Way Beyond Atheism: God Does Not (Not) Exist

[Sal316]

The atheisms of most committed, principled atheists are often not more than mirror images — inversions — of the theisms they negate. In On Interpretation, Aristotle wrote, "Affirmations and their corresponding negations are one in the same knowledge"; therefore, one can discern from many atheisms their corresponding affirmative theologies.

<snip>

Dawkins is dogmatically rigid and fixed in place. He is a fundamentalist.

He must be, because the only theology he has ever successfully attacked is fundamentalism, an embarrassingly easy target. But it's the only theology he knows, the only theology he can imagine. Therefore, per Turner, it's the only theology his own atheism is equipped to deny, which he himself demonstrates beautifully in Chapter 3 of The God Delusion. This is the part of the book in which he addresses and summarily dismisses, in less than ten pages and with all the subtlety of a tire iron, the work of Thomas Aquinas and Anselm of Canterbury. Unlike these theologians, Dawkins refuses to step outside of himself and take a critical look at his own assumptions.

Religion Dispatches

Paul Wallace is currently getting his MDiv at Candler School of Theology at Emory University. Previously he was a professor of astronomy and physics at Berry College in Rome, GA.

[bluerum]

1. Gawd save us. Embarrassingly simplistic. eom

[MineralMan]

2. No, that's not at all beyond atheism.

Atheists do not believe any deities or other supernatural entities exist. That's the essential definition of atheism, really. It doesn't matter which deity you want to name, atheists don't believe that deity exists, any more than any other deity.

What you have here is a person who does believe in at least one such entity trying to define atheism. He's wrong.

I will posit that the concept of a deity or multiple deities exists. But concepts are artifacts of human thinking. They are evidence of nothing more than the imaginations of those who conceive of such concepts. Virtually every culture and society of humans has managed to create some sort of supernatural explanation for what they cannot understand. It's a natural process.

If those conceptual deities serve some social purpose, then they serve that purpose. That does not make them any more real.

[bowens43]

3. nonsense. nt

[Silent3]

4. Start with an easily refutable cartoon caricature of atheism...

...add water, then stir. Instant refutation of atheism! Bravo!

[Sal316]

11. If you think this is about refuting atheism....

....then you've missed the point.

Dawkins is great at refuting fundamentalism (as the author said, an embarrassingly easy target), but that's where he typically stops. Most claims are "the Bible says x, and x isn't correct, so the entire thing is wrong."

What the article talks about, something that I've talked about numerous times, is that it goes beyond either literal or metaphorical.... it's both and neither all at the same time. Simply negating the claims of believers is intellectually lazy. It's responding 'nu-uh' to the fundamentalist 'ya-huh' schoolyard logic. In simpler terms, it's the opposite side of the "God said it, I believe it" coin.

As to the closing premise, I agree with the author:

Most atheists reject far too little. They only have to be one kind of atheist: The atheist who stands against some kind of ridiculous super-object in the sky, who stands against a child's theology.

Sincerely,

The Brick Wall

[Silent3]

15. Reject too little? Most do?

Most of the atheists I've run into here on DU are good all-around skeptics. Dawkins is a good all-around skeptic who rejects a whole lot more than just fundamentalist deities. Anyone who isn't automatically blinded to anything else he or other atheists say simply because they bring up fundamentalism isn't paying attention, who isn't conveniently shutting everything out after the point they hear fundamentalism mentioned, would be able to see that.

I started a thread on the very subject of the many gods I reject: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=214&topic_id=200672

These are the kinds of gods I've run into so far, at least those I can think of off the top of my head right now. I have no use for, or reason to believe in, any of them:

1) The black box god, the Creator god who does everything/is the answer to everything that we haven't otherwise figured out for ourselves.
2) The father figure.
3) The mother figure.
4) The amorphous "great spirit" god.
5) The redundant "sum total of everything" god, which usually is more than a sum total of everything anyway, but a package deal with preconceived notions of godhood tacked on.
6) The Cosmic Consciousness god that we're somehow all a part of god.
7) The Arbiter of Ultimate Justice/Source of All Morality god.
8) The "we are all our own god" god.
9) The god that somehow, by its very existence, somehow implies that we also get an afterlife (more package deal thinking).
10) The vague, something really, really important god that you can't actually define but you want me to believe in (or at least accept as possible) simply because part of what makes this god so important is that you can't define what it is, and therefore none of us should refute it because we don't even really know what we're talking about god.
11) The character from some ancient myth or legend god.

