The Atheist Bible
Chapter on Proofs for Gods
Introduction
Introduction
This chapter refutes popular proofs for the existence of God, gods, life after death, spirits, spiritual life forces, or anything supernatural. The chapter will argue that these proofs do not stand up to scientific scrutiny.The chapter consists of the following sections:
- Introduction: Presents the goddess Gayatri, who has kindly agreed to serve as a running example throughout this chapter.
- Proof by claim: Treats simple claims that gods exist.
- Pragmatic Arguments: Discusses arguments that say that it is convenient to believe in gods.
- Redefinitions: Treats alternative definitions of God.
- Abstract Universal Hypotheses: Discusses supernatural patters that people see in earthly existence.
- Interaction: Lists proofs that are based on some interaction with the supernatural.
- On Proofs: Discusses meta-arguments about whether proofs are possible at all.
- On Discussion: Discusses whether it is possible to discuss about the supernatural.
This chapter treats gods in general — which includes the abrahamic god. In addition, we dedicate two entire chapters to the Abrahamic God in particular:
The story of Gayatri
Gayatri is the Mother Earth. She is the symbol of nature, motherhood, fertility, creation, and destruction. She gave rise to the Earth and the Universe, and it is through her that we all are. She is the mother who gave birth to our very existence, she is the sister who accompanies us on our way through life, and she is the beauty that we see in nature all around us.
in the Natural History Museum of Vienna/Austria
Gayatri was worshipped for thousands of years. She helped humans develop tools, master metal, and she even taught them writing. But as soon as she taught humans how to write, around 5000 BCE, something strange happened. Humans began worshipping other gods. Egyptians worshipped lion gods, Indians invented all kinds of different gods, and in the Middle East, people started abandoning faith in Gayatri in favor of Baal.
Gayatri felt betrayed. She had accompanied humans loyally from the cave to early civilization. All her attempts to keep people with her failed. Finally, Gayatri became very sad and bitter. When she saw that she could not bring her people back to the right path, she reasoned how she could take revenge. She could have destroyed Earth with a snip of her fingers. But Gayatri thought of something greater. She knew exactly how to inflict the biggest pain on her earthlings. And she came up with a devilish plan.
She would send a spirit to some humans, and empower these humans to become prophets. Some of these prophets could do miracles. Others could talk with the dead. Again others would write poetry of magical beauty. Again another would be able to part the waters. To yet another one, Gayatri gave enlightenment under a tree. And each prophet would tell people a different story. One would tell them to worship a single God. Another would tell them that he is the son of God. Others would say that there are no gods, but spirits all around us. And Gayatri knew exactly what would happen. Through their gifted abilities, the prophets would draw followers. First only a few, but later more and more. These followers would follow their prophets, and keep their word alive after they died. And when followers of one prophet would meet the followers of another prophet, they would try to convert them to their faith. And since all prophets were given magical powers by Gayatri, none of the followers had any more convincing arguments that the followers of the other prophet. Eventually, this would lead to bitter fighting. And since no-one could ever prove anybody else wrong, this fighting would continue until the dawn of days.
And this is indeed what we observe. The story of Gayatri can finally explain to us not just how the world came into existence, but also why there are so many religions. It can also explain how Moses could part the waters, and how Buddha could be so wise. It all becomes clear now. And so it is time we come back to the true faith, the faith in Gayatri.
Really?
Well, kind of. People did revere a female goddess all over the world. However, I made up the story of how she got deceived by mankind. Gayatri does not really exist. At the same time, her story is more plausible than many of today’s religious stories, because (1) Gayatri was indeed revered in nearly all continents over tens of thousands of years and (2) the story can explain why we have so many different religions today. Thus, it can explain more things than today’s religions. But it’s still wrong.Proof strategy
In the sequel, we will use the story of Gayatri to show that proofs for the supernatural are wrong. Technically, a proof for the supernatural is a true theory that predicts the existence of the supernatural. This theory counts as evidence that the supernatural exists.We will show that these theories can equally well be used to prove the existence of Gayatri. Since Gayatri does not exist, she is a counter-example to the theory. Therefore, the theory is wrong.
Proof by claim
God exists
This is a simple claim. It does not need to be true. We could also claim “Gayatri exists” — which is false. In the same way, an atheist could claim “God does not exist”. To find out which of these claims are true, we need to support the claims by evidence.If you do not think that God needs evidence, see the end of this chapter.
There is a god in every being
Some people believe that there is a god in every being, in animals, in plants, in Earth and in the forces of nature.Similarly to the previous statement, this statement is a simple claim. It needs evidence to support it. If we accept statements without evidence, we can as well claim “Gayatri is present in all beings of nature” — which she is not.
If you do not think that gods need evidence, see the end of this chapter.
Most people believe in God!
The vast majority of people on this planet believe in supernatural beings. If there were no god, then 90% of the world’s population would be wrong. Is it not more reasonable to assume that they are right, and that there must be a god?Unfortunately, it is not possible to conclude from a belief to the truth. This fallacy is known as the Argumentum ad populum Argumentum ad populum. Here are some examples of false things that millions of people believed in:
- The Sun orbits around the Earth.
- Dancing certain dances makes rain.
- Slavery is a good thing.
