I’m an atheist because I don’t “believe in” God. Yes, it’s as simple as that. I don’t see any evidence that such a being exists (or plays an active role in the world, which amounts to the same thing).
That’s actually stating things too narrowly: the truth is, I don’t believe in gods. Or spirits, or the supernatural in any form, really. If something is genuinely supernatural – truly “beyond” or “outside of” the natural world – then by definition it can’t affect us. If it can affect us, it isn’t supernatural; it’s just a part of nature we don’t understand (yet). So it’s fair to say that I’m an atheist precisely because I’m a materialist.
There’s a classic accusation leveled against people who’ve left their faith. “You were never a Christian (or whatever) to begin with!” That’s… actually kind of true, when it comes to me. I was raised Christian, but it was never a big part of my identity. It was just one more item in a long list of things that didn’t make much sense to me, but seemed to be very important to everyone else. As I got older, and looked at it more critically, I quit identifying as Christian at all.
The big turning point for me wasn’t realizing “I just can’t believe this” so much as realizing that the fact that I couldn’t believe it didn’t necessarily mean that something was wrong with me.
Cat
United States
Cats can be cool!
I thought this was going to be by a cat. :(
PZ already has put up a post against you, Cat.
Glen Davidson
I’ll take circular argument for 1000, Alex ! (Who’s Alex btw?) I don’t like this line of arguing at all. It’s like saying “I’m religious because I believe in god”.
The “if it can effect us, it isn’t supernatural” part makes more sense, and that is in fact a great argument against gods.
Alex is Alex Trebek, the host of Jeopardy.
That should be Jeopardy!.
“As I got older, and looked at it more critically, I quit identifying as Christian at all.”
After you grew up you threw out the tooth fairy, the Easter Bunny, and the equally childish Mr. God. A few million other Christians never grew up and now their disease is incurable.
Lucky for you Mr. Cat the brainwashing was not too intense or perhaps there was no brainwashing at all. The more interesting Why I am an atheist testimonials for me are from victims whose youth was totally wasted with god bullshit. Their stories are interesting because against all odds they recovered from several years of intense mental child abuse.
— Human Ape
Ah thanks, I always wondered about that !
;)
rorschach #4 wrote:
No it’s not. Imo that’s one of the worst arguments against the supernatural because it manages to do two things: it attacks a straw man and it “wins the battle” by playing around with words alone.
People who believe in the supernatural believe that objects, events, or aspects of the supernatural world can and do effect the natural world. You’re not going to refute this by telling them that no it can’t by definition. You can’t demonstrate that by evidence and you can’t just unpack it from the term. The term is too ambiguous.
Besides, all they need do to sidestep your objection is say “okay — in that case God, angels, magic energy forces and higher consciousness are all part of nature! They’re a part of nature that works on a different level and in different ways than other parts of nature.” And there goes this “great argument.”
New Agers do this. They think they’re getting away with something.
Good for you! I think this is a very significant insight here. When you examine what’s involved in the concept of “faith” it pretty much comes down to wanting to be a certain kind of person — the kind of person who has faith.
Daniel Dennett called it faith in faith: the belief that there is something noble, sensitive, wise, or humble about the act or choice of believing something on insufficient evidence (or rather, evidence which would be insufficient to some types of people, but not to other types of people i.e. the noble, sensitive, wise, or humble.) I think this attitude lies behind religion, spirituality, and a lot of pseudoscience and woo. Beliefs aren’t conclusions; they’re commitments. Very divisive.
Once you realize there is no obligation — moral, cultural, psychological, or otherwise — to try to believe in God the problems with the concept gradually starts to become clear.
Our doubts are coming from our conscience.
Faith is the little voice in your head that says you should believe the little voice in your head.
Faith is a vice — doubt is a virtue.
I think Cat’s reasoning is not circular. She’s simply saying that the supernatural is incoherent or useless. This, I believe is quite similar to PZ’s own position on God.
This is a key point, as Sastra says. The slow dismantling of “belief in belief” is one of the important things that the “new atheism” has been contributing to the public discourse.
Wait a second ! What do you think is a strawman here ?
Of course I can. This isn’t difficult. If we can poke at it or measure it, it ain’t supernatural. If it is meant to do stuff in our world, it isn’t supernatural. It doesn’t matter if the religious don’t like it. They don’t get to own the terminology.
Francisco Bacopa #12 wrote:
Not quite. I think the argument she brings up tries to use the definition of a claim to show that the claim is false/unknowable. But people who make the claim would either not agree with the definition — or would agree and promptly move the same damn claim into another category with nothing changed from before. You can’t win with a semantic argument.
I’m not sure if it’s exactly circular reasoning, though. I’ve seen an atheist argument which is similar and looks a lot more circular. Consider:
1.) Nature is defined as “all that exists.”