Edit... I should also add this: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=214&topic_id=201986&mesg_id=201986

That post addresses the phenomena that supposedly "sophisticated" definitions of God, while harder to refute than the gods of a "child's theology", tend to be more and more abstract, less and less relevant to anything recognizable as typical religious faith. Only a "bait and switch" tactic can get you from a Prime Mover god to a God with any specific relevance to Christianity, Judaism, Zeus-ism or anything else.

The least refutable definitions of God turn into synonyms for the physical universe itself, at which point it becomes pointless to refer to such a thing as a God.

[toddaa]

25. Dawkins is a biologist

Selfish Gene
The Extended Phenotype
The Blind Watchmaker
River Out of Eden
Climbing Mount Improbable
Unweaving the Rainbow
The Ancestor's Tale
The Greatest Show on Earth

But theologians don't give a shit about those books because they are not intellectually lazy.

[Odin2005]

29. That's because Theology is all rationalized garbage and does not merit a response.

Few people actually care about theology, anyway, for nearly all believers God IS a super-daddy in the sky.

[trotsky]

31. So, what exactly distinguishes your and the author's theology...

from "child's theology"?

You both believe in a god.

You both believe this god performed magic on earth.

You both believe in an afterlife in heaven.

It's just the Courtier's Reply again. BOOOOOO-RING. People like you and the author keep lambasting atheists for not appreciating your sophisticated theology. But you have yet to show what exactly is so "sophisticated" about your theology, that sets it apart from the *vast majority* of god-believers (because, hate to break this to you Sal, but the god you claim Dawkins is only critiquing is the god that is worshiped by FAR more people than yours is).

[Warpy]

5. I have no idea why the religious are so desperate for pejoratives

that they have to project the ones they own onto us, along with most of their own faults.

Wallace, this is not about you. The fact that Dawkins is an atheist has nothing to do with you unless your faith is so weak that it demands perfect consensus.

That need for consensus is likely the reason the religious react to the very existence of atheists with a defensive horror.

[The Magistrate]

6. This Fellow, Sir, Has Odd Tastes In Masturbation, But Nothing Else Of Note Emerges From This

As he himself acknowledges, he is just playing 'a mind game that has nothing to do with reality'.

[laconicsax]

7. So...stating an openness to the possibility that you're wrong is dogmatic?

Add that contradiction to a standard repetition of the Courtier's Reply, some straw, and we have your post, Sal.

[Sal316]

9. No, that's not the point the author made.

But I'm not surprised you missed it.

It's not about evolution vs. creationism. That's a red herring argument. It's about the foundation (science) being uncritically accepted as the arbiter of truth.

This is the same trap the fundamentalists fall into.

[darkstar3]

10. Give me a break.

Are you going to trot out that old tripe AGAIN?

If you or anyone else want to attack science as incomplete or incapable, you need to provide us with an alternative method of investigation.

[Sal316]

12. Why would I attack science?

I'm a scientist by trade, having been a chemist for going on 18 years now.

Be careful, your straw is showing.

[darkstar3]

13. I ask the same question.

You're the one who said:

"It's about the foundation (science) being uncritically accepted as the arbiter of truth."

THAT is a straw man in itself, and it is often trotted out in an attempt to attack science as inadequate. You are not the first, nor the tenth, even in this forum to employ this ridiculous argument. The question is: Why?

[Sal316]

16. Like I said, I'm not attacking science..

...and all your kvetching doesn't make it so.

Nobody is "attacking science as inadequate", scarecrow.

[darkstar3]

17. You contradict yourself.

Post #9 disagrees with you. Now, if you wish to revise your straw man, feel free, but don't bitch at others when they point out what it is.

[cleanhippie]

18. Can you explain this please?

It's about the foundation (science) being uncritically accepted as the arbiter of truth.

If I am reading this correctly, you are implying that there is another method one can utilize to get to the truth. What is that? Or am I just not understanding what you are getting at?

[Sal316]

19. Perhaps I'm not explaining myself clearly enough.

Science is great at what science is great for, but it cannot explain everything.

For example:

Can science explain why, when two people look at the same piece of art or hear the same piece of music, they can have different reactions to it? Sure, science can explain neurological chemistry, the different electrical impulses in the brain, the activity level of different areas.... all empirical, but can it explain why that happens?

Science is great for empirical data and, in plenty of cases, can explain why things happen.

Then there are things that science can't explain, can't measure, or can only empirically measure the effects of. That's not a knock on science, that's just the way it is. It has limits.

