Why I'm an atheist

[sarahmichigan]

This is going to be kind of anti-climactic since I've been thinking on it for a while and leading up to it, and yet it's going to be short. But here goes.

I'm an atheist because I think the burden of proof is on those who believe in ANY kind of supernatural phenomena. As far as I can tell, material, natural explanations explain the world and how it works and how it came into being just fine.

To me, positing a Higher Being (especially the more specific you get about what this being is like) to explain things is like saying that tiny black fairies contort their bodies to show the time on my digital watch rather than relying on naturalistic, material explantions about electricity and such.

Now, I understand why some people have an intuition that there just MUST be something bigger than us that created the world. That's fine, and I can understand that. (I have trouble figuring out, sometimes, how people go from "some higher being" to "my specific sect or doctrine," but that's another subject.) However, I don't have that intuition.

I remember when I was taking philosophy courses at Western Michigan University, and sometimes the professor would ask, "What's your intuition about that statment or assertion?" This was in the context of many philosophical arguments, not just ones about the existence or non-existence of God. I remember thinking, "Intuition?! This is supposed to be a philosophy course, and not a New Age class about how to fine-tune your ESP."

But really, when it comes to belief in a higher being of some sort, I think a lot of us are going off our gut feeling. My gut says that only the material world exists, and there isn't anything "super" above the natural world. Any weirdness that can't be explained by science can usually be explained by psychology.

Comments

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

What i want to do first is ask a question: Can you explain exactly what you mean by "burden of proof", and why you feel it rests with those who believe in supernatural phenomena and not also with those who do not?

Something like the Sagan quote about "extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof" combined with Occam's razor. If a naturalistic explanation for life on earth, etc., is sufficient, why do we need to posit a higher being? That, plus most of the philosophical arguments FOR the existence of God tend to bring up as many paradoxes as they solve.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_earthshine_/]

OK... i think i understand what you mean.

The reason i ask is because i'm positing what i believe is more "neutral" assertion: if there is no evidence for or against a given hypothesis, then its truth and its fallacy hold equal credit.

What i'm suggesting here is that the use of terms like "burden of proof" or even "Occam's razor" implicitly put your original statement ("I'm an atheist because I think the burden of proof is on those who believe in ANY kind of supernatural phenomena.") into a logical/scientific context. This is of course reasonable, but my question is this: is it a circular argument?

The idea i'm testing here is this:

The disciplines of logic include axioms such as not bringing in irrelevant facts, or accepted practices like assigning burden or proof or applying Occam's Razor. Therefore, to apply these tools to this question is to bias the answer, because the tools themselves are based on a discipline whose purpose and usefulness comes from being able to rule out certain things.

(I hope i'm making sense -- i'm having a hard time articulating the idea.)

That said, trying to "unbias" this doesn't lean us toward the hypothesis that supernatural things exist, either. Instead, the unbiased approach seems to lead just to the neutral stance that, given no substantial evidence either way, both hypotheses are equally "valid".

("Valid" is in quotes because this isn't the "valid" of logical terminology, but just the more conceptual "valid".)

Let's say for a moment that this makes sense (but stop me if it doesn't). We're now at a point where, given no real evidence either way, the existance of anything supernatural/metaphysical/god-like is entirely debatable and perhaps even arbitrary, from a "truth" standpoint.

From here, two things come to mind:

1) That (as stacycat69 said), this is why this is all about faith -- either way. I have utmost respect for the "hard atheist" belief that there is no God. What drives me nuts is when, for whatever reason, the occasional hard atheist believes that this belief is somehow not a faith, but some sort of scientific conclusion about which the rest of the world is in denial or error. (For the record, in both this and past discussions here and elsewhere, none of the present company has ever seemed to be in this group.)

2) Where one goes with a decision that's arbitrary from one standpoint is often determined by changing standpoints -- if there's no more or less "truth" to believing in God or not, the next question seems to be what other factors might lend toward one or the other.

#2 is where things get interesting, in my mind. As you said, it's often just a "gut feeling" or intuition that takes over here. When talking about "beliefs", it's often not really a choice, but more of something intrinsic to our experience and/or makeup. It also leads me to ask the next question, which i think is key (and others have touched upon it):

What is, in your mind, the implicit goal or potential effect of believing (or not believing) in something spiritual?

If it's merely to explain what we see, then we're back to arbitrarity: both hypothesis seem to cover that ground (well, for purposes of this conversation -- i have some of my own questions about that, but they're out of scope here). If, as you said, it's about things like making the world make sense, helping people make good decisions, and bringing people together, then we have a fresh set of criteria with which to weigh the value of belief.

(Of course, that's just an exploratory exercise. It might lead to changes in beliefs, but we are talking about beliefs here... and true beliefs don't just change because we will them to. If we were suddenly all forced to change religion under some oppressive government, we might have a perfectly good reason (survival) to change our to the prescribed belief, but that doesn't mean that we could force ourselves to actually believe it.)


Anyway... curious what you think of all this. Thanks again for (yet another) cool discussion!

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

This isn't really a reply to this post, but I'm replying to it because I agree with it so much.

[...] when you have a discussion between theists and atheists/agnostics, one of the first and main points brought up is something like, "But how can you look at the world and believe that there's no creator?" or "How did the world get here if there's no god?"

