then we come up against the same problem of accessibility of the data. And, the question isn't clear on meaning of 'final cause'.

5) Why do we have subjective experience, and not merely objective existence?

Given (1) this can only be answered in atheist materialist terms, and within that context the understanding of matter and how life is just a formation of matter in action, and from there on to evolution. I'll keep this short, but would be glad to expand on request.

All matter responds to interaction with other matter. Things bounce. At some basic levels we have explanations for this - such as the coming together of atoms of my skin with those of the table, where despite that fact that atoms are mostly space, the electric and nuclear forces stop atoms merging or flowing through each other.

Basic life is complex formations of matter. We still don't know anything concrete about the beginnings of life, abiogenesis, but the basic hypothesis is that early replicators began the process - try thinking of something like growing crystals, though even this seems an inadequate analogy. The problem with all of this, life, is that we only have life on this planet to examine, that the origins are in the distant past, and anywhere the same process began spontaneously it would be consumed by local chemical reactions or organisms.

Form there, simple single cell life forms react in very complex ways compared to simple elements and molecules - but their responses to contact with other inanimate matter and other living organisms is basically physical and chemical. They go around bumping into stuff, and when they do chemical reactions on their surfaces give rise to further activity.

Complex cells formed by the combination of different single celled entities - i.e. mitochondria. Complex multi-cellular organisms formed cohesive bodies and functionality was subsumed to different organs. In a soft celled multi-organ organism think of the combination like a turtle and its shell. The inner soft and delicate organs don't need protection from the environment if outer organs are dedicated to that task - e.g. skin. 

So, at this stage we have complex systems, of which one component is a nervous system that co-ordinates activity for the organism as a whole. Not all organisms use this approach - e.g. plants. But there seems to be a relationship between the motor capabilities of the organism and the complexity of its nervous system.

Given that one aspect of the nervous system is to respond to the environment in order to direct processes in the organism, and to direct it's motion, required to find food, one natural outcome is that the organism should be able to detect itself. No point in eating your own arm is there. And this is the basis for self awareness, which most organisms have to some degree if they have a nervous system that samples the environment.

Mammals have multi-mode senses - sight, hearing, touch... And these need co-ordination if they are to be useful. The chicken egg answer is that complexity of nervous system and co-ordination of senses probably evolved together, each effecting the development of the other.

It seems a natural progression that when an organism gets to a certain degree of complexity this self-sensing can include sensing the very internal processes of nervous system itself. In us this isn't complete, since there's a big part of our sub-conscious nervous system of which we're not aware. But basically subjectivity is simply what it appears like when an organism senses it's own nervous system in action.

6) Why is the human mind intentional...

(5) pretty much answers this.

7) Does Moral Law exist in itself, or is it an artifact of nature (natural selection, etc.)

It's a subjective (see 5) conceptual product that has evolved in a social sense, but is based on biologically evolved feelings of empathy and sympathy.

See here for more detail.

8) Why is there evil?

There isn't, in any objective sense, any more than there is moral law (see 7).

Evil is simply a classification of behaviour that humans typically ascribe to the behaviour of other humans. 

Sometimes it can be conflated with suffering generally, such as the as a consequence of natural disasters, but that notion is only the concoction of those religious people who think natural disasters are associated with demons or with divine retribution.

We don't ascribe the term 'evil' to thinks that animals do which if performed by humans would be classified as evil. This is again due to the confused thinking of the religious who think that humans have some special gift, or some special place in the universe, or some special relationship with some god or other, and that some or all of these misconceptions give special meaning to human actions we generally disapprove of.

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Perhaps the main point I'd want to make is that theists are in exactly the same position. They don't know. But what they do is make up an answer with no substantiating data and claim that to be the case. They think that the combination of ancient tradition and pseudo-profound language gives credibility to their view, but it really exposes their gullibility to ancient stories from a time when such ignorance was excusable for lack of any reasonable data.

There has been no evidence for religious claims that can be substantiated by third party examination. All subjective personal claims about religious experience have plausible explanations in a materialist world view, where various results of brain sciences can replicate or account for those experiences.

Love - Something Humans Do

On Lesley's post Peter Rollins - What is Religion? I've been trying to understand what Rollins is saying, without much success. But in the ensuing comments I claimed that love is just something that humans do - my intended implication being it is nothing to do with a god, or specifically God.

Kathryn asked, "Why do you think this [love] is something humans do? Do you think it is a genetic fluke, or is there some purpose?", and I wanted to give a more complete response than I could in a comment on Lesley's post.

It's a fluke in one sense: the sense that it just turned out that way due to evolution, without any intentionality or direct design or purpose. But that 'fluke' is not to be confused with ID critiques of evolution that say evolution relies on impossible odds. Fluke, luck, random events, whatever we might call them, have a part to play in evolution, but the theory of evolution shows that other forces, such as natural selection, play on those flukes in order to cause some change that persists.

The significant point from an evolutionary perspective is that traits that have some benefit in some sets of circumstances are more likely to survive.

Some simplistic examples to make the point and put love in context (for sexually reproductive species)...

A genetic condition (e.g. a mutation) that caused infertility would not be passed on to the next generation at all. Another mutation that didn't effect fertility but did remove sexual lust would also die out quickly in most animals (though humans, with our cognitive abailities, could overcome this). An emotion like love may not be as necessary at all for short term survival, but may be necessary in some species for greater group cohesion, or perhaps mother-infant bonding. Both fertility and lust are necessary for reproduction in sexually reproductive animals, but love isn't.

But we can still see how love can provide a greater benefit than not experiencing love, for some species.

Fertility we count as a physiological trait, love as an emotional one, but lust we see more as something of both physiological and emotional - so, where's the divide between physical trait and emotional trait? When you get down to the chemistry of what's going on in the brain they are, all three, physiological traits, each with their own contribution to the survivability of a species (along with all other influences). We have no reason to suppose that love is anything other than this, and certainly no evidence that it has any special meaning or value outside the context of humans that, using our brains, give it meaning and value. it's not something we need to associate with God, despite that fact that theists tend to raise it to the level of the divine.

Evolution doesn't have a purpose as such - and so there is no purpose for love. There is a trivial descriptive sense in which, looking back, we might use a purposive description - e.g. 'the purpose of this gene sequence was to cause that trait to emerge...' (again, a simplistic view of genes) But this isn't purpose in the sense of an agent intentionally causing some trait to appear for particular purpose of his. We are used to attributing purpose to the things we do, and we can mistakenly attribute purpose to complex causal chains that are otherwise hard to describe. It can be helpful to describe causal chains with such anthropomorphic framing of purpose - but we need to be careful that we understand that this purpose isn't real, it's a metaphor for causality.

So, there is nothing in our evolutionary past which could predict, in any reasonable sense, that love would turn out to be a trait that a particular species valued highly. There are clues available to the hindsight we have acquired through the development of the theory of evolution, based on our understanding of empathy and attachment that bond animal parents to young, and in some cases parents to each other. Insects have a very specific type of bond to their fellows nest, which is basically chemical. So, love (or its simpler animal parallel) isn't necessary for all animals to be evolutionarily successful - though for larger animals with more complex brains it may be particularly beneficial. We think it's beneficial for us - so much so we have learned to value it highly.