So, as far as science being the arbiter of truth, and in some cases people believe it is the ONLY arbiter because if it can't be measured it can't exist, that's a bit of a stretch.

[cleanhippie]

20. Maybe you are confusing science...

with the scientific method. I guess depending on how you want to define science, you may be right, but the scientific method is the ONLY way we have of determining what is true (factual) and what is not.
The scientific method CAN tell us why two people who hear music get different meanings, and the actual science is part of it.

So what other ways of determining the truth is there then?

[trotsky]

21. So there are some things that science can't explain. Yet.

Key word of course is "yet." After all, far more sophisticated theologians than you once advanced these same arguments about the mysteries of disease or of the stars - strange phenomena indeed that secular inquiry had no answers for!

Regardless, the funniest part of that argument is the part that neither they nor you are able to see: YOUR method of inquiry doesn't answer those questions either! You criticize science for not providing answers, but neither can you!

Oh, these delicate fibers and intricate designs of the emperor's new clothes! :rofl:

"if it can't be measured it can't exist"

Another strawman. Like the person you quoted in the OP, you just can't say something without creating one. Can you provide me with just ONE person who says that seriously? One is all I ask for. Just one. Bet you can't do it.

[rug]

26. You did.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=214x266524#266764

Unless you have a peculiar definition of verify.

[darkstar3]

27. Interesting.

Do you not understand that verification and measurement are two different things?

Perhaps it might help if we use an example. I can verify that you posted on this forum. What measurement do I use for that?

[trotsky]

30. *yawn*

Let me know when you have something pertinent to say.

[darkstar3]

22. Ah, so you're digging at the age old question of "why", is that it?

Science CAN'T always tell us "why". But you see, that's the beauty of science. The unanswered question of "why" drives us to investigate more, to refine current processes, to learn. Some day, perhaps, science will answer all of the unanswered "why"s. Perhaps not. But if it doesn't, that's OK, and that doesn't mean it is limited.

BTW: As we tried to hash out before in this forum, it appears that the word "truth" is far too subjective for ANY investigatory method to be any kind of "arbiter" of it.

And aside from all of that, if you're chasing the question of "why", and you don't think science can provide an answer, what other tool can you use?

[Silent3]

8. If you're actually impressed by this article you cite...

...then not one counterargument as ever gotten past apparently impenetrable defenses you have against anything that contradicts what you want to believe. Even correct positions, if I give you credit for possibly having a correct position, can be promoted using terribly flawed arguments. When a person won't let go of even the most flawed arguments used in support of his position such tenacity is not a virtue.

For all the time you've spent posting in R/T, I've seen no new approaches, no greater sophistication of argument or logic, no development whatsoever. If you have ever acknowledged that a person disagreeing with you has a good point, it's been too rare an event for me to remember having run across it.

We must assume henceforth that addressing you is the moral equivalent to a conversation with a brick wall. I begin to suspect, perhaps, one might actually have more success engaging the brink wall.

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. But Wallace is a Christian, and so believes in a personal and physical God

(he acknowledges he is a practising Christian in an earlier article). So he hasn't got as far as 'not believing'; he has held onto the story of Jesus as god. As did Aquinas, for that matter.

All 3 Abrahamic religions feature a personal God that is indeed a 'thing' or 'uberthing', and which communicates with humanity, or parts of it. And Hinduism similarly still heavily features incarnations of God. So the arguments from people who still belong to these religions seem very theoretical - "if I didn't hold my actual beliefs, but instead thought something very different, then you'd have a problem disputing that, wouldn't you? Eh, Mr. Smartypants?" I wonder why they argue like this, and then ignore their own reasoning and continue to proclaim themselves Christian or whatever.

[ZombieHorde]

23. Dawkins says there may be a god, which is not a fundamentalist view point by any

definition I have seen, even on DU.

[laconicsax]

24. Nope. OP says that's dogmatic. n/t

[Odin2005]

28. Bullshit. All those theologians were spouting fallacious poppycock.

All Theology is crap, they start with the answer they want and work backwards.

[edhopper]

32. If one would only read "The God Delusion"

He/she would see that Dawkins addresses this. He does not ONLY attack fundamentalism. He goes into some depth about people who are not fundamentalist, and yet have beliefs that can be logically countered.
This is nothing but a Strawman easily knocked down.

[trotsky]

33. Don't be silly.

Why should they have to *read* what Dawkins has actually written, when they can just attack the strawman Dawkins (Strawkins?) someone else already created for them?