How broad is the claim of atheism? Pretty broad. Atheism is defined as a worldview that makes
certain definitive claims, the most notable being that God does not exists. But
in order to make such a claim, one must have an almost infinite knowledge
himself. For even deists, who hold that God created the universe and then
basically let it play out under its own steam are still people who do not doubt
God's existence. To say that God doesn't even exist in this sense strikes me as
claiming much more than one could ever prove. In his book A World of Difference, Kenneth Samples offers this anecdote. After attending a debate on the question "Does God Exist?", Ken had the opportunity to meet and talk with the atheist supporting the negative position. Here's his recount of the exchange:
I approached the atheist and shook his hand, thanking him for his efforts. Then I asked if it were correct to define atheism as the claim that "no god or gods are real" or that "no god or gods actually exist."
After some quibbling about the exact meaning of certain terms, the atheist essentially agreed that these two statements accurately reflected his position. I then asked, "If atheism asserts that 'no god is real' or that 'no god actually exists,' then isn't it making a universal claim about 'all reality' and 'all existence'?"
"In other words, as a point of logic,' doesn't the atheist, for his claim to be real, have to know all about reality and existence to rightly exclude any and every god. For example, to claim with any validity that there are no entities of a particular type (gods) in a given circle or set (reality), doesn't a person need a complete, comprehensive knowledge of that circle or set (reality)?’
I concluded my remarks by asserting that the atheist position could be valid only if atheists could justify their implicit claim to have a comprehensive knowledge of all reality and/or all existence. This position of seeming omniscience is, of course, beyond the capacity of any human being.
The atheist responded by saying that an incoherent god could not exist regardless of humanity's limited knowledge.
"That may well be true," I replied, "but then in order to maintain one's atheism a person must bear the burden of showing that every conceivable concept of God, is actually incoherent. This feat seems beyond the atheist's capacity."
Samples, Kenneth Richard. A World of Difference: Putting Christian Truth-Claims to the Worldview Test.
(Grand Rapids, MI:Baker Books, 2007).40.
RE: "The atheist responded by saying that an incoherent god could not exist regardless of humanity's limited knowledge. "That may well be true," I replied, "but then in order to maintain one's atheism a person must bear the burden of showing that every conceivable concept of Go, is actually incoherent. This feat seems beyond the atheist's capacity." "
ReplyDeleteBut you aren't interested in defending all gods, just the god of the Bible. That god is easy to show as philosophically inconsistent, such as "being the ground of morality" yet doing such immoral things as flooding the whole world and killing all humans (genocide) and land animals except an insignificant number saved on an ark.
Bernie, you miss the point. This was a debate and the question was "Does God exist?" The person to whom Ken Samples was speaking had taken a definitive position of no, therefore he is making a claim. He also asked the atheist if he understood him correctly. Therefore Ken was just trying to point out the inconsistency in the atheist's worldview.
ReplyDeleteOnce again I see a religious type expanding the definition of atheism to satisfy the needs of their twisted and deformed argument.
ReplyDeleteATHEISM: a·the·ism [ey-thee-iz-uhm] noun
1. the doctrine or belief that there is no God.
2.disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings.
That's it...Nothing more. All the other BS in this article is contrivance to bolster this persons' particular fairy tale and bring atheism down to their level of petty semantics.
Urbane: If the definition is "the doctrine or belief that there is no God" then you are making a claim about reality, and you should be able to support that claim. Deist conceptions of God, (e.g. that God created the universe and then left it to run under its own laws and conditions) still fall under a theistic worldview and exclude atheism. In such a case, one may be agnostic about God's existence. However, atheism makes a definitive claim about all of reality.
ReplyDeleteWhy do atheists claim this? We are open to changing our claims, but you need to falsify them first! In other words, give us verifiable, testable, and falsifiable evidence.
ReplyDeleteJohn,
ReplyDeleteI know you are hung up on the whole notion of falsification, but that is only one way to know things. You can know you're alive without ever having to be hooked up to an EEG machine. I can give you two pieces of information, such as All men are mortal and Socrates is a man, and through rational deduction you can know a third thing- that Socrates is mortal. You can know that killing babies for fun is wrong, even though there's no way to test this scientifically.
Beyond all this, scientists themselves don't only rely on falsification but they also use inference to the best explanation. Dark matter is a prime example. There's no test for it but it's inferred from the other observations we see.
Hopefully, this will expand your view of what knowledge is so we can get beyond the "it must be testable" response.
I like Ken Samples, but I have to disagree with him here. He says,
ReplyDelete"In other words, as a point of logic,' doesn't the atheist, for his claim to be real, have to know all about reality and existence to rightly exclude any and every god."
I don't think this is the case. If the atheist wanted to prove beyond doubt his belief was true he would have to do this, but since his belief is that no god or gods exist, he need only think what he sees as the lack of evidence or reasons are sufficient to warrant his beliefs. If he were to then claim no such evidence or reasons exist, he would then take on the burden Samples claims.
It would be similar to saying that as Christian theists we would have to know all of reality to show that none of the competing god ideas in the world are true. I don't think so. I think if we have warrant for belief in YHWH, then we can rest in the logical entailment that competing worldviews are false. Evidence for our view is by default evidence against the competing views.
Does that make sense?
Thanks for the thoughts, Daniel. I've asked Ken to reply to your concerns. I will publish his comments this week.
DeleteI used to believe this, and counted myself as an agnostic rather than an atheist for twelve years.
ReplyDeleteThen I started dating the man I would eventually marry, who was an atheist, and asked him how he could be sure God didn't exist. And he replied: "Well, do you believe in fairies?"
It was a lightbulb moment for me. I realised that there were all sorts of things (fairies, werewolves, vampires, unicorns, trolls, goblins, Thor, Zeus....) that I believe not to exist despite the fact that I can't absolutely prove they *don't* exist. For all those things, the lack of any solid evidence at all for their existence is considered sufficient for us legitimately to conclude that we don't believe in them. Yet I was considering myself obliged to treat my lack of belief in the biblical God differently.