In this sense love is just what humans do, without it having any directive purpose. It's one of the many things we do, along with hate, fear, lust, empathy and many other traits. They all boil down to having emerged through our evolutionary history, and having been developed in our intellectual and cultural history.

Perhaps a better phrasing might be love is just what humans did in the past as a more refined development of empathy, but which we do now with more purpose and intent as we have come to appreciate it and value it.

We can reasonably explain the relationship between some of these things we do, in this simplified evolutionary context...

Personally and subjectively we like the feeling of love, and we dislike the feeling of fear. Our empathy makes us appreciate the same perspective in others, so we want love for others as well as for ourselves, and part of that is that we get additional pleasure from giving love, and even more from reciprocative love. And conversely we dislike fear, we dislike seeing fear in others, and so we want to alleviate the fear we see in others. And, on top of that we dislike seeing others cause fear, because of our empathy for the victims; and in a simple sense, just as a mother responds to defend her young with the animal equivalent of anger, so we respond with anger towards those that cause fear. These are strong innate emotional responses, honed in our history, with their origins lost in myth.

Many of our basic emotions have parallels in other animals, but have been developed into more refined concepts by us, probably because of the concurrent development of our language and our brain's ability to be more acute in our understanding of these emotions and the concepts we form about them. Just as a musician can develop a more acute sense of musical notes (an analogy Kathryn uses).

The problem is we don't often consider the simpler animal basis for our complex emotions - partly because of our ignorance of the evolutionary perspective. This ignorance was understandable for most of human history in which our reach back to the past was only ever measured in terms of a few generations. We could only develop myths out of that ignorance - ironically using the very creative imagination that later allowed us to come up with the science that helped us discover more plausible explanations.

The weight of those myths persists, and is maintained in varying degrees by a continued ignorance of the significance of what evolution is telling us, along with the willing, and sometimes not so willing, indoctrination in and bias towards those myths. Even those theists that have an understanding of evolution find it hard to accept the full implications of evolution and related ideas when they challenge their theological beliefs - they sometimes express a fear of the consequences of following the ideas through - e.g. the fear of the nihilism of atheism, in the absence of God.

To help a theist put this in perspective, consider some of the cosmological ideas that are floating around - many of which theists use as examples of how science has its own myths. In some respects our old myths parallel the current speculations about our cosmological origins - the old myths were speculations in the absence of data, just as some of our cosmological ideas are speculations in the absence of data. In some cases the mathematical theory of the latter replaces imaginative theology of the former, and so cosmologists might feel their theories have a greater legitimacy than theologies. But there may come a time, when we are better informed, when some our current cosmological speculations seem more like myths. So, this is how now atheists see theologies as outdated myths.

The deep history of religion is interesting, but I'm still largely ignorant about it. One particular book on my reading list is The Evolution of God, by Robert Wright. It appears to put the contingency of Christianity in perspective, effectively explaining the myth. It's the historical perspective that I need to know more about; and I suspect many Christians need to know more about it too, but without their own theological bias. If ever there was a case of the winners getting to write the history, theology is it - I don't think much of the history of theology sees the light of day. I don't know to what extent history of theology is taught in this respect. The book's website gives a good sampling of the book and is worth a read.

Atheists Against Religion - Misconceptions

Some theists seem to get the wrong impression about atheism and atheists, with regard to the extent and type of opposition to theism and religion. I think this occurs because several issues become conflated in discussions between theists and atheists. Some theists seem to think that atheists want to abolish religion or censor it; but they are confusion the following: genuine desire to stop some religious practices and privileges; the desire for a secular state; and intellectual disagreement on the validity of religious belief.

They are all issues that should be considered separately.

Opposition To Faith Schools
The objection to faith schools is because of indoctrination on young minds and the fact that one faith view is projected. Most humanist atheists want schools to be secular, which only means no religious or other world view bias (not even atheism), not the censorship of religion. We actually want education to include information about all religions and other world views and basic philosophy in a non-biased here-it-is make what you want of it sort of way. There's no requirement to impose the atheist or humanist world view above others.

My children attended a Roman Catholic school, which preached RC Christianity. Both my children said that when they compared notes with friends at a state school the coverage of other faiths was quite different. The Roman Catholic school had given feint acknowledgement to other faiths whereas the state school was more open about discussing the variations of the details of the different faiths. I don't know to what extent a difference in teachers played a part, and I've no detailed experience of other faith schools. But in principle I'm opposed to the promotion of a particular faith.

Faith schools breed division. This I know from my personal school experiences, where a predominantly CoE state school backed on to a Roman Catholic school - pupils were always at war, and though most pupils probably weren't particularly religious, the religious difference was a focus of difference. This inevitable divisiveness has also been commented on with regard to Norther Ireland many times. In Oldham there is currently a plan to form a mixed academy to replace the current Christian dominated school and Muslim dominated school in areas that resulted in race/faith/culture riots ten years ago.

Abolishing Religion
The wish by atheists that religions did not exist is just that, a wish. Not necessarily that they never existed - there is no requirement to change history. The wish is that religions would begin to fade away - starting with the most obnoxious elements of each religion, because we think in the long term society will be better when it has gone. Note that isn't saying atheist humanism is the cure for all ills.

And this wish isn't expressed in any political sense. There is no way in which humanist atheists want to censor or ban religion or religious thought. The very nature of atheist humanism, or in this context secular humanism, is that the state should not be involved at all in personal world views, and that everyone should be free to choose their own world view. There are many unknowns about the universe, regarding its origins and its makeup. The God hypothesis is a reasonable one, so given the free-thought imperative of secular humanists there is no requirement to stop people believing in God.

Secular State
The political desire for a secular state is not a request for censorship, it's the request for the removal of a religious bias and privilege that is already present. What's the alternative to removing bishops from the House of Lords as religious political posts? Add more bishops representing every faith in proportion to the faith adherents? Add atheists specifically because they are atheists? what about Wiccans and other belief systems? A Lord of New Age? No, the most equitable route is to remove all posts relating to religion and have people there on merit of by election - depending on the desired makeup. This then does not prevent religious leaders being members; they would simply be members for some other reason; hopefully, merit.

The wider issue of a state church is slightly less significant to me, though many British Muslims might disagree. We have a lot invested in our culture associated with our churches, armed services, state events, etc., that currently have a close association with religion. I'm in no hurry to see these go since they are quite benign, colourful and culturally of historic interest, in terms of the state. I don't, for example, have an issue with traditions that date back to more feudal times, such as the monarchy and knighthoods and so on. They just need disassociating from the executive branch of the state.

Intellectual Opposition
The intellectual objection to theism, as opposed to particular religious organisations that implement those theisms, is purely that, and intellectual one of the understanding of the philosophy and science of it all. Again the free-thought nature of secular humanism supports the unrestricted examination of all philosophical views and wants to engage freely in debates about these issues. Historically it has been religion that has wanted to censor views and interfere in the free thinking, free expression and free action of others that don't agree with them.

It's a bit rich for anyone associated with these ancient religions to accuse atheists of censorship - it couldn't be further from the truth for atheism, while at the same time most religions don't have a good record on censorship.

Anti-Religion
Anti-religion is the opposition to some or all religions. Personally I am strongly anti-religious when it comes to the more dogmatic religions.