- Witches must be burnt.
- The goddess Gayatri exists.
Apart from that, people believe in quite different gods: Single gods, multiple gods, good gods or evil gods. Some people also believe in ghosts and witches. It is difficult to derive any consistent statement of existence from these believes. As Charles Darwin argued: If we want to take the belief of the majority as the truth, we should all believe in evil spirits, as the belief in such spirits is much more widespread than the belief in a loving god.
Truth is not something to be decided by votes.
People have always believed
Religion is a very old human phenomenon. This is taken as evidence that there must be something true about the existence of gods.However, if people believe in something for a long time, this does not mean that the thing is true. The belief in Gayatri, for example, was upheld for tens of thousands of years. It is much older than any of today’s religions. Still, Gayatri does not exist. This shows that we cannot take the age of a belief as a proof for the truth of that belief.
People believe in gods mainly because everybody else does it. Everybody else does it because their parents did it. The parents did it because their parents did it, and so on, until we come to a person or group of people who claims to be in touch with the supernatural. This touch with the supernatural, however, is never proven. Thus, following a religion because everybody else does it is like a proof by induction, where the induction hypothesis holds, but the base case hangs in the air.
People go “Do you think the vast majority of the world is wrong?”
Well, yes.
I don’t know how to say it nicely, but yes.
There is a God Gene!
It has been hypothesized that a certain gene predisposes humans towards spiritual beliefs. This gene has been called the God Gene God gene. Can this be used as evidence for the existence of God?We first note that the gene can equally well be used as evidence for the existence of the goddess Gayatri. We can say that this mother goddess implanted this gene in us (called the “Gayatri Gene”) so that we may remember and revere her. Indeed, mankind revered Gayatri for tens of thousands of years (in different forms). Still Gayatri does not exist. Therefore, we cannot use the god gene argument to support belief in one particular god or goddess.
We could still use the god gene to argue that humans are predisposed for the belief in the supernatural in general. This may be true. However, this does not mean that the belief in the supernatural must be correct. Humans are equally predisposed to believe that fat and sugar are good for them. This belief is hard-wired in the human nature, because humans had to accumulate fat and sugar to cover their energy needs. Indeed, humans will devour large quantities of chocolate if given the chance. Today, however, where nutrition is readily available, this desire is no longer adequate. On the contrary, we have a tendency to become obese if we eat too much fat and sugar. Thus, even though the belief is hard-wired, it is still wrong. Thus, it serves as a counter-example to the theory “If some conviction is hard-wired in the human being, it must be true”.
Religion is like a Big Mac.
Just because it tastes good and it has sold millions,
doesn’t mean it’s good for you.
Argument by Imagination
When did you last meet one? Gustauma @ 7themes
However, having a precise imagination of something, or being fascinated by something, does not allow us to conclude that this thing exists. For example, we have a very precise imagination of all kinds of legendary creatures: Dragons breathe fire, unicorns have one horn, Gayatri has large hips, and fairies have a light-colored dress. Some of us are even fascinated by these creatures. Still, they do not exist.
It is the mark of an educated mind
to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
God does not believe in atheists
This argument says that, just because someone believes that something doesn’t exist, we cannot conclude that it really doesn’t exist. That is totally true. However, it can also be applied the other way round: Just because someone believes that something exist, we may not conclude that this thing exists. In other words: even if theists believe that God exists, this does not mean he exists.
All of this illustrates that human belief does not tell us anything about reality — neither about existence, nor about inexistence.
All religions believe the same
There is indeed some overlap between religious beliefs. However, not all religions believe in a unique god. There are Polytheistic religions (worshipping many gods), Nontheistic religions (which do not believe in personal gods), Spiritual religions (which believe in unnamed spirits rather than gods), UFO religions (which worship extraterrestrial intelligent beings), and Animist religions (which hold that natural physical entities such as animals possess a spiritual essence). We discuss these religions in detail in the Chapter on Religions. It turns out that around half of the world does not believe in the abrahamic god. A large portion of humanity does not believe in personal gods at all. Around one billion people believe in multiple gods. By saying that all religions essentially believe in the same God, we are doing injustice to these numerous religious communities. However, adherents of the abrahamic religions are rarely aware of this diversity.
In light of this diversity, atheists no longer stand so far apart. For every single religion-specific belief (trinity, divinity of the Quran, existence of gods in all elements of life, reincarnation, etc.), an atheist is on the side of the majority of the world population by not believing in it.
