Views on God
The existence of God has played a prominent thought exercise in my mind for most of my life, and over the years I have played for both teams. For quite a few years my views have remained more or less unchanged (in fact, this current text is a restructuring of something I wrote in 2010), but that is not to say that they’re set in stone; the importance of changing views in light of new information and ways of thinking cannot be understated.
To outline my position and justification, I feel the best approach is to decouple these two similar, sometimes complementary, but certainly different propositions:
The next nutshell to crack before we can move on is what I mean by “God”. There is, of course, a difference between the omnipotent Judeo-Christian God of the Western World and the deified Roman Emperor Augustus. There is a difference between a metaphor to encode the beautiful complexity of the universe and something that actively intervenes in earthquakes. As my own answers to propositions 1 and 2 vary depending on what god you’re discussing, my insistence on a clear definition is not so pedantic. I’m going to discuss two definitions of god, which I hope suffice for all reasonable discussions on the subject (pondering the existence of Zeus doesn’t often enter my thoughts):
The final segment of preamble before I can, at last, outline my position, is the general principle of why I would believe proposition 1 or 2. That simply is this: a belief requires sufficient evidence (“sufficient” is a word I’ll allow the reader to define). This automatically puts a lack of belief as a default, and the burden of proof lies on those who have belief.
With this definition of God, I uphold proposition 1, and to an extent proposition 2. The reason why is that, I think, to argue for a proposition’s truth, I believe you must supply positive evidence for that proposition to change the current status on the matter from ‘not knowing’ to ‘true’ (not necessarily 100% proof). A failure to provide evidence isn’t positive evidence against it, the status on the matter will remain as ‘not knowing’. For example, explaining matter using atomic theory requires positive evidence for atomic theory to be accepted as true and a failure to do so does not mean that matter is not made of atoms, you just simply don’t know yet. To summarise this really, really confusing paragraph by quoting Carl Sagan, ‘…absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.’ I stress the difference as I have to justify the propositions differently to justify my view.
Now, proposition 1. I have not seen positive evidence for the existence of God. I am well aware that there have been traditional arguments, and though tempting to tackle them one by one, I shall forward to you someone much greater than I am, and may even call him God. That man is Bertrand Russell, and this is his essay (the focus relevant to here is the existence of God part and following subtopics, as mentioned, this blog post is not really focused on religion).
Now, proposition 2. This is where evidence that there is no God has to be found. This is a more difficult task, especially if I am to be consistent with my previously stated method of acquiring knowledge. Say if God exists and is just a higher intelligence, without being specific, as this intelligence did not necessarily create the universe, isn’t the centre of morality, and so on, there is pretty much no evidence for this being. However, there isn’t evidence that this being does not exist, with a lack of evidence each way, we simply don’t know, but just don’t believe because there is no evidence for it. This is why I cannot fully be with proposition 2. However, if this is the sort of compassionate intelligence that created us intentionally, cares for us, and so on (give and take qualities), then the evidence for proposition 2 comes round. The sort of evidence I mean here, and to be brief, is the problem of evil, and applies to concepts of God that are meant to be all powerful and benevolent. Just to give one example, if this God is compassionate and cares for humanity, or life in general, why create us through the long, painful process of evolution? And an important point is, religious God generally come into play with such traits.
So my focus is on proposition 1, if my justification for it is accepted alone then that’s my justification for simply not believing in God. To be honest, I am slightly uncomfortable when asked about my position in a single term, as the terms surrounding it are rather inconsistent (for example, agnosticism refers to knowledge, atheism to belief, but are used on some sort of one-dimensional spectrum).
Well there you have it, I hope this makes a morsel of sense, and half a morsel of interest.
*In predicate logic, if P(•,•) we could write these as:
To outline my position and justification, I feel the best approach is to decouple these two similar, sometimes complementary, but certainly different propositions:
- Proposition 1: “X doesn’t believe there is a God.”
