Evidence for and against God’s existence

Thanks for surfacing this. An example I have observed with a specific Atheist, Richard Dawkins, is his faith in the simple to complex model. Richard is clearly uncomfortable with organized religion and emotionally wants to be freed from the burden of God. In his interview with Ben Stein he argues for the tyranny of God and the simple to complex model to support his world view.

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Yes. That reason is the total absence of good evidence. The same reason why claims that haven’t met their burden of proof, aren’t automatically accepted when first heard. The time to accept a proposition as (likely) true is when you’ve encountered rationally compelling evidence for it. Since I have not encountered that, I have exactly the reason one would need for lacking belief: Lack of rationally compelling evidence.

No. It’s possible to be undecided on such questions. Why is there something rather than nothing? I have no clue. As best I can tell, no one does. You’re not obliged to just take some position on faith. The fact of me being ignorant of any purported reason for why the universe exists is not a good reason to just take some particular position on faith.

I understand that to some people it can be disconcerting to live with not knowing and uncertainty, and to be sure I am curious, and I would like to know what that reason is, should there be one. Reality is in many ways a big mystery. Does that mean I should just decide to believe some particular candidate explanation even without good evidence just to satisfy my desire to have an answer? No, I don’t think so. So I refrain from making a judgement call since the evidence I have just isn’t good enough to accept, as most likely true, any of the proposals I have heard.

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Yes, that is true, people believe all kinds of things for all different reasons, such as culture. However, that does not mean that all beliefs are wrong. It’s our challenge to figure out which beliefs are right.

In this case are your including the possibility of an intelligent creator behind the universe? Your position appears to be agnostic.

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You just made that up. He doesn’t say that in the interview at all. He describes what he receives in letters, he doesn’t say that’s why he doesn’t believe in organized religion.

No he doesn’t. He’s asked to describe the God of the old testament as he has written about him, which he obliges to and then reads from his book, and then he’s asked “who did create the heavens and the Earth?”, to which he correctly asks why Ben Stein uses the word “who”, which of course begs the question. Then they start talking about the origin of life, which Richard (again correctly) says nobody knows, and then Ben Stein asks an very vaguely defined question about the possibility of intelligent design to explain “some of the things in genetics”. Then Richard indulges the thought-experiment and says he can imagine kinds of intelligent design, such as from extraterrestrials, which Ben Stein then in a sensationally dishonest way narrates over the video as some sort of revelation that Richard Dawkins accepts the possibility of intelligent design.

You’ve just completely made up a story in your own head about what Richard Dawkins believes on faith, and why he purportedly does so. And on the basis of an infamously deceptive interview.

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I once had an agnostic or perhaps atheist friend of mine debating me about my beliefs. I realized that these debates were just fun for him, because he liked winning arguments. So at one point I asked, “If there was a God, would you want to know?” And he thought about it and answered with beautiful candor, “No, because I do not want to change my life.”

Now of course, not all agnostics or atheists would agree with my friend’s response or have the same feelings as him. But it is perhaps helpful to ask oneself these questions once and a while. Conversely, as you rightly suggest, I have often asked myself, “Do I believe in God because I want the gospel to be true, or because it is true?” When these moments of doubt come along, I remember why I believe, based on what I have read, heard and experienced, and I find that the evidence is enough to continue in my faith.

Here is a commonly quoted statement from Thomas Nagel on his opposite, and candid perspective on his unbelief:

In speaking of the fear of religion, I don’t mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper—namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.

  • The Last Word, Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 130-131.
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I’ve always felt these statements to be odd, because I don’t see why one would have to change one’s life just because you believe a God exists. I have to wonder what it is these people are doing(or not doing) they would feel the need to change just because they became convinced God exists. I’m sure we’re all aware of believing Christians who indulge in all sort of behavior they later excuse away with prayer and confessions.