All abrahamic religions believe the same
The abrahamic religions share a belief in a unique God. So it looks as if atheists are standing apart. In reality, however, the abrahamic religions are quite different from each other.Christianity and Islam
Christianity believes that God is triune, i.e., he consists of three different entities. This concept, however, is rejected by Islam. Furthermore, Islam holds that Jesus was a human and that he was neither crucified nor resurrected. The Quran says:- People of the Book, do not go to excess in your religion, and do not say anything about God except the truth: the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, was nothing more than a messenger of God, His word, directed to Mary, a spirit from Him. So believe in God and His messengers and do not speak of a “Trinity”, that is better for you — God is only one God, He is far above having a son, everything in the heavens and earth belongs to Him and He is the best one to trust. [Quran / 4:171]
- Those people who say that God is the third of three are defying (the truth): there is only One God. If they persist in what they are saying, a painful punishment will afflict those of them who persist. [Quran / 5:72]
- That they said (in boast), “We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of God”; — but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not: — Nay, God raised him up unto the himself; and God is Exalted in Power, Wise. [Quran / 4:157]
Islam and Judaism
The God of Judaism looks compatible to the God of Islam. And yet, Jews and Muslims are some of the most antagonized peoples in history Islam and antisemitism. The conflict runs exactly along religious boundaries. This suggests some fundamental incompatibility between their beliefs.Bahai faith and Christianity
The Bahai faith considers itself the successor of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (and all the other religions that existed at the time point when the Bahai Faith arrived). The Bahai Faith believes in a unique god. However, it does not explain whether this god has a son (as in Christianity) or not. Either way, its concept of God will be incompatible with at least one other abrahamic religion.More differences
The above list shows that, even among the abrahamic religions, the theological convictions differ. They differ enough to make it a religious duty in Christianity and Islam to convert the people of the other religions to these religions. They differ enough to prohibit adherents of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam from marrying adherents of the other faiths. They differ so much that these religions prohibit the conversion to any of the sibling faiths — under penalty of death. If all religions believed essentially in the same god, then why would these boundaries be necessary? The answer is that even the abrahamic faiths are less compatible among themselves than believers would like to believe.Atheists, in contrast, can marry followers of any religion from their point of view. In this sense, they are closer to all of these religions than the religions are among themselves.
The Muslim says the Christian is wrong.
The Christian says the Muslim is wrong.
The atheist says both are right.
I can feel that God exists!
The feeling that God exists is one of the most common arguments for the existence of God. However, these feelings differ across individuals and across times: For tens of thousands of years, people felt that Gayatri existed. Today, some Hindus feel that there exist multiple gods. They feel this just as strongly as others feel that there exists only one god. The Romans also felt that there were several gods. Monotheists would reject these beliefs. However, their argument for monotheism (their feeling) is not stronger or weaker than the Romans’ argument (their feeling). The failure to realize this is one of the biggest issues with religion in general.
Atheists, in contrast, feel that God does not exist. Even those who have tried have not been able to feel the existence of the supernatural. If feeling counts as a proof, then this proves that God does not exist.
To atheists, this “feeling of someting higher” is just the result of a number of psychological processes. These are: the desire for protection, self-talk, imagination, the insight that we have much less power over our life than we commonly assume, the longing for hope, the personification of entities and events , and our tendency to assume humanness. None of these, however, is proof for the existence of a god.
If fifty thousand people say a foolish thing, it’s still a foolish thing.
Pragmatic Arguments
Atheism is blasphemy!
Blasphemy is the defamation of the name of a god Blasphemy. In this sense, the denial of God is certainly a blasphemy. However, since there is no god in an atheist’s world, an atheist does not have to be afraid that the blasphemy causes it any harm.We could argue that the denial of God insults his adherents. However, if voicing a disbelief in God insulted theists, then voicing a belief in God insults atheists — for example if it is printed on bank notes. This conclusion however, is usually not drawn.
To make sure that my blasphemy is thoroughly expressed, I hereby state my opinion that the notion of a god is a basic superstition, that there is no evidence for the existence of any god(s), that devils, demons, angels and saints are myths, that there is no life after death, heaven nor hell, that the Pope is a dangerous, bigoted, medieval dinosaur, and that the Holy Ghost is a comic-book character worthy of laughter and derision.
Atheism leads to hell!
However, this argument is faulty: If God does not exist, then neither does hell. Atheists do not believe that hell exists. For atheists, hell is just an invention that people use to scare other people — much like adults use Robin Goodfellow to scare children. Robin Goodfellow does not exist. Neither does hell.
Eskimo: If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?
Priest: No, not if you did not know.
Eskimo: Then why did you tell me?
Positive effects of religion
This essay takes a very critical view on religion in general. Yet, there are a number of positive effects of religion. These effects include:- personal strength
- happiness
- a moral framework
- a community
Atheists note that, even if the belief in God can have a positive effect on some people, this does not make God exist. For example, the belief in Santa Claus also makes children happy, but Santa Claus does not exist. Therefore, it is impossible for an adult to start believing in Santa Claus, even if we tell him that this will make him happy. Analogously, it is not possible for atheists to start believing in the supernatural in order to be happy. Atheists prefer to believe things because they are true, and not because they make them happy.
Apart from that, religion does not have all the positive effects that people commonly associate with it. For example, people in religious countries are actually unhappier than people in secular ones. In the same vein, religion has a number of dangerous, and sometimes disastrous effects on society. We discuss them in the Chapter on Criticism of Religion.
You may need religion for comfort. That doesn’t make it true. You may need a million dollars. That doesn’t mean you have them. Join the real world.
