Friday, June 29, 2012
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
If atheism is true, then God help us all
First off: I think atheism is probably true. My philosophy teacher actually polled the class and I said that my confidence level that there is no God is 70%. According to atheists like Richard Dawkins that would probably make me an atheist. Yet I consider myself an agnostic mainly because I recognize the fallibility of human reason, particularly my own. All it takes is subtle prejudice or one unexamined premise for things to fall apart. Moreover, the Universe is a mysterious place full of unanswered questions, and that's not a pronouncement I am prepared to make.
I digress. According to atheists like Dawkins and others, atheism is something to be happy about. It is to be embraced. I think the complete human autonomy implied by atheism is appealing--to be able to do absolutely anything you want without having to worry about divine retribution. But I think the negatives outweigh it considerably:
1. If atheism is true, everything and everyone you know and love will perish and die. Hawaiian sunsets, the Louvre, your Grandmother, your friends, your children, are transient, and will be snuffed out of existence. They''ll be no more. They may as well have never existed. The sun is going to explode and the Universe will collapse in on itself. Not exactly a pleasant outlook.
2. Atheism robs our lives of any real, objective, transcendent meaning. We are accidents. Natural selection did not have us in mind. Purpose can only be given by the conscious action of intelligent agents. A watch has a purpose. Art has a purpose. What purpose could milk splattered across the kitchen table have, or a river rock forged over millions of years by hydraulic and geological processes? None of course, and we came about by the same natural processes. Everything is meaningless and pointless.
This? This is what you want?
I digress. According to atheists like Dawkins and others, atheism is something to be happy about. It is to be embraced. I think the complete human autonomy implied by atheism is appealing--to be able to do absolutely anything you want without having to worry about divine retribution. But I think the negatives outweigh it considerably:
1. If atheism is true, everything and everyone you know and love will perish and die. Hawaiian sunsets, the Louvre, your Grandmother, your friends, your children, are transient, and will be snuffed out of existence. They''ll be no more. They may as well have never existed. The sun is going to explode and the Universe will collapse in on itself. Not exactly a pleasant outlook.
2. Atheism robs our lives of any real, objective, transcendent meaning. We are accidents. Natural selection did not have us in mind. Purpose can only be given by the conscious action of intelligent agents. A watch has a purpose. Art has a purpose. What purpose could milk splattered across the kitchen table have, or a river rock forged over millions of years by hydraulic and geological processes? None of course, and we came about by the same natural processes. Everything is meaningless and pointless.
This? This is what you want?
Sunday, June 24, 2012
The Difficulty of Faith
In the book of Romans, the apostle Paul tells his readers that unbelievers are "without excuse (1:20)." They have no reason not to believe in God or to have saving faith in Christ. When I was a Christian, I used to believe this strongly. Gradually though, I became less and less convinced of the strength of the arguments for faith and God. Moreover, I encountered many powerful arguments not to believe:
-evidence for evolution: if it's true, there isn't a need for a creator God. If it's not true, why is there many strong lines of evidence for it? Would God deceive us? Why give people a strong reason for disbelief if their souls hang in the balance?
-evidence for the antiquity of the the Earth vis a vis biblical deductions of the Earth's age
-the inability to reason against homosexuality. Period.
-the incoherence of Heaven: i.e., if there will be no sin in Heaven, why couldn't God have made it such that humans would not sin on Earth in the beginning?
-the incoherence of early Genesis: talking snakes with no mention of Satan, an omniscient God playing dumb and calling out to man: "where are you?"
-the unbelievability of the book of Job
-the problem of Hell
-the problem of suffering
-the barbarism of God in the Old Testament
-free will and moral responsibility. If I lack free will due to physical necessity or divine sovereignty, how can I be held accountable for my sins? Or how can biblical statements asserting that we do have free will be reconciled with a seemingly deterministic Universe?
-the powerful arguments against traditional authorship for many biblical documents: it appears that letters such as 2 Peter may be forgeries.
-the problem of denominations: which Christianity is the true one: Catholicism? Protestantism? Or some other? How can we know?
I could go on. Suffice to say it seems that God has given man many powerful excuses, or reasons, not to believe. I've read many of the Christian responses to these arguments and I find them to be unpersuasive. I want to believe, but I can't do it anymore, and I haven't been able to for some time even after much reading, contemplation, prayer, etc. How then can God judge me? Why give so many reasons to reject Christianity if our eternal well being is on the line? "Just believe!" some might say. Well, why not just believe in the abominable snowman? I have just as many compelling reasons to believe in him as I do in God: none. It seems to me much easier to propose that Christianity is false.
-evidence for evolution: if it's true, there isn't a need for a creator God. If it's not true, why is there many strong lines of evidence for it? Would God deceive us? Why give people a strong reason for disbelief if their souls hang in the balance?
-evidence for the antiquity of the the Earth vis a vis biblical deductions of the Earth's age
-the inability to reason against homosexuality. Period.
-the incoherence of Heaven: i.e., if there will be no sin in Heaven, why couldn't God have made it such that humans would not sin on Earth in the beginning?
-the incoherence of early Genesis: talking snakes with no mention of Satan, an omniscient God playing dumb and calling out to man: "where are you?"
-the unbelievability of the book of Job
-the problem of Hell
-the problem of suffering
-the barbarism of God in the Old Testament
-free will and moral responsibility. If I lack free will due to physical necessity or divine sovereignty, how can I be held accountable for my sins? Or how can biblical statements asserting that we do have free will be reconciled with a seemingly deterministic Universe?
-the powerful arguments against traditional authorship for many biblical documents: it appears that letters such as 2 Peter may be forgeries.
-the problem of denominations: which Christianity is the true one: Catholicism? Protestantism? Or some other? How can we know?
I could go on. Suffice to say it seems that God has given man many powerful excuses, or reasons, not to believe. I've read many of the Christian responses to these arguments and I find them to be unpersuasive. I want to believe, but I can't do it anymore, and I haven't been able to for some time even after much reading, contemplation, prayer, etc. How then can God judge me? Why give so many reasons to reject Christianity if our eternal well being is on the line? "Just believe!" some might say. Well, why not just believe in the abominable snowman? I have just as many compelling reasons to believe in him as I do in God: none. It seems to me much easier to propose that Christianity is false.
"The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely in its very
uncertainty. The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes
through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense,
from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and
from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the
co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason. To such a man
the world tends to become definite, finite, obvious; common objects
rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are
contemptuously rejected. As soon as we begin to philosophize, on the
contrary, we find, as we saw in our opening chapters,
that even the most everyday things lead to problems to which only very
incomplete answers can be given. Philosophy, though
unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts
which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which
enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus,
while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things
are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be; it
removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who
have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps
alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an
unfamiliar aspect."
Bertrand Russell - The Value of Philosophy
Bertrand Russell - The Value of Philosophy
Saturday, June 23, 2012
A fun primer--Hume's problem of induction
In written form
It is kind of disturbing to see that science is built upon such a shaky philosophical foundation.
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