There are many aspects of Islam, such as it's political desire to dominate that is such an important and freely expressed part of the religion, and the discrimination inherent in Islam against non-Muslims in Islamic state governance. These are inherent parts of Islam, given that they are stated in the Koran or Hadith. Islam would have to go through a radical change for me not to be anti-Islam. But there are many Muslims who would like to see such change, and I'd support them in that without wishing to have them give up non-political or otherwise humane aspects of their faith. If some Muslims think atheists have an unfair view of Islam then they need to start making their more moderate voices heard, not only by atheists, but by the more radical Muslims.

There are many aspects of fundamentalist Christianity that make me anti-those sects, such as the intense indoctrination of children into psychologically damaging beliefs about being sinners and being damned to hell. I am less anti-liberal-Christianity, though I do disagree with its ideas on intellectual grounds. Other atheists may have a more blanket anti-religious stance.

Summary
Atheists generally do want to stop faith schools, political privilege, any particularly unfair practices, and to work towards a secular state.

Atheists generally are willing to debate theism as opposed to atheism on intellectual philosophical grounds.

Atheists may also be happy to see the back of religion. But one of the main principles of free-though humanist atheists is the right to practice ones own belief system, and so would want to defend anyone's right to belief, as long as the practice of that belief is not contrary to the freedoms of other people.

My personal feelings is that I have no problem with self-funded religions and places of worship. I quite like some aspects of the CoE; I like to visit old churches; I enjoy some religious music, though I have no interest in the content of any songs or hymns; I like to visit grand cathedrals and mosques. I suppose my interest is atmospheric and historic. I have fond memories of some vicars from when I was young in the Boys Brigade - even our local tyrant was fair. So, other than the issues above I'm not that anti-religious.

And I enjoy a good argument.

So, in general atheists don't want to burn theists at the stake, stone them or decapitate them, or condemn them to hell or whatever the atheist equivalent might be (which according to some theists would be for them to become atheists). Live and let live - if only they all would.

A Biblical Story

The religious like their stories. Postmodern relativist theists love them. It allows everyone to have their own cuddly warm snug safety blanket in which to wrap themselves, without fear of someone nasty coming along and snatching it away - a gift from their father, God. There's nothing nicer than being wrapped up, nice and warm, being told lovely stories about their heroic father protecting them from evil.

But there's another part of their story that's not so nice, but just as necessary, because we all like scary stories. One day a bully arrives in the class, and his name is Atheist. His favourite wicked pass-time is to snatch their faith blankets away and make them cry. His second favourite is to tell a frightful story, of how his own father, Nietzsche, is killing their father God.


But I've got a better story, a predominantly western story (for their are similar stories elsewhere). And it goes like this.


Nietzsche is blamed for killing God. How can that be? There never was a God to be killed. Let's start at the beginning, or as near to it as matters for this story.

Long ago humans evolved along with other animals from some common anscestor with similar characteristics. Humans have many featues in common with all vertabrates. Even more in common with mammals. Even more with primates. Most with the remaining other apes.

They have a mix of traits, that include complex combinations of being able to love and hate, help and kill. Their social evolution has caused them to be mostly loving to those close, and fairly neutral and even co-operative with other groups, suppressing their baser inclinations. However, conflicting interests, fear, misunderstanding, jelousy, etc., all the nasty bits, are just below the surface.

It's difficult to know for sure what real evolutionary mechanism caused religion to come about, whether it confered some direct benefit, or whether it's a by-product of the evolution of the degree of self-awareness. It remains a mystery, but many facts fit one particular idea.

All mammals have a sense of 'other', as in other external creatures: to be eaten by, to eat, to fight, to mate. Few animals are self-aware, so when self-awareness evolved to a certain degree there becomes both 'other' and 'self'. The brain sciences have shown quite clearly that these are in different parts of the brain, but are linked; that the confusion of 'self' and 'other' can give a feeling of internal 'other'. This is very striking in various forms of brain damage - the type and location of the damage can determine loss of this internal 'other' or its acquisition. It can also be induced or inhibited in healthy brains at will, in a laboratory. Many humans have a 'self-self' and an 'other-self'.

There were no brain scientists around in ancient times, but there were a multitude of unexplained awful events. With a familiarity of the powerful capabilities of humans compared to other animals, it might have seemed obvious that there must be some more powerful external hiddden 'others' at work, directing nature, inlfuencing lives.

Put these internal and external 'others' together, and you have gods that are doing things for and to humans, and even invade their minds.

But, some humans aren't quite as dumb as they first appear. Over the millenia, as the population increases, and pouplations merge and compare ideas, as they record their ideas and they spread them, it seems obvious that there are some inconsistencies, competing gods, silly notions of what it is to be a god.

From the recordings of the Greeks onward philosophy and rudementary science bring some critical thinking to the table, which begins the whole process of rationalising and economising on gods and their capabilities. There emerges the most concise God, the Jewish God, with many of his awkward inconvenient inconsistencies explained away into the sky, or heaven or wherever - depending on how critical the analysis has to be to avoid arguments from those that tend not to believe or who have competing gods. God goes into hiding, and leaves the material world behind, and his interactions with us and our world have to be explained by miracles.

The religions provide great social cohesion in times that are still barbaric and brutal. They provide an authority that can't be matched by individual rulers. They help keep the peace mostly, but can still just as easily be invoked for war. Religions are used control the uneducated supersticious masses, for reasons of good for the theologians, for reasons of convenience for the godless powerful.

Despite the reconciling role of great religions there are still independent theological thinkers who challenge the various orthodoxies, causing many schisms in what had been the start of a grand religious project. Other religions emerged on the boundaries of western thinking, the most prominat being Islam which separated much of western thinking from its Greek routes.

Come the enlightnement even more events and wonders of the world, like the rainbow, become explainable as natural phenomena. The Greeks are rediscovered, and Islamic ideas on science filter through. Western Europe becomes the focul point for many revolutions in thinking, and discovering, of ideas, places, animals and peoples. God and his works recede into the distance.

From Darwin and others a unifying explanation develops that shows not only that humans are not special, but that evolution can remove the need for a God, or at least push him back to the moment of creation. Sophisticated theology is required all the more to hide God somewhere safe. The struggle between the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other mirrors the internal dichotomy of the rational internal 'self-self' and the feeling internal 'other-self'.

This vanishing act needn't be the intentional and aware response it sounds to be. It can be a genuine shift in the detail of belief in thologians that have as much access to the enlightenment ideas as any atheist. They have to reconcile what they know with what they feel, but what they feel has a strong hold and won't let go.

So, God remains the primary presupposition that in their cognitive dissonance must override all other ideas. They may even have a sneaky suspision that their beliefs are nonsense, but what can you do if the internal 'other-self' is so convincing? They even see the folly in other beliefs that are similar, or in those of their own religion that have a less sophisticated view of what God is. They know they can't explain their God really, but they can have faith.

Some become so close to atheism in their intellectual disposal of God's inconveniences, that they even confuse what atheism means - Peter Rollins, with his really odd twisting of words is so confused, hence and confusing. No doubt Rollins is sincere. I'm not accusing these theists of being charlatons, though some of the money making TV evangelists may be, I don't know. But many theists clearly have an eye for this world as much as the next.

And so here we are. Nieztshce didn't kill God. There never was a God, just an idea of a God accompanied by a feeling. Nieztshce and many others have been dripping slow acting poisons into the challace, causing a lingering and painful death for the idea that is yet incomplete. Though the feeling remains you can see the agony of self-realisation of the inevitable dawning on the likes of the Arch Bishop of Cantebury, as they struggle to reconcile their faith with the ultimate demise of the God that never was.