Pascal’s wager
Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician, made the following argument for the belief in God: If you believe in God and turn out to be incorrect, you have lost nothing. However, if you don’t believe in God and turn out to be incorrect, you will go to hell. Therefore, it is better to believe in God. This argument is known as “Pascal’s Wager”. A variant of this argument goes as follows: If God doesn’t exist then I will just cease to live after death, and I cannot have feelings of regret; if it’s the wrong god, then both the atheist and the believer suffer; and if God exists, I’m good.Unfortunately, the argument has at least three flaws:
- The argument works if the only alternative to atheism is monotheism. However, as we know today, that is false. There are at least 2000 possible gods, and hundreds of denominations even for the supposedly same gods. This makes the chance of choosing the right god(s) one to several thousand. If you worship the wrong god, you may make the true god very angry — much more angry than if you didn’t believe at all. The abrahamic god, for example, gets extremely angry if people worship other gods. Now if the true god is the one of the Mayas, then worshipping the abrahamic god will make the Maya god very angry. Thus, it is actually safer not to worship at all. Homer Simpson summarized this by saying: What if we’re worshipping the wrong god, and every time we go to church we’re just making him madder and madder?
- Even if you believe in the true god(s), the argument does not guarantee that the true gods appreciate your opportunistic behaviour. The gods of most religions require wholehearted devotion. As most gods are omniscient, they would discover your false faith.
- It is not true that you don’t lose anything by adhering to a religion. Religions usually come with dietary restrictions, restrictions of sexual liberty, rituals, dogmata, and restrictions of whom you can marry. We fill an entire chapter with these issues, the Chapter on Criticism of Religion. If you follow a religion, but turn out to be wrong, then you have needlessly curtailed your life — your only life. If you add in all the damage that religion inflicts on humanity, you may actually have done more harm than good with your life.
Finally, atheists refuse to believe in some arbitrary stories that someone tells them, because this can be harmful in itself.
By believing in an imaginary god, you have not “lost nothing”. What you have done is committed yourself to a lifetime of delusion, instead of committing your life to reality.
Yes, but maybe he exists!
One of the most frequent arguments for following a religion is a variant of Pascal’s Wager, which just says: Yes, but maybe God exists!Yes, maybe. But maybe not. For atheists, a “maybe” is just not enough to start following a religion. Scott Berry explains this by telling the following story on Quora.com:
Belief in God is convenient
Pascal’s Wager essentially tells us to believe what is most convenient.This line of thinking, however, is rarely followed — neither by atheists nor by theists. Many religions carry some inconvenience with them. Muslims, for example, have to fast once a year; Hindus have to follow all types of rituals; Jews may not operate devices on a Saturday; Christians also have to fast; all of them have restricting laws on sexuality. There are, however, some more liberal religions that have no such constraints. Take, for example, the Wicca Religion or the Bahai Faith. These religions offer the same postmortal comfort as the established religions, but come with much less demanding rituals. If people wanted to believe what is most convenient, then they could start believing in these newer religions. However, they don’t. They don’t because what counts for them is not the convenience, but the plausibility of their belief. Try explaining to a Hindu that he should become Muslim, because he could have 4 wives instead of just one. He will tell you that he is not Hindu because it is convenient, but because Hinduism is most plausible to him.
The same holds for atheists: They refuse to submit their life to a myth for which there is no evidence.
A man convinced against his will
is of the same opinion still.
The Atheist Wager
You should live a good life and be a nice person, but leave religion alone. If God is loving and kind, he will forgive you for not believing in him and reward you in the afterlife for having been a good person. If God punishes you despite having been a good person all your life then God is unjust and you shouldn’t worship him. Atheist’s Wager.
Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the hommage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.
Redefinitions
God is love
This argument goes as follows: Most atheists believe that love exists. One can argue that love itself is God. The two are equivalent. Then, atheists believe that God exists.By love, we mean the “strong feeling of affection” Oxford Dictionary / Love. This feeling, however, is nothing supernatural. If we define God as being love, then God is not supernatural. God is just another name for the natural feeling of affection. Thus, atheists have no problem with this definition of God and indeed believe that this god exists.
However, this view of God excludes the other attributes commonly ascribed to God: He is not omniscient, he did not create the universe, and he does not stand above the laws of nature. Thus, the word “God” would no longer mean the god of the monotheistic religions. This would be confusing. Therefore, it is more convenient to call “God” the God of the monotheistic religions and “love” the feeling of affection. This is indeed the common meaning of words. With these meanings, atheists do not believe in God.
God is the universe
The pantheistic argument says that God is equivalent to the universe, i.e., the set of all existing things. Since atheists believe in the existence of things, atheists would thus believe in the existence of God.If we define God as being all that exists, then our God is not supernatural. Hence atheists have no problem with this definition of God. They believe in the existence of things and if we call the things God, then they believe in God.
However, this view of God excludes the other attributes commonly ascribed to God (omniscience, creation of the universe, omnipotence etc.). Thus, the word “God” would refer to something different than the God of the monotheistic religions. That would be confusing. Therefore, most people prefer to call God “God” and to call the universe “universe”. With this meaning of the word, atheists do not believe in God.
It does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravitation.
God is the universal principle of existence
Some people say that God is the universal, basic principle of our existence and of life. If atheists believe in this universal principle, then atheists believe in God.Unfortunately, it is not very clear what this universal principle is. Let us try to make it more concrete. Would we say that the universal principle is the existence of things? Then this question is treated above as Pantheism. Or is it the power that made the world come into existence? Then the “universal principle” is a different name for God. In this case atheists do not believe in this universal principle.