I was raised as a Christian from I was about 5 years old, was baptized as an infant, later confirmed when I was 15 years old, but eventually became an atheist when in my mid twenties(short and boring story, I realized I began believing because I was raised to, and upheld the belief through ad-hoc rationalizations that were themselves ill-motivated reasoning I didn’t have any reason to believe either). After eventually becoming an atheist in my mid-twenties, nothing in my life has really changed, short of the fact that I don’t interpret things that happen in my life as part of some grand plan(or as God speaking back to me), and I no longer pray, or speak to God inside my own head. I don’t feel like a different person, I haven’t really changed my views on politics, society, philosophy, or economics. I’ve basically just stopped believing that Christianity is true.

If I were to become convinced of the truth of Christianity again, I don’t expect I’d change anything about my life other than, of course, not spending hours arguing the truth of theism with Christians on the internet. Of course all this assumes I’d re-convert to some Christian denomination, rather than becoming a different type of theist or a deist(like Anthony Flew purportedly did).

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Perhaps you don’t realize how insulting and offensive to imply that people here hold their positions because they allow their emotions to overrule their reason. If you don’t, consider yourself informed now.

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The inference I made about Richard is not only from this interview but after reading several of his books. Are you claiming that Richard does not feel a sense of freeing himself from religion?

Do you realize he used the simple to complex model as an edict after he proposed the possibility of an alien designer. He claims that designer must have been the product of a Darwinian process. Wouldn’t you agree that Richard has faith that all life can be explained ultimately by a Darwinian process?

How did you think the interview was deceptive?

No I am sorry I do not understand why you are offended, and I certainly mean no offense. As I said above, I realize that not all atheists or agnostics would have responded the way my friend did. People here are implying that people of faith are driven by irrationality. My response to that charge is to suggest that we should all be introspective

I also was not talking about being swayed by emotions, but talking about how personal experiences also inform people’s beliefs. From my perspective, the arguments you have been making against faith are missing part of the equation, so will not persuade any of the Christ followers in my circles to leave their faith. Here in New England, the Christians in my circles are not nominal in their faith. They have had powerful and personal experiences with God that have strengthened their faith. Many came to faith later in life, after much reasoned consideration

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No I am saying I don’t see anything in the interview you linked that substantiates the claim you made in the post where you linked it. Perhaps he does feel a sense of having freed himself from religion, do you have any quotes of his you can supply that substantiates this is why he stopped believing at a young age? As far as I am aware, Dawkins grew up as a Christian, bought into Paley’s watchmaker argument as one of the reasons for belief, but then later discovered Darwin, which eroded his faith.

You mean besides the fact that it was poorly edited together to make it seem like Dawkins is saying the universe(“heavens and Earth”) began by a slow gradual process, where in actual fact he was asked to speculate about the origin of life?

Well for one thing by the badly-phrased questions apparently designed to elicit a response that can be quotemined. The idea here being that Dawkins “thought intelligent design might be a legitimate pursuit”(this time meant to imply Dawkins believes we should consider it a likely idea that life on Earth was designed by space-aliens, or God), and yet go look at the comments section of the video to see just the kind of fatuous nonsense the people there are halluscinating he said:

“Ben Stein was brilliant in this interview. Dawkins can believe in space aliens, whom he’s never seen…”

But Dawkins didn’t say he believes in space-aliens, he was simply describing a possibility. Or how about:

I love how Dawkins ended up admitting that there was some form of intelligent design. Really good documentary.

Or

So Dawkins believes in space aliens

But of course he didn’t “admit” that there was such a thing, he was asked to speculate about a possibility, and then he did just that. Speculated about things that could be possible in principle.

And then we have you, who seem to have invented a story about what goes on inside Richard Dawkins head, from whatever insinuations you have confabulated between the lines of that interview. This is exactly how people who hear stories come to believe that dead people were raised back to life. Have the stories come from people in your in-group(religious conservatives), make it a case of us vs them(Dawkins God-hating atheist liberal = bad), and you’ll get people literally dreaming up false memories of things.

Please, please do not ask me to pretend this is not the very purpose of this interview. To feed a particular primed demographic exactly the kinds of vague insinuations and dog-whistles they need to start dreaming up self-serving stories about what other people believe and why.