Rather than let the atheist kill their God they would rather do it themselves. They suffocate him in an act of kindness, they bury him in the safest place they can find, in the depths of their souls where he'll be accessible to them. He becomes a fully personal God. No longer the need to explain him away, he'll still be close by, feeding ideas through the inner 'other-self'.

They see the problems, yet they still feel God, see God, or see the need for God, or fear the lack of God. What must it be like to have this inner self, the 'other-self', ripped from their hearts?

Those that don't have it can only sympathise. Atheists who see a grand picture of the universe and beyond as a natural unfolding process have no need for God. There's a freedom to think the unthinkable without fear, to find what we find without judgement, to see what the science tells us without thinking it has a moral dimension, that the creation of moral codes are anyway just one more human trait. We can take what evolution has given us and build our moral codes on top of that, and make those moral codes do the best they can for everyone, because the predominant evolved characteristics are to love, to help, not to hate and to kill.


This is just a story. Many different stories can be told, and are told. This one is as close to the observed facts that I know of. Think of it as a docu-drama - a story made to fit the facts; or as a working hypothesis that has evidence to support it. This is a story told by humans, about humans using evidence accumulated by humans.

The predominant alternative story is one written by humans too, but where the main unobserved fictional character is supposed to have written the story himself. And as such, the authors can have the character explain away any inconsistencies by the magic of miracles, or by claiming not to know the mind of the unfathomable character the human authors have created. Now that's some serious imaginative just-so fiction. An incredible story. Really, it just isn't credible.

BBC Mythos and Logos

The BBC programme
Something Understood - Mythos and Logos (h/t Lesley) discusses the roles of Mythos and Logos: Mark Tully explores the difference between a scientific understanding of the world and a mythological understanding; between the rational language of science and the poetic language of myth.

My view is as follows:

Mythos - Myth, fantasy, didn't actually happen. Fine for fictional novels. Some fictional novels are intended to portrait philosophical or sociological metaphors or allegories, from which we can learn stuff, so okay on that too - but care is required not to read too much into it (as is done with the Bible).

Mythos had a greater place in the past because there was less logos. The mythos of the ancients is viewed retrospectively with rosy tint of modern theology and myth. My guess would be that if you could go back in time and offer some of the ancients a bit more of our logos so that they didn't need so much of their mythos, then they'd bite your hand off. There's a tendency to over glamorise the past.

There's also two categories of mythos in the current post modern mind. I don't know if it was present in earlier ideas, but it's here now, and it does cause confusion. There's (a) the mythos that is really just creative imagination, and there's (b) the mythos that is believing fantasy to be true; and they are confused at will by theists. It goes like this: the theist makes a claim (b), and the atheists says there's no evidence, to which the theist responds with (a), which obviously the atheist didn't intend to dispute. Angela Tilby gives fine examples below.

But first Tully introduces words from Karen Armstrong.

Karen, "There were regarded as complementary ways..." - Not surprising. if you had little logos available, what else did you have to turn to in your uncertainty?

Karen, "myth was not concerned with practical matters, but with meaning..." - Because they didn't have the logos to tell them that there was no meaning, as they understood that to be, and as I think most theists still understand it to be.

Karen, "Logos...it must work efficiently in the mundane world. We use...when we have to make things happen, get something done, or to persuade other people to adopt a course of action."

Karen, "Logos is practical, unlike myth..." - What price pragmatism? - "..to elaborate on old insights" - i.e. correct the mistakes of the myths - "...achieve a greater control over our environment..." - our only known environment.

Tully, "We may have regressed spiritually, because of our suppression of mythos." - Note the negative defensiveness. Alternatively we may have progressed, not by suppressing, but by outgrowing mythos. Lucretius sounds as though he was onto it. Can you honestly say that the old mythos was reasoned? Wasn't it just more of the same nonsense you might attribute to some of the crazier believers of today? Trouble is, once you mistake mythos for truth all bets are off - you are capable of believing anything; or sometimes more significantly, you can't deny someone else's right to believe their crazy mythos.

Tully, on Peter Gabriel, "...overcome by the power of music and ritual, the mythos" - No. Just hypnotised by it. A brain state. Many animals can be lulled into these states too. Think of it as your computer freezing up momentarily for no apparent reason - it's doing something, it's just not obvious to consciousness.

Angela Tilby, and Anglican Priest and theologian...

Angela, "You might think ... scientific..is logos... clearly right in the way science practises itself. But it probably isn't right in way scientists sometimes use their imagination, use their instincts, use their sense of adventure to inhabit the whole enterprise; mythos carries on even when it's denied." - Bollocks. This is not the same mythos at all. This is an attempt (maybe unintended) to conflate mythos as myth with straight forward human emotion, personality, involvement - all potential for scientific explanation in themselves. Scientists don't pray for guidance in their work, unless they're scientists who happen to be religious. They don't look to ancient books for eternal truths, they look to older evidence and challenge it, or reproduce it, they question older truths, mythos or logos - all is up for questioning.

Has logos won? Not entirely, on two points. The first, is that if logos itself implies that mythos is nonsense as a route to truth, then there's no room for complacency, mythos is still influencing irrationally. The second, the very nature of logos (certainly now) is that it's an ongoing quest for truth, and so again there's no room for complacency - there is no winning, there is only progress. Winning implies the job is done. There is no know reason to think we will ever be able to say, job done.

Angela, "Mythos does continue to hold great sway" - Only for those that believe it. There's not inherent place for mythos. I see it as a temporary fluctuation in the evolution of one particular species - think evolutionary time scales, where will we be in 1,000 years, 10,000. There's no reason to suppose the remaining elements of mythos, the Rollins view if you like, won't go the same way as sacrificing to Gods. As protestant Christians, do you really see RC transubstantiation surviving as a credible truth? The resurrection?

Angela, "We delight in story telling, in narrative..." - Yes. That's how we came to grow into our language, to be able to make connections with each other, reporting non-local non-current events, transmitting knowledge - all when logos was particularly scarce that it was indistinguishable from myth.

We know soaps and novels are fiction, but yes, we can relate to stories that they tell. We do not really think that Gail McIntyre actually spent time in prison, but some of us do really think Jesus arose from the dead. The problem isn't the stories, the fantasies, the myths, it's believing they are true - and the more literally we take them, the more danger they pose as falsehoods.

Angela, "Mythos doesn't die just because logos is in the ascendancy..." - Conflating mythos (believing fantasy to be truth) with fantasy again. This really is a mistake the Mythos crowd make. They see both the pleasure and the practical value in telling stories, using them as metaphor and allegory - this is fine. But they lump that in with truth claims about ridiculous fantasy.

We put too much emphasis on logos, underestimating mythos?

Angela, "I think there is an imbalance ... live in a world of pure fact ... if you do that you end up in a very impoverished way." - Again, the mistaken conflation of wrong headed fantasy as truth, with the very commendable use of story telling, emotional involvement, and all the other fluffy stuff that scientists are equally (more so says Feynman) capable of appreciating - not impoverished at all.