2.) The supernatural is outside of nature.
3.) Thus, there is no such thing as the supernatural.
A theist (or other supernaturalist) would rightly complain about that first premise.
Instead, the argument here is:
1.) The only things we can be affected by are natural things.
2.) The supernatural is not natural.
3.) Thus, we can’t be affected by supernatural things.
Again, the theist would complain about #1. Since agreeing to either first premise would obviously shoot out their whole belief system, they’re not likely to grant it. Can’t say I’d blame them.
It’s like when theists insist that Dawkins can’t use scientific reasoning to undermine the existence of God because BY DEFINITION you can’t use scientific reasoning to undermine the definition of God. That’s the first premise. Uh huh. The gnus do not roll over for that one.
But nor do you. At best you achieve an entirely empty victory, like the presuppers – in fact, you’re doing pretty much the same as them. If you’re satisfied with that, OK, that’s up to you. I’m not.
Sastra has previously given a definition of the supernatural something like: anything that has mental properties that are not dependent for their existence on physical processes. There is nothing incoherent about such a concept; it just does not appear to be instantiated. If you claim otherwise, then it is for you to show that it is incoherent; merely asserting it isn’t good enough.
rorschach #14 wrote:
The definition. The “supernatural” is being defined as “something that is so far outside of and beyond the natural world that it can’t affect the natural world in any significant way.” No supernaturalist would agree to that definition.
And have you tested the supernatural and found this out?
Here’s the problem. I agree that a definition can’t be infinitely flexible, either way. It has to mean something and stick to it. But defining “the supernatural” in terms of whether it’s inside or outside of “nature” or in terms of what we can or can’t know about is pretty vacuous. It’s not really engaging with what people who talk about the supernatural, both believers and critics, really mean. (Tip: They’re talking about some sort of purely mental force/property. I’ve yet to see anyone come up with a supernatural claim which didn’t somehow depend on some form of dualism.)
If we come up with some disproof of the supernatural — or a proof of God — which rests on looking at the definitions of things we’re just playing word games.
@ Rorschach:
Here’s a question. If, instead of being considered “outside of Nature” the supernatural was defined as “the highest or ultimate level of the natural world,” then would the great argument against the existence of God no longer be a great argument against the existence of God?
I suspect that the only thing it would take for the proponents of the supernatural to shift to the ‘new’ definition is whim — and whether they think the highest or ultimate level of nature sounds like it’s impressive enough.
Sastra #10
Atheists do not have god-shaped holes in our psyches which need to be filled. As a result, we can consider if god(s) exist or not and examine the evidence or lack thereof for god(s).
But what does that really mean. What kind of “mental properties”? What does it even mean to exist free of physical processes?
Nevermind my #21. I have a bazillion things to do today, and don’t have time to engage properly. Sorry.
Then it would be “I am not an atheist because I am God.”
Antiochus Epiphanes
What it says. Really, this sort of question is just obfuscation.
Oh, you know, things like thoughts, feelings, intentions…
It means to exist free of physical processes. Like numbers, for example. We can prove that an infinite number of primes exist, and this is true whether or not the physical universe is infinite.
If you make the claim that the supernatural can influence the material world then you have made a claim that is empirically testable.
Since AFAIK all such tests have been negative (or positive results having been due to fraud), it is OK to reject the existance of supernatural effects.
Besides, no conclusions section ever begins with the caveat: Assuming no supernatural entity has been pissing in the soup…
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/9662/atheistcat.jpg
Hee hee.
It means to exist free of physical processes. Like numbers, for example. We can prove that an infinite number of primes exist, and this is true whether or not the physical universe is infinite.
Perhaps, then, primes think thoughts while the rest of the rationals only muddle mentally?
I hear that 2 has a real problem with 1. What pisses off 2 is not so much that 1’s square root is irrational but that it isn’t even 1’s identity. 2 is really put out by such crass ignorance of self.
Meh. I’ve yet to meet a mental process that was not fully grounded in physical processes. Not that such could not exist. I could be wrong or simply ill informed. Nevertheless, all the mental processes, all the thoughts and all the creativity that exists seems rooted firmly in the physical universe which expresses itself by moving things and forces around.
That which moves not, thinks not. I think.
Oops. Please swap the 2s for the 1s.
>note to self: please engage brain before clicking submit<
To Cat, your emergent sense of disbelief reminded me of my childhood when my mother subscribed to Fate Magazine. That was a monthly digest of all things woo and supernatural.
Even as a little boy I felt my brain flex uncomfortably when reading the stories of UFOs and ghosts and mysterious messages from beyond. That irksome flexing was even worse when I tried to get religion. Damn near broke something in my head and might have done permanent damage had I not remembered earlier lessons and just put the whole issue of religion down. I just put it down, all at once. I'll bet it's still right there where I left it.