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I think that was a clip from the movie, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”
I recall reading about Dawkins being upset when it came out, because he felt he had been interviewed under false pretenses, not knowing it would be used for that type of film

If Dawkins has faith that Darwinian process loves him and has a wonderful plan for his life, and literally worships a graven image of Darwin in his garden, that would still not mean that faith is a requirement for an atheistic worldview.

I suppose you are right but what intellectual vigor lands you with this worldview based on a lack of belief or faith in the cause of significant origin events such as the origin of the universe?

What is “intellectual vigor”, and why is not believing in Thor supposed to give you that, can you not get it from something else rather than things you don’t believe?

Oh. I was not privy to that conversation, and the context of the remarks above reveals nothing remotely resembling that kind of judgment. I was commenting on your remarks in response to @T_aquaticus, and didn’t see him making such assumptions. I must have missed some other context.

I was an evangelical Christian for almost 30 years, and so I am easily frustrated by deflection of responsibility onto “the media.” Then, as now, this kind of deflection was commonplace, and the phrase “negative portrayals in the media” was a stock phrase.

But to the point I was trying to make: I will not respond to your other post in this thread to me, but will just say that I found it very disappointing. You did not engage the hard data that makes evangelicalism look so bad. You refuse to accept responsibility. Maybe I didn’t make it clear enough that my challenge to you and to all of my Christian friends and loved ones is not that you yourselves are responsible for rampant anti-science (call it anti-reality) stances. Not at all. I wouldn’t come near PS if it were a place to celebrate the ongoing destruction of rationality. My challenge is this one: you must acknowledge and own the fact that your religion is plainly a huge contributor to this damage. The numbers I quoted you are indisputable and damning. There is something about evangelical Christianity that damages minds (and hearts, IMO, if by that you mean the source of conscience and decency). To refuse to acknowledge this is to be in denial, and that’s a pretty big impediment to mutual understanding from my point of view.

Again, for me, this isn’t about whether you or any of my Christian friends are personally responsible for the intellectual catastrophe of evangelicalism. This isn’t about whether you, or others here at PS, or my family members, are yourselves dishonest or intellectually compromised. It’s about whether you will have the courage to take responsibility for the clear implications of Christian belief, today, in the lives of tens of millions of people.

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Not sure why you think “we” are in denial. If you had read my article, you would see that I am addressing those issues head on, as is Peaceful Science, BioLogos and ASA, which is why I am involved here at PS and with BL and ASA. Are you suggesting we deny our faith rather than work to make changes in the culture?

Tim Keller gave some helpful reflections on this issue during last Monday’s live-stream with Francis Collins. His points were similar to ones I have made here and elsewhere, so expanding on them a bit:

  1. in the history of science, you see how the distinctions of Judaism and Christianity from other religions made the pursuit of science possible. We believe in one God who made a beautifully ordered universe under a set of laws that could be studied. So Christians should know better and be supportive of science
  2. the current culture has let scientists make claims that overstep the bounds of science. Science cannot disprove the existence of God. There are many sources of knowledge outside of science and all reality is not only physical. Such stances of empiricism are being promoted on this thread and the Loke one. That is scientism, not science, and has led to the distrust of science within the church. Scientists who make such overreaching claims are also responsible for the problem.

So yes the current church has a problem with distrusting science. And scientism is part of the problem. So there are two fronts in which to solve the problem. 1) help the church trust science again and 2) clearly communicate the erroneous claims of scientism

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16 posts were split to a new topic: God as a necessary versus contingent being

I think it’s the difference between grounding and contingent facts. In theism, consciousness is a grounding fact. In naturalism, consciousness is observe but contingent.

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I don’t understand how God’s consciousness being a grounding fact, as in (I assume) a necessary or defining aspect of God, translates into a probability for humans being conscious on theism.

In order for human consciousness to be evidence for theism over naturalism, something must make it (human consciousness) more probable on theism than on naturalism.

God being by definition conscious means God’s consciousness is not merely expected on theism, but tautological. If God is conscious by definition and God exists, then God’s consciousness exists. Absolutely, we have to grant that, but it’s completely trivial.

But it is our consciousness that is being argued is evidence favoring theism over naturalism, and I just don’t see the connection. What is it that implies that if A(God) is conscious, we expect B(Humans) to be conscious too?

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