Angela, "Truth doesn't contradict truth..." - Another problem. The issue, from the logos point of view is that it's difficult to be sure when we have got at the truth, particularly any ultimate truth. Science refuses to make that claim. It's only theism and other mythos adherents and pos modernist woolly thinkers that use this move. In essence it relies on 'stories' (the mythos kind not the soap opera kind) to entitle people to their own versions of the truth, as they see fit. It demands respect among the mythos crowd for each other's myths, and prevents any serious questioning from the sceptical logos community - or at least the mythos crowd think it should.... Angela, "I think that's absolutely true" - which becomes true since all truth claims (stories) are true, by the mythos principle. Bollocks of course.

Angela, "As a person I believe [1] thoroughly in the scientific method and in evolution. I want to use antibiotic drugs, I'm interested in space exploration; [2] I'm interested in the strangeness of new physics. At the same time [3] I want to respond to the world as God's good creation and to live in it a creative and ethical life that has meaning and fulfilment beyond myself and physical death." - The mythos team think [3] is made compatible with [1], but they really mean there's no conflict between [3] and [2] - and many theists are comfortable with science processes. But [1], if followed to where it leads, through whatever evidence there is - and [1] relies on evidence - then they are not compatible: there's nothing that leads a rational scientific mind to [3].

Angela, "It isn't a problem to live with those two truths." - I agree. It's not a problem to live with the truth that London is in France, as long as you don't try to visit London. You can even visit France, without visiting London, and still believe that false truth, while believing the truth that you are in France. And so it is possible, that if you don't think clearly enough about what you're, well, thinking about, you can make incompatible beliefs co-exist in your head quite comfortable - even though some of them are myths (the fantasy kind).

Angela, "I don't think they contradict each other." - Set theory: A and B are independent sets. 1) x is a member of A; 2) x is a member of A and B. Statements (1) and (2) don't contradict each other, but (2) happens to be false. Again, woolly thinking. Contradiction isn't the issue. Mythos being the route to truth is the issue.

Angela, "I won't choose. They're both valid ways of being a human being." - I agree. Logos is a valid way of being a rational human being; mythos is a way of being an irrational human being. Don't get me wrong. In backing logos I'm not saying we must always be perfect rational human beings - the whole point of my argument is that we can't be, and that recognising this helps us to realise that mythos is one of our more dramatic failures - particularly in the hands of fundamentalists.

Angela, "I think I would be less human if I wasn't trying to hold the two together." - Well, such low self-esteem seems to be one of the attributes of the religious. They seem to need the God mythos to validate their lives. Note the inherent insult to non-believers - we're less human. That's a clear message that's been spelled out to the irreligious for centuries - sinners destined for hell - and it's no less clear simply because it's disguised in woolly post modern terms. Thankfully we've got broad shoulders - or maybe it's just that we know there's no weight, no mass, no substance to this nonsense, so it doesn't bother us. But there are times when it matters.

Angela uses Bach as an example of mythos and logos coming together. She points out the rigour in the maths and the precision behind his work, "...and yet he produces this astonishingly heart rending music." - Conflating mythos with music now? The creativity of human beings is a distinct imaginative skill, facet, characteristic, whatever you want to call it. There's no logical attachment of imagination to believing fantasy is truth.

Angela, "..[Bach] goes right to the soul and speaks of realities far greater than that of the scale itself." - Well, no. It says nothing at all about other realities, greater or otherwise. What music does do is resonate. It may do this literally and physically, in that it does cause resonant conditions within the brain, particularly if it's loud enough to feel more physically through the body rather than just through the ears. It can also do it psychologically, in that it invokes emotions, sometimes associated with events and experiences, or even with fantasies. This latter is less well understood, and requires much more from brain science disciplines to understand more fully - but that current gap in our knowledge is not one for a God of the gaps, or in this case a mythos of the gaps, to fill in. Of course that's the tradition our ancient much-mythos less-logos has left us with, so it's understandable some are easily persuaded of this.

Angela, "...[Bach's music] says something about how Western civilisation can bring these two things [logos mythos] together" - Only because Angela wants it to, and because she categorises creativity and human physio-psychological responses to that creativity as an element of mythos. Now if she wants to do that, if that's how she wants to define mythos, great. Except that then causes confusion in debates about theism and mythos, about the mythos of Genesis, and so on. Not very helpful.

I find it curious that the mythos team seem to think that if they can only give us on the logos team good examples then we'll get it. They read us poetry, excerpts from the Bible, sayings of wise some wise sage, or maybe play us some music - as Tully does here with Bach. we get it. We are moved by the music and the poetry too. What we also get is that what the mythos team lump together with their fantasies we see as something distinct. No amount of reading poetry and playing music is going to make us magically lose the logical difference.

So, there are four distinct topics recognised so far here: logos, creative-mythos, fantasy-story-mythos, and fantasy-truth-mythos.

Logos is compatible with creative-mythos. We recognise the blend of art and science in many of our most creative polymaths. We can also accommodate fantasy-story-mythos, using the vehicle of story telling, narrative, to show us allegorically the many twists and turns of human nature. the Bible is often quoted in this respect, and it does have some good human stories that strike a chord. Shakespeare does it better for me personally, and often with a damn site more humour - always a bonus.

What isn't compatible with logos, and what goes against the grain of any sort of rationality that we humans are capable of, and what flies in the face of science's greatest efforts to understand this world, this universe, ourselves, is the make-believe of fantasy-truth-mythos. There is no evidence for a God, no matter how much some people would like him to be there - wishful thinking does not make it true. The miraculous appearance of Adam, and the use of his rib, transubstantiation, resurrection - all fantasy by all rational standards.

---

Tully on Kant: Reason has it's limitations and philosophers can be too dependent on it. Quite. So, why does Kant reason, quite reasonably, that we can't go beyond what we can know, and then go on to describe in some detail things that are beyond his reasoning capacity?

Listen to this Philosophy Bites. Kant is okay, up to the point where he recognises the limitations of our perceptions. In Kant's terms we can never take the spectacles off - okay. We have to put to one side all metaphysical question that are beyond us - including any deity. We can ask the questions - that isn't the problem. But we can't know what is out there. We can speculate. We are at liberty to have faith, but you can't have knowledge of whether that's true or not. This is the atheist logos position and offers nothing to the mythos.

In supposing noumena exists Kant goes too far - beyond our fallible human capabilities.

Kant is motivated to maintain faith. And he's prepared to give up all his hard work in order to sustain this. Like many philosophers, he can't stop himself going beyond his own claims.

Religion has nothing to do with science – and vice versa

Thanks to Alan's comments for this link, where he say's "Just found this story with which I agree.":

Religion has nothing to do with science – and vice versa, by Francisco J. Ayala

Well, though I agree with some points, there are many specific ones with which I don't agree, and I don't agree with the general notion that Ayala makes.

Let's start with this:

"On the other side, some people of faith believe that science conveys a materialistic view of the world that denies the existence of any reality outside the material world. Science, they think, is incompatible with their religious faith."

and within that, this:

"denies the existence of any reality outside the material world.

First, that's false. Many don't deny it. They say there's no evidence to show it. Why? Because we are material creatures. We have senses that detect the material world. We have a material brain that operates in the material realm. How the heck are we supposed to detect or otherwise see something that is non-material? Do the religious magically have access to a realm that all of science, including religious scientists, has been unable to detect in any way. Our instruments are designed especially to extend the scale of human experience - but nowhere, never, has there been evidence of supernatural forces. Everything that has been discovered has fallen within the bounds of natural laws.