I am not aware of a different “universal principle”. It may just be an empty word.
Abstract Universal Hypotheses
Sense behind everything
The argument goes as follows: We observe that all things in life have a certain sense: Chairs are made to sit on, cars to drive and the laws of nature have the purpose of holding the material world together. The sense behind this order in nature is God.It is certainly true that most man-made things (such as chairs and cars) have a certain “sense”. Here, “sense” has the meaning of “purpose” and ultimately refers to the intention of the maker. Now let’s look at the things in nature: volcano eruptions, lightenings, waterfalls... The argument supposes that there is “a sense” behind these things. That is, the argument supposes that there is a maker who pursues an intention with these things. This, however, was what the argument aims to prove in the first place. Therefore, the argument presupposes what it aims to prove.
The argument is an example of a universal abstract hypotheses.
Everything goes in cycles
Many things in life repeat themselves. For example, the tide comes and goes, and seasons repeat. This recurring nature is seen as a proof for God.The recurring nature certainly applies to the seasons and the tide. Nevertheless, there are also things that do not go in cycles. For example, if a pencil is used up, it never comes back. If you got a chance in life, the chance may possibly never be there again. The second law of thermodynamics even says that the entropy of the universe will steadily increase without any chance of ever being reversed Second law of thermodynamics. Thus, not everything repeats itself. The theory is just wrong.
Furthermore, even if everything repeated itself, this does not mean there is a god. The rule “Everything repeats itself, therefore God exists” has not been validated. Rather, the rule is an example of an abstract universal hypothesis. These, however, are rarely true.
The concept of sense
This argument goes as follows: Humans have the concept of sense. Everything humans have a concept of must have a role-model in nature. Thus, sense is inherent in nature. This sense is, ultimately, God. This rather philosophical argument is based on the assumption that everything humans have a concept of must be derived somehow from a role-model in nature.This theory is wrong: Not everything humans have a concept of needs a role-model in nature. Humans (and some animals) for example have developed the concepts of language, symbols and abstraction. We can be sure that the single-cell animals that preceded the living beings of today had no concept of abstraction. Thus, humans developed a concept for something that had no role-model in nature. Similarly, humans developed the concept of sense (which essentially means the intention of a behavior) without the need for a role-model. Therefore, the theory is wrong.
This argument is an example of an abstract universal hypothesis.
Argument from Dualism
This argument is based on an intense and old philosophical discussion. It goes as follows: We observe that any thought is always embedded in a physical system. For example, human thoughts cannot exist without a human body. Seen this way,The first problem is that the argument can be continued: If God (the thought) gave rise to this world (the matter), then it follows by (1) that there must be a matter that gave rise to God. This is usually denied.
Therefore, people leave away (1) and postulate only (2): All matter has risen from thought. Now let us see what could be a counter-example to that rule. What if some matter were manifestly ill-designed? For example, what if some animals had eyes that they cannot use? Would that be a counter-example? If this counts as a counter-example, then we can point to the mole rat: It has eyes that it cannot use. Thus, the theory is false, and the argument if over.
If the mole rat is not enough of a counter-example, let’s look at things such as volcanoes, illnesses, cockroaches, or rocks. These do not have any visible thought that precedes them. Hence, for the theory to stand, we have to say that the “thought” is something invisible, undetectable. Then, even rocks and cockroaches are no longer counter-examples. In fact, there cannot be any counter examples at all. Everything has just risen from thought, no matter whether we see the thought or not. This, however, means that the theory is unfalsifiable. If we assume that there is a thought, but that it is undetectable, then we are just as wise as before. The theory is meaningless.
The theory (and in fact the whole idea of the dualism between thought and matter) is an example of an abstract universal hypothesis: It offers a simple all-embracing schema for our world, but it is so weakly defined and it has been generalized from so few evidence that it is of no use.
Everything in life is one
Advaita or Nonduality is a philosophy that asserts that the fundamental property of the things in life is their one-ness. As an Advaita Website explains: Your fingers are all different from each other, but are they separate? They all arise from the same hand. Similarly, the objects, animals, plants and people in the world are all definitely different in their appearance and functioning. But they are all connected at their source — they come from the same source. This one Being that is behind all life has an infinite number of different expressions that we experience as different objects. To continue with the hand analogy, your fingers are all made of the same substance. They are made up of similar tissues, cells, atoms, and at the deepest level, subatomic particles. Similarly, when your experience of reality becomes more subtle, you discover that everything is just different expressions of one field of nondual Being. Endless-Satsang.com / Oneness. This one Being can be called God.It is certainly true that many things have something in common. All fingers of my hand are on the same hand. Yet, to give one-ness to the fingers of my left hand and the fingers of my right hand, I need to generalize to “they are on the same body”. If I want to give one-ness to the fingers of my hand and the fingers of your hand, I have to generalize to “they have the same shape”. To generalize to fingers and hooves, I have to say that they are of the same cells; to generalize to fingers and my watch, I have to say they are made of atoms. To generalize to fingers and an abstract concept such as a square root, I have to say that they both exist. To generalize to fingers and unicorns, I have to say that they both exist in my mind. Thus, the theory is basically “If I speak about something, then it exists in my mind”. This theory is true. However, it carries no practical value. In particular, it cannot be used to predict the existence of God.