- Proposition 2: “X believes there is no God.”
The next nutshell to crack before we can move on is what I mean by “God”. There is, of course, a difference between the omnipotent Judeo-Christian God of the Western World and the deified Roman Emperor Augustus. There is a difference between a metaphor to encode the beautiful complexity of the universe and something that actively intervenes in earthquakes. As my own answers to propositions 1 and 2 vary depending on what god you’re discussing, my insistence on a clear definition is not so pedantic. I’m going to discuss two definitions of god, which I hope suffice for all reasonable discussions on the subject (pondering the existence of Zeus doesn’t often enter my thoughts):
- Deist God: A higher intelligence, who possibly created the universe, but does not intervene.
- Theist God: A higher intelligence, who created the universe, may intervene, and has an interest in human welfare.
The final segment of preamble before I can, at last, outline my position, is the general principle of why I would believe proposition 1 or 2. That simply is this: a belief requires sufficient evidence (“sufficient” is a word I’ll allow the reader to define). This automatically puts a lack of belief as a default, and the burden of proof lies on those who have belief.
- Deist God, proposition 1: True, I don’t believe in a Deist God.
- Deist God, proposition 2: False, I don’t believe there is no Deist God.
- Theist God, proposition 1: True, I don’t believe there is a Theist God.
- Theist God, proposition 2: True, I believe there is no Theist God.
With this definition of God, I uphold proposition 1, and to an extent proposition 2. The reason why is that, I think, to argue for a proposition’s truth, I believe you must supply positive evidence for that proposition to change the current status on the matter from ‘not knowing’ to ‘true’ (not necessarily 100% proof). A failure to provide evidence isn’t positive evidence against it, the status on the matter will remain as ‘not knowing’. For example, explaining matter using atomic theory requires positive evidence for atomic theory to be accepted as true and a failure to do so does not mean that matter is not made of atoms, you just simply don’t know yet. To summarise this really, really confusing paragraph by quoting Carl Sagan, ‘…absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.’ I stress the difference as I have to justify the propositions differently to justify my view.
Now, proposition 1. I have not seen positive evidence for the existence of God. I am well aware that there have been traditional arguments, and though tempting to tackle them one by one, I shall forward to you someone much greater than I am, and may even call him God. That man is Bertrand Russell, and this is his essay (the focus relevant to here is the existence of God part and following subtopics, as mentioned, this blog post is not really focused on religion).
Now, proposition 2. This is where evidence that there is no God has to be found. This is a more difficult task, especially if I am to be consistent with my previously stated method of acquiring knowledge. Say if God exists and is just a higher intelligence, without being specific, as this intelligence did not necessarily create the universe, isn’t the centre of morality, and so on, there is pretty much no evidence for this being. However, there isn’t evidence that this being does not exist, with a lack of evidence each way, we simply don’t know, but just don’t believe because there is no evidence for it. This is why I cannot fully be with proposition 2. However, if this is the sort of compassionate intelligence that created us intentionally, cares for us, and so on (give and take qualities), then the evidence for proposition 2 comes round. The sort of evidence I mean here, and to be brief, is the problem of evil, and applies to concepts of God that are meant to be all powerful and benevolent. Just to give one example, if this God is compassionate and cares for humanity, or life in general, why create us through the long, painful process of evolution? And an important point is, religious God generally come into play with such traits.
So my focus is on proposition 1, if my justification for it is accepted alone then that’s my justification for simply not believing in God. To be honest, I am slightly uncomfortable when asked about my position in a single term, as the terms surrounding it are rather inconsistent (for example, agnosticism refers to knowledge, atheism to belief, but are used on some sort of one-dimensional spectrum).
Well there you have it, I hope this makes a morsel of sense, and half a morsel of interest.
*In predicate logic, if P(•,•) we could write these as:
- Proposition 1: ¬P(X,∃G)
- Proposition 2: P(X,¬∃G)