"If they are properly understood, they cannot be in contradiction because science and religion concern different matters." - Only to the extent that the religious want this to be the case, along with the odd atheist exception, such as Stephen Jay Gould, who just wanted to let us all get on. 

"The scope of science is the world of nature: the reality that is observed, directly or indirectly, by our senses. Science advances explanations about the natural world, explanations that are accepted or rejected by observation and experiment." - This bit is right.

"Outside the world of nature, however, science has no authority, no statements to make, no business whatsoever taking one position or another." - This bit is right too. But what the religious don't get is that it applies to them too! Science uses reason and the senses - exactly the same faculties available to the religious. There is nothing the religious can get at that scientists can't. In fact it's the other way round. Science has given us access to the brain - albeit we're still in the early stages - so that there are many examples of the brain doing weird things that one particular example, experiencing God, is really no big deal. We have no examples of anything that confirms that an experience of God is actually that and not some trick of the brain.

"Science has nothing decisive to say about values, whether economic, aesthetic or moral" - Simply not true. Science has plenty to say about all these.

"...nothing to say about the meaning of life or its purpose." - Simply not true. Results of science suggest that there is no purpose or meaning in the sense that religion would like there to be.

"Science has nothing to say, either, about religious beliefs, except..." - No exceptions. Science can say quite a lot about beliefs, and I'm sure will be saying more and more as the various branches of brain science expose more.

"People of faith need not be troubled that science is materialistic." - Only if they want to ignore it and pretend it doesn't have anything to say. Wishful thinking will not make science go away.

"The methods and scope of science remain within the world of matter." - True. Same applies to you.

"It [science] cannot make assertions beyond that world." - And neither can you or anyone religious. Well, not quite true. You can make the assertions - and often do, but based on nothing at all.

"Science transcends cultural, political and religious beliefs because it has nothing to say about these subjects." - Warning! Pseudo-intellectual postmodern claim! What the hell does it mean by 'transcends' in this statement? The word is usually the reserve of the religious, to say what they know of is above or beyond, bigger and better (e.g. Lesley's Rollins video). The word is sometimes used to mean 'encompasses', as in Venn diagrams when one encompasses another: the outer includes all that's in the inner but 'transcends' it by encompassing more than is in the inner. 

"That science is not constrained by cultural or religious differences is one of its great virtues." - True. It can address anything the human mind and senses can address, because it is an instrument that expands the human mind and senses. If science can't get at it then we can't.

"Some scientists deny that there can be valid knowledge about values or about the meaning and purpose of the world and of human life." - This is true, but curiously this isn't the point he then goes on to describe with regard to Dawkins. He's confusing the point about what we have access to, what we can know, which this statement is about, with some things that we actually do have ideas about: the denying of purpose (in the religious sense) (not values - Dawkins isn't denying that)

"There is a monumental contradiction in these assertions. If its commitment to naturalism does not allow science to derive values, meaning or purposes from scientific knowledge, it surely does not allow it, either, to deny their existence." - This totally misunderstands the point. The point is that science shows there is no inherent purpose in the universe, not even the characteristics that give rise to us (essentially issues regarding Entropy - it all just happens as the universe 'winds down', to give a simple expression). This in no way prevents us, as organisms with brains that evaluate our surroundings and our selves (echoes of the free will issues here), and to derive values and purpose for ourselves, based on non-teleological evolutionary directives.

"In its publication Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science, the US National Academy of Sciences emphatically asserts that religion and science answer different questions about the world..." - And this is supposed to tell us what? With all the kerfuffle in the US about religion, evolution, ID's 'teach the controversy', etc., this is just a conciliatory nod to the religious that evolution won't step on their toes if they don't step on science's. other than that, the specific issue of evolution doesn't cross swords with liberal religion, since liberal religion accepts evolution and evolution doesn't address ultimate origins; but it does very specifically deny Creationism's young Earth claims.

"People of faith should stand in awe of the wondrous achievements of science. But they should not be troubled that science may deny their religious beliefs." - Of course they should. Science, like any common sense approach to life, demands that we have evidence for what we are being told - otherwise you will be conned all to easily, by email scammers for one. The fact that these scams succeed is a testament to the gullibility of the human brain when left to it's own devices. Belief in religion is another.

"Religion concerns the meaning and purpose of the world and human life" - for all it tries to do that, for all it makes claims, it has nothing to back that up. basically, even when you dress up liberal religion in postmodern 'opinion' truths, it says nothing more than, "What's our purpose? Go is our purpose, or gives us our purpose, or demands our purpose, or loves us so we have the purpose to be loved, ...", and on and on with all sorts of unsubstantiated drivel that basically means they don't know either, but they'll have damned good fun making something up.

"[Religion concerns] the proper relation of people to their Creator and to each other" - Whoa! Hold on. "The proper relation of the people to the creator" - More postmodern bollocks. Without any evidence of a creator, or without the capacity to access the creator in order to establish there is a relation (remember, we are material beings. We don't have access to the supernatural) Note how this grammatically reasonable but nonsensical sentence is given some semblance of meaning, "make sure we include something human, our relation to each other, just to give this nonsense some grounding in reality."

"[Religion concerns] the moral values that inspire and govern their lives." - Only because the religious make that claim, and then espouse morality as if they are the only ones with access to it.

"Science, on the other hand, concerns the processes that account for the natural world: how the planets move, the composition of matter and the atmosphere, the origin and function of organisms." - And, one of these concerns is the workings of the human brain: neuroscience and evolution and anthropology suggest that internal personal 'religious experiences' are just brain anomalies, even if within normal bounds of variation; psychology and sociology and anthropology and evolution all suggest that external religious experiences and organisations are cultural memes that satisfied some requirement in the past.

"Religion has nothing definitive to say about ..." - Well, about anything really. Religion is made-up stuff. 

"According to Augustine, the great theologian of the early Christian church..." - And therein lies another problem. Augustine and other theologians concerned themselves with explaining what pertains once a belief in God is given. This puts anything else they have to say into doubt.

"Successful as it is, however, a scientific view of the world is hopelessly incomplete." - Incomplete, yes, of course. It's work in progress. Humans first appeared about 50,000 to 100,000 years ago - and this might be the point when we really began to use our brains, but the details are unclear. The first human markings on pottery go back about 5500 years. What we call science now had it's base in Greek thought, but really took off just over a thousand years ago - about 1% - 2% of human existence? So, yes, we are still in our scientific infancy. We have no real conception of what science will be telling us about the brain, about religious belief, in another thousand years. 

Because religion has been around for a while and science is so young, the religious seem to have the conceited view that theology has and continues to have access to great insights into the makings of the universe. But given that most of our current religious systems are not much different that those of two thousand years ago, give or take a bit of theological jiggery-pokery in the middle ages, I don't see that religion has had anything to offer.

"Scientific knowledge may enrich aesthetic and moral perceptions and illuminate the significance of life and the world, but these matters are outside the realm of science." - No they are not, because that would put them outside the realm of human beings, when it's human beings that create both science (the process) and these perceptions (in our brains).

Ayala made some similar statements at the Buckingham Palace reception where he received his Templeton Foundation prize. Probably is best statement was this:

"Properly they cannot be in contradiction because they deal in different subjects. They are like two windows through which we look at the world; the world is one and the same, but what we see is different,..."