The assumption of nonduality is an abstract universal hypothesis — essentially an all-embracing, yet unfalsifiable hypothesis. Since the hypothesis is unfalsifiable, the opposite of the hypothesis is equally true. Let us give that a try: “Your fingers look all similar, but are they the same? If you look closely, you will find that each one of them is a little different from the other. Similarly, the objects, animals, plants and people in the world are all different in their appearance and functioning. Even if two things look similar to us, every one is slightly different from all the others. Just like every fingerprint is unique, and like every snowflake is unique, so is every being unique. When your experience of reality becomes more subtle, you will discover that everything is in its own way unique, and different from everything else that might look similar.” This discourse is as true as the previous discourse that asserts oneness of everything. If the opposite of a theory is as true as the theory itself, then the theory is nonsense.
The spirit of nature
We observe that the environmental damage we impose on the world sometimes contributes to natural disasters. Thus, nature appears like a conscious being who “fights back” if it is attacked. This perceived consciousness behind nature is attributed to God.However, not everything that appears to behave like a human has consciousness. Rivers, for example, always find the swiftest way to the ocean. Although this can be interpreted as a conscious search for the optimal way, it is simply a consequence of gravity. Similar mechanisms are the reasons for other natural phenomena, such as the search of a bacterium for sugar. Thus, it would be an over-interpretation to suspect consciousness behind nature.
Apart from that, the mechanisms of nature are unfortunately too weak to counter all human activity. Pollution is proceeding relentlessly and species are dying out every day. Thus, the idea that “nature fights back” is just wrong.
Conscious beings
This argument goes as follows: In our everyday life, we make a natural distinction between living (conscious) and non-living (non-conscious) things. For example, a stone is a non-conscious thing, while a boy is conscious. When a boy throws the stone, we notice that the source of the flying stone is a conscious entity. Now, we observe that the wind blows. Should we not assume a conscious entity behind the wind, just as we assume a conscious entity behind the flying stone? If so, then these conscious entities are the gods.We first note that all events in (macroscopic) nature can be predicted by the laws of science. The event-gods would be obeying these laws without exception. For example, the Sun god has to make the Sun set every day exactly according to our calculations. He cannot decide to make Sun set an hour earlier. This means that the Sun god cannot actually take decisions on his own. He has no free will. Thus, he is lacking a crucial component of consciousness. Furthermore, the gods can even be yoked by humans to move the electrons in a light bulb, to turn the axle in a diesel engine, and to heat the food in a microwave. Thus, the gods would be in fact inferior to humans.
But what if the gods just consciously follow what we humans predict and enforce? In that case, we cannot prove that there is no conscious being. There could be a conscious being in everything, and these conscious beings could just choose to behave exactly as if they were mere physical entities. This means, though, that they are no different from physical entities. If something always behaves exactly as a physical entity, well, then it is a physical entity. In other words, the hypothesis that there are conscious beings behind everything who just behave as if they did not exist is unfalsifiable. This entails that we are not any wiser about this world if we assume these entities. The hypothesis is literally meaningless.
The idea that everything had some consciousness behind it seems to be driven in part by the human instinct to suspect human-ness in the phenomena of nature. It is an abstract universal hypothesis.
I am a polyatheist.
There are hundreds of gods that I do not believe in.
Abstract universal hypotheses
Quite a number of arguments for the existence of God make an all-embracing assumption about the phenomena of life: One argument assumes that there is a sense behind everything, which is ultimately God. Another argument postulates that everything in nature needs a role-model. The argument of Dualism says that matter always rises from thought. Non-Dualism says that one-ness is a fundamental property of everything. Another argument goes that everything in life comes and goes in cycles. Yet another argument says that everything is driven by conscious beings.These arguments are abstract universal hypotheses (AUHs). An AUH is a theory about the world that is so general and fuzzy that it is not admissible in rational discourse. More precisely:
- The AUHs overgeneralize
- The AUHs promise us a universal principle behind the phenomena of life. This satisfies our thirst for the understanding of this world. Yet, the AUHs swipe under the rock that they just do not apply to everything. For example, not everything in life is “one”, not everything has a sense behind it, not everything needs a role-model in nature, and not every matter has risen from thought (see the respective articles). The AUHs just postulate that from a few handy instances. This, however, ignores the cases where the hypothesis does not hold.
- The AUHs are not falsifiable
- If we want to insist on the truth of an AUH, we tend to interpret them in such a vague way that they do apply to everything. Then, however, the AUH becomes, by definition, unfalsifiable. This means that nothing in life can prove them wrong. This means, in turn, that the AUH does not have any predictive or explicative value. The AUH does not allow us to predict that something will happen or will not happen — we are as wise as before.
- The opposite of an AUH is equally true
- The unfalsifiability entails that we can equally well claim the opposite of the AUH. For example, instead of claiming that “Everything in life is one”, we can equally well claim that “Everything in life is dual”. This is in fact what some eastern religions say — with equally many examples. If the opposite of a statement is as true as the original statement, then the statement makes no sense.
