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WillowOne's Positions

God

My Positions

  1. Given what appears commonly to be meant by "god", I choose to act in the world as if no god or gods exist (Atheism).
  2. The term "God" is inconsistently and often incoherently defined, rendering most god-claims semantically meaningless (theological non-cognitivism, _ignosticism_). Before I can say whether I believe in God, I need to know what is being claimed.
  3. Claims about god that are inherently unfalsifiable fall outside the bounds of empirical or rational inquiry and are therefore improper subjects of belief (Popper's Razor, ignosticism).
  4. Claims about gods that contradict strong prior experience and are presented without sufficient "extraordinary" evidence are improper subjects of belief (Hitchens' Razor, Sagan Standard).
  5. I hold that appeals to the supernatural offer no explanatory power and are unwarranted in a coherent worldview. Claims which rest on supernatural appeals are therefore improper subjects of belief (_philosophical naturalism_). "God did it" does not explain anything; it only relocates the mystery.

Classical definition

An agent who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, who created the world and everything within it, and who may selectively intervene in our reality, often in response to prayer, to suspend natural law in order to perform miracles, or to express dissatisfaction.

  1. I do not hold that a god, as defined above, exists. The proposition is inherently unfalsifiable and therefore an improper subject of belief (Popper's Razor). Where evidence has been presented for such a god, it has not met a reasonable level of sufficiency (Sagan Standard) and is better accounted for by less complex explanations (Occam's Razor - Principle of Parsimony).
  2. The classical attributes are also in tension with one another and with observation. The problem of evil (Epicurus; David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, 1779) remains unanswered: an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being would neither permit nor require the suffering we observe. The concept of Hell makes the tension worse, not better.

Modern apologetic definition

As outlined by William Lane Craig:

A spaceless, timeless, immaterial, uncaused, maximally powerful, personal being who created and sustains the universe.

  1. That which is spaceless, timeless, and immaterial would be, to us, indistinguishable from non-existence. That which is non-existent could also be said to be uncaused without contradiction. The notion of power is incoherent given these prior attributes, since power is the capacity to effect change, and change requires time. Personhood is similarly incoherent, since every person we have ever encountered is embodied, temporal, and changing. That such an entity could "create" or "sustain" anything is likewise incoherent in light of the prior claims, as creating and sustaining are activities, and activities take place in time. The definition therefore describes something that both does not exist and could not exist, and as such it is an improper subject of belief. See Kalam Cosmological Argument for the argument that is supposed to establish these attributes.

Notes

  • I do not claim to know that a god or gods do not exist.
    The claim to know is sometimes referred to as Hard Atheism. My position could reasonably be termed agnostic atheism. I use the term "atheist" to denote a lack of belief rather than a claim of certainty.
  • By "god" I refer specifically to:
    • A conscious supernatural entity with agency and intentionality;
    • The conscious creator or originator of all matter, energy, space, and time;
    • An omniscient, omnipotent, or omnibenevolent conscious entity.
  • Definitions I do not count as "god":
    • Pantheism ("God is the universe"). This is a relabelling, not a claim. I already believe in the universe. See Benedict de Spinoza.
    • Deism (a creator who does not intervene). This is unfalsifiable by construction and makes no difference to anything, and so falls under position 3.
    • "God is love" or "God is the ground of being". These are either metaphors or equivocations that borrow the emotional weight of the classical definition while abandoning its content.
  • I am not aware of sufficient evidence to support the claim that any god or gods exist.
  • Were I presented with reasonable evidence supporting such a claim, I would revise my position.
    Examples of potentially compelling evidence might include a double-blind study, with adequate sample size and proper controls, showing one of the following:
    • A communion wafer which had undergone the Eucharistic blessing exhibited a measurable difference from one that had not.
    • Intercessory prayer to a specific deity produced statistically significant results. (The largest such study to date, the STEP trial [Benson et al., American Heart Journal, 2006], found no effect, and a slight negative effect among patients who knew they were being prayed for.)
    • Amputees who prayed regrew limbs at a rate exceeding those who did not.
    • A sacred text contained verifiable information that its authors could not have known.
  • I note that the arguments for god are not independent. Each of the standard apologetic arguments fails on its own terms, and stacking failed arguments does not produce a successful one. See the Gish gallop.

Also see

  1. Popper's Razor
  2. Atheism
  3. Hard Atheism
  4. Agnosticism, Deism, Pantheism
  5. Theodicy, Divine Hiddenness
  6. Owens Tryptic of Ignorance
  7. Argument from Contingency
  8. Does God Exist William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens - Full Debate HD
  9. The God Debate II - Harris vs. Craig