My response to that is that they could be. If religion stuck to it's organisational and pastoral care roles then it has a lot to contribute to human affairs. It differs from science in this respect in that science is best at finding things out, telling us how the world is - even though through understanding the brain and human social issues it can contribute data to be used by religious organisations. This also seems in accord with what Alan has said on his blog - he sees the pragmatic value in religion, what it can do for us.

But if religion wants to tell us how or who created the universe, what interaction the personal brain is having with as yet unknown agents (i.e. God), then these are real questions of science. Cosmology and particle physics tells us much more about how the universe actually is, and as much as we can yet know about how it began, and no amount of theological navel gazing is going to improve on that. The branches of brain science are examining how the brain works, and how it doesn't, how it fools itself, how gullible it is, and no amount of theological navel gazing and introspection is going to tell us anything better.

The religious need to move on. I haven't read anything by some of the more liberally religious, such as Richard Holloway, recommended to me by Lesley. Though science can't yet answer many of our questions about our origins and our interactions with internal agents, neither can religion, and science is in the best position to get those answers, eventually.

Human Fallibility

From here I've arrived at the point where our working model is that we think with our minds and we have senses to sense the natural world.

But on closer examination, by our minds, these senses appear to be fallible, so we concoct methods for gaining confidence in particular sense experiences. On even further examination we discover that our reasoning and other cognitive faculties can also be fallible, so we take steps to account for that observation too. So all we can do is construct experience and look for multiple ways of confirming what we experience to gain confidence in it, to give credibility to it, to compensate for the fallibilities. When we do this rigorously we call this science. Science gives us the best and most reliable explanation of our cognitive and sensory experiences, accounting for and accommodating for our fallibilities the best it can.

Note that this is an entirely inductive experience, from the particular to the general. Induction lies on top of no firm and absolute foundation, it is true. An inductive argument indicates some degree of support for the conclusion but does not ensure its truth. So, just to make it clear, none of this is offered as a proof! Of anything.

For any of the detail along the way we might use deductive reasoning, which is often thought to be more thorough, more concrete. This does not mean that deduction is always the better choice. Deduction is fine if you construct a valid argument; and if you have true premises then you have yourself a 'sound' argument, the most sure argument there is. But it's an illusion to think you can have a sound deductive argument at the limits of philosophy, in metaphysics - you can never be sure your premises are true! Why? Because all we have are our thoughts and our senses - we have no prior premises and arguments upon which to build our starting premises. So, if someone tells you they have a proof that, say, God exists, it's baloney, because it always relies on presupposition, and the presupposition can't be guaranteed to be true. If someone wants to offer you 'evidence' for God, that's a different matter and should be treated seriously.

We are fallible human beings. The very best we can do is accumulate data, examples, lots of them, and compare them and subject them to any tests we can. We create hypotheses, of which Richard Feynman said they could just as well be guesses. Any old random guess won't usually do - we could be here forever checking every possible hypothesis - something some theists think atheist are claiming (and what Pirsig mistakenly thought was a problem, in ZAMM - more of that in another post). Of course we base hypotheses on prior experience that appears to work. This is induction and science in action.

Science concludes (this means best explanation so far, not we're absolutely certain) that according to our senses and reasoning there is a physical world out there. It gets a bit quirky sometimes - e.g. quantum physics - but so far nothing has been found to refute this tentative conclusion. I mean, really, nothing! You have to consider what it would mean to refute this. You would have to find something that isn't physical. This is a tall order. Before sub-atomic particles were figured out the world was still physical. Discovering the sub-atomic particles didn't introduce some magic into the universe - it was simply that we discovered something we didn't know was there before, but is still considered part of the physical universe.

This is what will happen with any 'paranormal' effect or 'energy' that might exist. If it exists, then when it is found, that is when there is evidence of it, then it too will become a part of our physical description of the universe. The reason the paranormal is ridiculed so much isn't because we know it to be false absolutely, it's that fantastic claims have been made, but no evidence has been found to support them. Astrology? No evidence.

Evidence is the route to discovery and the support and maintenance of ideas and theories and facts. No evidence? Then it might as well not exist. Not, you note, that it doesn't exist! Science is not saying anything in particular does not exist. It only says to what extent there is evidence to support an idea. If we can't see it, taste it, feel it, etc., then we might as well act as if it doesn't exist, even if it does, for how can we tell the difference. We can happily go about our daily lives as if the speed of light does not have a limit, because in our daily lives we never reach that limit.

We can also ignore God as an entity because whether he exists of not makes no apparent difference. This means that despite the fact that theists can't prove God exists and atheists can't disprove it, it's irrelevant, because there is no evidence, and that's sufficient.

Many theists realise this and no longer require the existence of God as an entity 'out there' - See Rob Bell (h/t Lesley's Blog). But that doesn't mean theists have dealt with the problem of human fallibility in relation to faith. I'll get to that in another post.

Wager On An Atheist's God

Getting bored with arguing with theists, I thought it might be easier if I just give up and join the club. I've been trying to find a God hypothesis that comes close to working for me. There are none out there that completely satisfy my needs.

Though I'm not prone to believing God stuff without evidence, from my point of view it is legitimate to concoct hypotheses and check them against what my reason and senses tell me. Here's one.


There is a God. He created the universe as we have come to know it through our senses, reason and science. He wanted nothing more than to create a universe to see what would happen. He is not omniscient, so he was curious. Being alone, but otherwise a good scientist, he is very hands-off and observational.

He has seen humans evolve with no input from himself other than the initial conditions. He looks on with amusement at all the speculations, guesses, hypotheses about how the universe started. He is amused that some, the theists, guessed right, but went overboard in speculating about him. Basically, other than the guess that there was an agency, him, all religions got everything else totally wrong. He has no interest in morality, that is in making decrees he expects us to adhere to. He pays no attention to prayers and certainly doesn't answer them.

In fact, since he has left no trace of himself, and has made no communication with us, he is amazed and amused by the great intelligence of the atheists who suppose he does not exist, knowing that if he were in their position he'd conclude the same. In fact, given he has left no evidence of himself, he's surprised there are beings still dumb enough the think he exists.

He's so pleased with the atheists that, despite having no former plans, he is considering taking up one of the theists' wrong beliefs - that of the afterlife. But, the twist is that everyone who has died a thoughtful reasoned atheist, he will recreate as equal partners to himself, as gods - thinking it would be nice to have some intelligent conversation. As for the theists, he wouldn't in all eternity want those freaky dictatorial idiots around with any godly powers - he'd have religious wars on his hands that would put the vindictive ancient Greek gods to shame. No, the theists can be left to return to other forms of matter - to go up in smoke or be eaten by worms.


Now on the surface this seems a dumb hypothesis to me, because there's no evidence to support it. Buut hey, hold on! There isn't supposed to be. Perfect! This overcomes some of the problems with the usual theist hypotheses - that God intervenes. And I can say God is unknowable - this is only my hypothesis, I don't know if it's true, and I'm not claiming it is, so I don't have to justify it. It can't lose.

Still, to be on the safe side, in case this is the truth, I'd still be better consigning it to the bin like all the other divine hypotheses - I wouldn't want God to think I think he's there. But on the whole this is a far better bet on which to use Pascal's Wager.