Interaction
Near Death Experiences
A near-death experience (NDE) is a personal experience associated with impending death, encompassing multiple possible sensations including detachment from the body, feelings of levitation, total serenity, security, warmth, the experience of absolute dissolution, and the presence of a light NDE. Does this not prove the existence of something that goes beyond our lives?Interestingly, there is a drug called Ketamine that produces all of the elements of an NDE when it is injected into normal, non-dying people. In other words, an NDE is a natural, chemically induced state that the human brain enters. The trigger for an NDE is lack of oxygen to the brain and body. GodIsImaginary.com / Near death experiences NDE/Neurobiological analysis
Thus, the sensations of an NDE can be induced by a chemical reaction. They are hence no proof for the supernatural.
We know of only one documented case where someone decided to study life after death in a self-experiment. Thomas Lynn Bradford designated a woman who was to receive supernatural communication from his spirit after his death. Then Bradford committed suicide. Unfortunately, no communication has ever been received from him Thomas Lynn Bradford.
Spiritual encounters
I have met a man who was an unbeliever. One day, the presence of God struck him so violently that he ran immediatley to a church and had himself baptized on the spot. Are such powerful experiences not a proof for God?If a god truly existed and were universal (or even sole), then that god would appear in different parts of the world. And yet, that is not the case. People have spiritual experiences exclusively with the deities they know. Rarely has a Hindu an encounter with Allah, a Muslim an encounter with Khonvoum, or a Christian an encounter with Vishnu. Everybody meets exactly the deity they learned about. Therefore, such encounters are more likely to be the product of education than the proof for a particular deity.
However, the encounters could be used to argue for the existence of “something” supernatural. And yet, it is very hard to judge to what degree we can rely on personal accounts of the supernatural. In Jerusalem, e.g., dozens of tourists every year succumb to the so-called Jerusalem syndrome. This is the syndrome of developing religiously themed obsessive ideas, delusions or other psychosis-like experiences Jerusalem syndrome. These people start saying that they have met God, that they will perform miracles, or that they are the next prophet. Nobody (except the person concerned) takes these experiences seriously. Rather, these people are hospitalized as mentally ill.
Thus, we generally reject the theory “If someone says they have a spiritual encounter, that person met the supernatural”. Therefore, the theory cannot be used to prove the existence of the gods. On the contrary, there are quite a number of natural causes for such encounters. We discuss them in the Chapter on the Founding of Religions.
Table-turning
Table-turning is a social activity, where several people sit around a table and put their fingers on it. The participants ask questions, and the table will tip to one edge if the answer is “yes”, and to another one when the answer is “no”. In more advanced settings, people agree on a code that maps table movements to letters, so that the table can spell out words. A related technique is the Ouija board — a board that has letters written on it. People place their hands on a small piece of wood that glides over the board, thus spelling out sequences of letters. Such movements are seen as evidence for supernatural spirits, most notably in Spiritualism.We first note that different people get different answers from the activity. Also, in the words of the founder of Spiritism, “Spirit-orthography, it must be confessed, is not always irreproachable” Allan Kardec: The Spirits’ Book. Therefore, the activities are seen as evidence not for a single omniscient god, but for several, individualist, unrelated spirits with different degrees of knowledge. This has prompted the Catholic Church to warn their faithful against the practice.
Natural Explanations
- Ideomotor movements
- People can move their hands subconsciously, while being convinced that they do not move their hands. In other words: Honest, intelligent people can unconsciously engage in muscular activity that is consistent with their expectations Ideomotor phenomenon. In an experiment, people were asked to put their hands on the Ouija plate and think of a particular direction (say, the door of the room). The plate started moving in that direction, even though people were told not to move the plate The Guardian: The psychology of spiritualism: science and seances, 2013-10-20. As soon as there is some movement by some hands, the other hands unconsciously move along, thus amplifying the movement. The same happens with table turning: The physicist Michael Faraday placed sheets of cardboard on the table, and had the participants put their hands on that cardboard. When the spirits “talk”, it is the cardboard that moves, not the table — thus proving that the participants make the movement and not the spirits. When the participants become aware of this, the table turning no longer works Table-Turning.
- Fraud
- In a large number of cases, such purported interaction with the spirits was proven to be fraud. The Fox sisters, for example, whose reported interactions with the supernatural marked the beginning of Spiritualism, later admitted that they used tricks to make the spirits “speak” Fox sisters. For table turning, common tricks include: just pushing the table in the desired direction; waiting until the opposite player pushes the table down, and then placing the foot under the table so that one can move it at will; moving the table with the knee; or using a ring on the finger that hooks into a protuberance of the table Table-Turning.
- False memories
- People tend to idealize their memories. In one experiment, participants were made to believe that the table flies, by someone repeatedly saying “The table rises! Spirits, raise the table higher!”. Two weeks after the experiment, one third of the participants wrongly remembered that the table rose Séance. When such memories are shared with others, people tend to amplify them. Just as for miracles, people tend to make the stories more miraculous as they tell them. The effects of the “Chinese Whispers” game apply accordingly.