Both important points, to be sure. Personally, I think that the belief that there is no god is strikingly arrogant- a belief that is strikingly similar to the religious belief that "God" fits neatly within the dictates of a particular sect's declarations.

Religious literalism and Secularist-Atheist literalism are intimate bedfellows.

The main functions of religion, as far as I can tell, seem to be helping people make sense of the world, helping people figure out how to make good decisions, and creating a sense of community.

A reasonable summary, except that the term carries a connotation of shared path as much as a connotation of imposed assistance.

I'm a deist, a Christian.
I think that religious belief and unbelief are both positions of faith when dogmatically asserted.
I abhor evangelism.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_earthshine_/]

Both important points, to be sure. Personally, I think that the belief that there is no god is strikingly arrogant- a belief that is strikingly similar to the religious belief that "God" fits neatly within the dictates of a particular sect's declarations. ... I think that religious belief and unbelief are both positions of faith when dogmatically asserted.

Well, i agree with the concept here, but with the clarification that i wouldn't myself say the merely believing there is no God is arrogant. Arrogance is an attitudinal (word?) trait, not something that comes with a belief. A person could be a "hard atheist" but still be very tolerant, welcoming and respectful of others' beliefs... just as there are Christians who can believe very absolutely in the Gospel but not assert any practical superiority over people of other faiths (and i dare say that i personally believe that Christ would want it that way -- but i'm neither the scholar nor the parishoner to suggest that my opinion on that means anything). :)

I would suggest (and maybe this is what you mean, too?) that the arrogance comes when people become forceful (evangelical) or superior about their faith -- be it for or against God in any form. I don't think Atheism, Christianity or most other faiths inherently carry that with them -- i think some people (and in some rare cases, sects) choose to apply that view to their faith.

...and like you, i don't like it much. :)

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

No, I do believe that any firm pronouncement that we have firm earthly knowledge as to the precise nature/nonexistence of God is intrinsically arrogant, as well as fundamentally illogical.

I don't think that the arrogance is necessarily global. It may be the only thing that the person is arrogant about. It gives us no logical basis to speculate on their beliefs, character or behavior otherwise.

Neither does my statement apply to statements like "Given the utter absence of evidence, I default to the position of unbelief". Such a statement implicitly admits that the position of the claimant is one of assumption in the context of limited evidence- a position I have absolutely no quarrel with.

No, I am referring to that limited subset of atheists who take the fallacy "The absence of evidence constitutes evidence of absence", and build a firm belief system upon it.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_earthshine_/]

Ah, okay. I think i understand.

I would certainly take issue with such a claim. Being the guy i am, i would probably just assume that the person was -- somewhere in their chain of logic -- making an assumption or relying on an axiom without remembering that such things are statements of faith in and of themselves, regardless of however high a degree they correspond to observable reality. Whether or not that constitutes "arrogance" i'll call a matter of definition at that point, but i believe i understand what you mean -- it can certainly come across as such.

I usually find that -- if they're willing to discuss it -- most folks will eventually boil their explanations down to just such a level, and that we can collectively identify which assumption is the root of their claim. At that point, they either accept that their assumption is exactly that and that maybe not all people share it, or claim that the assumption is an empirical conclusion that may as well be true. I can live with the latter, so long as the point is made that that is what we're dealing with, and not a hard fact.

In the end, i suppose there will always be some people who just can't get down with the idea and think other people are idiots because they can. That's the kind of intolerance (and yes, probably implicit arrogance) that i just need to consider a loss.

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

I think we would likely both agree that many statements which are, logically, implicitly arrogant often boil down to simple error which some people are able to recognise and a few are even able to admit. This is true whether the arguer is deist, atheist, or agnostic.

By "implicitly arrogant" I simply mean, that the argument depends on or implies the existence of power, ability, or unusual characteristics that the arguer is unlikely to have.

It's not really a big deal.

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

I tend to lump god in with things like black fairies in my digital watch and the Loch Ness monster. They're so ridiculous (in the case of God, I mean specific assertions about the nature of a Creator God, not any sort of higher being in general) that I think the burden of proof rests on those who assert their existence. I'm also having trouble articulating why, exactly, so let me think on that some more.

I don't know that believing or not-believing in the divine has any kind of goal; in a sense, that question doesn't even make sense to me. In terms of effect, I think belief or non-belief has a lot less effect on what people do than we'd like to think. I think good people use God as an excuse to do good and bad people use religion to justify they bad things they do. I think they'd still be good (here, "good" meaning something like "following the golden rule") even if they lost their belief in deity.

I'm glad you're enjoying the discussion, but I'm actually tiring of it a bit; I was putting up the "Why I am a..." posts more for my own reference than to start a philosophical debate. I've done the debates over and over both in college courses and in other settings with believers, and I just tend to get tired of it eventually. I don't mean to say you're doing anything to bother me in particular, and I don't want to be rude, but I'd just rather move on from this discussion at this point.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_earthshine_/]

All fair... Thanks for kicking it off. Others are now chatting about it and may continue.

It sounds like your original assertion -- that, all things being equal, your instincts just tell you that God/supernaturalia is just a silly idea -- is the essence of it. I can totally go with that, because (as said above), in matters of improvables, that's really all we've got to go on.

Sorry if it wore you out -- i didn't intend to kick off a debate that would strain anyone. Just wanted to throw ideas around. Folks who have opinions/beliefs different than mine but who i also respect are a great source of new ideas and growth for my own philosophies.

Be well!