If you can find any flaws with this hypothesis, then by all means contribute. But don't expect an argument from me, I'm an atheist.

Some Notes on Theism

I'm prompted to write this post as a general account of my opinions about the existence of God in response to an exchange with Aaron on Sam's blog: Comments. In particular I wanted to respond to this comment by Arron: "At the very core, Christianity is nothing more than following Christ. The word itself means simply one who follows Christ's teachings. All of the sacraments, all of the ritual, all of the dogma is man-made artifice that is at times either helpful or harmful to a given individual or even to the world at large."

There's nothing new in what follows; it's just a summary of my views on the subject of theism in the above context.

I don't find anything wrong with following the teaching of any particularly wise person, but is it really likely that all the professed teachings of Jesus were all his own work? Even if it could be shown that many of the teachings of Jesus were attributable to his followers and biographers that wouldn't necessarily diminish the wisdom inherent in the teachings.

But anything in addition to this is where my problem with Christianity, and theism in general begins.

First, to make Jesus anything more than simply a mortal teacher requires the presupposition of God. This presupposition is at the heart of all the main monotheistic religions. Without an initial God everything else fails, theistically. Theists sometimes argue that atheists aren't in a position to comment on some aspects of theology that they haven't studied, but without the presupposition of God the theology is worthless.

I find no rational reason to presuppose God. I have not seen one single argument supporting theism that doesn't presuppose this, for any of the God religions. And this brings me to the degree of my 'agnosticism' or 'atheism' as discussed with Aaron. The metaphysical idea that a God is one possible cause of everything is fine, but that's all it is, an idea, a concept, with no more weight than any other metaphysical idea. I could equally presuppose two Gods, and infinite number of Gods, or no Gods, a single once-only universe from nothing, a cyclical single universe, multiple parallel universes, metaphysical ideas that have mathematical support and those that don't, and even pure fantasy universes - metaphysically, anything goes. So, in response to Aaron, I am 'agnostic' to the extent that the God hypothesis is one of many, and I am 'atheistic' to the extent that I don't find the God hypothesis a particularly convincing one. I'm so unconvinced I'm prepared to accept the label 'atheist'.

Without presupposing God it becomes necessary to say why one would think there is a God.

All the so called proofs of the existence of God, the ontological, teleological, cosmological, and other 'logical' arguments are all based on some unsupportable premise, that is usually based on some human intuitive requirement that there should be some cause, that it should be intelligent, and that it should be loving. God is made in the image of the best of what we would like to be, not we in his image.

Terms such as 'infinite' and 'perfect' are often used in relation to God. These are mere concepts that are useful in describing something beyond what we can see, measure or reach. There is no reality to them, as far as we know. There's no good reason that they are attributes of or have anything to do with God.

Discussions about the 'probability' of any of these possible ideas, and in this context that there might or might not be a God, are metaphysical speculations and have no mathematical basis to take them any further. In order to calculate probabilites about God's existence we need information we just don't have.

Some theists don't require proof or evidence or probabilistic likelihood, since they find some ideas 'obvious', when considering these issues. For example, it's 'obvious' there must be a 'loving', 'intelligent', 'omnipotent', ..., creator. To such a theist I'd ask the following. How would you know that? How many universes have you witnessed being created to come to that 'obvious' conclusion, deductively or inductively? What experiences do you have, on the scale of universes, that make you think this or any universe requires a creator at all? An as for 'His' attributes, how would you know what they were? Revelation? Well, revelation presupposes there's a God to do the revealing, as opposed to there having been a number of fallible humans through the ages that have misunderstood, willfully lied, or been deluded about revelatory events - that presupposition again?

Another approach theists sometimes take is with respect to what might be called 'ways of knowing'. When all the rational arguments have been put forward - basically saying there's no evidence or proof that God exists and so we should act as if he doesn't - theists have been known to question the appropriateness of these arguments, by questioning the ways in which we can know things. All I want to say for now on this is that the best and most useful ways of knowing consist of supporting our personal experiences with rational critical and sceptical thought and, when appropriate and possible, employing what is commonly know as the scientific method. I accept that when we follow this path the best we can hope for is the accumulation of common experiences that give us some grasp of how things work, and to a limited extent why they work; but I also accept that in no way does that lead us to any ultimate and absolute truth about anything; it only provides us with a degree of confidence. What about meditation and other 'spiritual' ways of knowing? As far as I can see, moving to what is essentially a different mind-state is no different than chewing on magic mushrooms - anything goes; and there's no reason to suppose anything valuable or real is being revealed.

Yet another idea that theism embraces whole heartily, and which is also a necessity for some non-theists, is the requirement for purpose or meaning. I think this idea is often behind the 'obvious' discussed above. But there is no requirement that the universe, or any part of it (i.e. us), should have any purpose or meaning. This need that some people have for there to be purpose and meaning in the universe at all is a quirk of human nature, akin to the need to bite ones nails or pick ones nose or scratch an itch. Can I prove this? No, but the parallels are sufficient to explain it without conjuring up an agent such as God.

Now, I can accept a 'concept', call it God if you wish, as an aspiration, a goal to which we would like to aim; but it's entirely a human construct - it certainly isn't theistic in the usual sense, and not even deistic. In that respect it's a form of Humanism. I think that this is what some versions of Christianity have come to be, though I can't understand why there remains the insistence on the truth of, say, the resurrection, or even the continued association with Christ.

Much of this aspiration for the unreachable perfection is fine. But because we can't actually reach it we have to settle for less. And that 'less' that each person settles for is subjective. I don't have a problem with different individuals or groups of people deciding that they think they should live by certain rules, constructing their own morality - I've seen no evidence or good argument for objective morality. And I think it makes sense that as a society (and collections of societies) that we should agree that compromises have to be made - we can't all have our own particular moral codes enforced just as we choose. The problem with religion in this respect is that it has aimed for the heady heights of the infinite and the perfect, and has decided there is a real God, and has then interpreted its own subjective moral codes as being determined by this fictitious character. All theistic religions, and sects within religions, and individuals within sects, all have their own take on what God is, to what extent he interacts with us, to what extent he commands us, or requires us to worship him, etc. Religion is probably the most variable and subjective of human enterprises, in terms of what is believed, and yet often its adherents claim to have access to absolute and invariant truth. This is pure nonsense.

Take any individual, whether it be Jesus, his apostles, Mohammed, the Pope, or anyone claiming to be divine or to have been in touch with some divine being, or to have received a message, a revelation; take any of them; any claim they have made can be accounted for by down to earth explanations. But, you might say, at least some of the claims could be true. Well, how would you know? How, in fact, do you distinguish between a truthful claim about the divine and any of the many consequences of simple human frailty: mistakes, dreams, delusions, lies, intuitions, group-think, etc. There is no known way of making such a distinction, and since ultimately all supposed sources of divine information result from such claims, one way or another, they must all be seriously suspect, at the very least. Add to the shear variety the fact that no matter which religion you follow, and no matter how dedicated you are and to what extent you submit yourself and obey the commands and pray, there's not a damn bit of difference made in this world. From the most pious to the most 'sinful' - not a jot of difference that anyone has demonstrated.

All that pretty much takes care of my view about God. I think it's a strong case. I'd be happy to expand on any individual points, or to consider any angles I haven't already. I'd even believe in God if I thought there was sufficient reason.