Sorry, fell asleep last night.
As pointed out in @25, saying that the supernatural, whichever way you define it, has effects in the natural world, is making a testable claim. And this is what theists do, they assert the existence of something outside the natural world that nevertheless has effects within the natural world.
So if it exists and we can test and poke and measure it, it ain’t god. To me, that’s a good argument against them.
And if, on the other hand, we find no evidence of such supernatural goings-on, same result. No gods.
Crudely Wortt
If you’d care to take your head out of your arse for a moment, you might notice that I was giving aan example of something that exists without depending on physical processes, because Antiochus Epiphanes asked what that could mean.
I completely agree with you. What I’m disputing is the claim that this can be determined by rorschach defining words to mean what he wants them to mean, rather than by empirical enquiry, as has actually been the case.
Here is how I’d play it if I was a “logical” theist and not the go-to-hell atheist I am:
Again I am playing “logical” theist..
(1) All the stuff about god(s) being active in the natural universe is bunk. Atheists you are RIGHT! Of course nature is not supernatural nor influenced by the supernatural; anything that can influence nature is natural – no matter how awesomely weird and mysterious it seems.
The new-age woo peddlers all quantum-ee are just miscasting natural phenomena and/or hiding behind science too complex for laypeople to get their head around. And the old guard definition of god(s)/spirits active in our lives just ridiculous wishful thinking that should have died out a century or two ago.
(2) Religions are man-made constructs mostly for the purpose of perpetuating the powers that be and/or conveniently controlling the masses. Atheists you are RIGHT! Religions are blood sucking scourges that we should have replaced with more modern social structures at advent of functioning democracies.
(3) I believe that there is a supernatural force (for lack of better word) that permeates all nooks and crannies. It is supernatural. It being supernatural transcends the natural and provides continuity even if a Universe(s) ceases and restarts starts an infinite number of times. It is the force that provides all nature. It is the substrate for all laws of nature. It is part of me and it will exist forever.
Why do I believe this: because philosophically it answers many questions as to origin of Laws. It is as logical as any other origin theory.
_________
OK I think it is all fallacious and unnecessary but at least my “logical theist” has some superficially tenable position. But that is the BEST a theist can do in my mind. I am being out-of-line here but I think people like Ken Miller must somewhere have this as a fallback position in their minds.
to clarify: “OK I think it [#3] is all fallacious and unnecessary ..”
Who’s obfuscating here? Your criteria for what “exists” includes any idea that anyone might have? So, sure. Mental properties free of physical properties could exist as an idea inside your head.
This isn’t so much an incoherent concept as a trivial one.
@ KG, #31,
I should have more clearly indicated that my numbers example was conceived and presented in jest. Had it been meant seriously then I would have indeed had my head up my arse.
I am glad that you are in agreement with my following statement that you quoted above. While words have meanings that represent concepts that we have encapsulated in them, those meanings can be in error. The words we use or misuse are, after all, human constructs and as such represent human thought at some past point in the evolution of our understanding. In the future word definitions will no doubt alter even as we invent new ones to reflect our evolving understanding.
Crudely Wrott,
Thanks – I did indeed misinterpret your intention.
Well of course ideas exist, but as far as we know, they are always dependent on physical processes – but this is a matter for empirical investigation, it cannot be decided by fiat. There is, however, a distinction between ideas, and what (if anything) they refer to. I was giving a clear example of something that exists without depending on physical processes: numbers. Not ideas about numbers. The number of primes was infinite before anyone discovered this fact, and would be infinite even if everyone thought otherwise, or there had never been anyone to think about it.
I’m not sure that we can say this. We can make truth claims about abstract notions, but they really don’t exist in the same way that physical elements of the universe do. Even if “mental properties” were an abstract notion in the same way that the prime set is, they aren’t part of the universe unless they also have physical properties.
But, I don’t think that “mental properties” is even within the class of meaningful abstractions, the way that the prime set is, because “mental properties” lacks implications. That the set of primes is infinite is built into the definition of a prime number, even if that implication isn’t obvious at first blush. In fact, the existence of primes is itself implied by number theory. “Mental properties” without physical properties is a notion devoid of connection with anything else. We can formulate some hazy idea, I suppose, about what thoughts and intuitions are, but when we divorce this idea from real things in the real world, I think that its meaning becomes vanishingly small. If not incoherent, then trivial.
The more interesting Why I am an atheist testimonials for me are from victims whose youth was totally wasted with god bullshit.
Where do I find those? I am fighting a hard battle with one of those youths, who completely wasted the last (most formative) 10 years of her life on this BS, and is jeopardizing our, otherwise extremely loving and successful, relationship because I refuse to just “believe.”