Proofs that it does not work
There are is actually counter-evidence to the theory that table-turning communicates with the supernatural.- Blindfolding
- If the participants of the Ouijda game are blindfolded, so that they cannot see the letters, then the game does not work. The spirits just make nonsense sequences of letters National Geographic: Do You Believe?, 2015-02-05 (Youtube video). This shows that there cannot be spirits at work. The same should apply to the table-turning activity, if the participants decide to use a letter code that they do not know. For example, they could ask the spirits to use the Morse code, and decode the message after the activity. In such a setting, table turning will not work. The games work only if the participants can consciously participante in building the answer.
- No advantage
- If these activities really worked, then their participants should be able to know things that other people do not know. Thus, they should be more successful than the average person at making life choices, at betting, or at least at resolving murders (by contacting the spirits of the victims). And yet, that does not happen. Participants know just as much as everybody else. The Spiritualists have not, by the advantage they get from supernatural communication, risen to become the dominating class in politics, business, or science. Brazil (where Spiritualism is particularly popular, with millions of adherents) has one of the highest murder rates in the world Countries by homicide rate. Plenty of spirits to talk to.
Miracles
Some people believe that God works miracles. Are such miracles not proof for his existence?Who did it?
We first note that a miracle does not prove the existence of a specific god. Most major religions have claimed miracles: Buddhism tells the story of a prophet who darkened the sky, Christianity claims the miracles of Jesus, Islam claims that God parted the waters, the Jews know the miracles of Elijah and Elisha, and the Bahais claim a miracle of their founder Miracle. Thus, if a miracle occurs, it could be in favor of any of these religions.Worse, the religions each claim that the miracles of the others are fakes or done by their own demons. The Old Testament,e.g., tells Jews and Christians that if a prophet from another religion performs a miracle, then this is done only by the abrahamic God to test his followers (Bible / Deuteronomy 13:1-5). The New Testament urges Christians not to take miracles by non-Christian prophets as a proof for existence of other gods (Bible / Revelation 19:20, Matthew 24). In Islam, the Jinns are spirits that can perform miracles Jinn. Thus, any miracle of any other religion can be seen as a Jinn activity to mislead humans. This book uses the same strategy: It claims that all miracles are in fact ultimately the work of Gayatri. So, next time we see a weeping statue of Mary, we should consider Gayatri as an explanation.
Thus, miracles cannot prove the existence of one particular god. They can just point us to the existence of some unspecified god.
Miracles don’t happen
And the reason is that nothing can go against the laws of nature. Miracles are either
- Tricks done by magicians Magic
- Fraud (as in the case of Televangelists)
- Consequences of scientific theories that the general public is unaware of
- Lies, propagated by those who have an interest in the miracle
- Stories, mystified and enhanced as they pass along
As an example, consider the Miracle of Calanda: There was a man whose leg had been amputated. He later had his leg restored. This would justly qualify as a miracle. However, the more likely explanation is that the man never had the leg amputated, but bound his foreleg to his thigh in order to be more convincing as a beggar. When his trick was discovered, he claimed a divine miracle to save face Miracle of Calanda. The same goes for weeping statues Weeping statue. All weeping statues studied so far have been shown to be fraud. The stories of weeping statues are propagated by people who have an interest in these miracles — for example in order to attract tourists and pilgrims. Such sites make millions from the pilgrims. The same goes for faith healings. Such healings do not work. The stories of faith healings are propagated in order to attract the trust (and the money) of the gullible. People are happy to pass on such stories, and each time the story is passed on, it becomes a little bit more miraculous.
For scientific-minded people, all miracles are of this type.
You also don’t believe in miracles
in London/UK
In fact, we are the same today: We do not believe either that miracles happen. Take for example the picture on the right. It shows a man in a costume who hovers in the air. I took the picture personally in London. The man is a real person in a costume, you can actually go and talk to him. And he really hovers in the air, you can put your hand under him. This is amazing! Still, not for a second did you consider this to be magic. You see a man flying before your eyes, and still you are 100% convinced that there must be a trick. You would probably brood over the trick, discuss with friends, search on the Internet, or even go ask the person to figure out how he does it. But you will just not believe that this person is magic.
Now all I ask of you is to apply the same criticism to the miracles of your religion. If you do not believe in magic even if I show you a man flying before your eyes, then why do you believe in magic for stories that reportedly happened over 1000 years ago in some other country?
We only ever believe in miracles if they are told to us, and never when they are shown to us. And the reason is that we fully well know that miracles do not happen.
Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course. But we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time. It is therefore at least millions to one that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie.
Prayer
People pray for many things. They pray for recovery from illnesses, for luck, or for success. Sometimes, these wishes become true. This is seen as a proof for the existence of God.Where prayer works
Prayer can have a very positive psychological impact on the person who prays. People who pray feel less anxiety and they manage stress better. Prayer can even help curing an illness, if that illness is mainly psycho-somatic. We discuss this in detail in the Chapter on the Benefits of Religion. However, all of these effects are psychological. They are based on a number of psychological phenomena, which include the Placebo effect Placebo and the powers of positive thinking. While these effects are undisputed, they cannot be used to prove the existence of a god.Hence we turn in the following to prayers for non-psychological effects.
Where prayer does not work
You can try it out on your own: Pray for anything that would not happen anyway by coincidence. Then watch as your prayer gets ignored. For example, pray for your laptop to fly. Pray for finding $10,000 in your basement. Pray for peace in the Middle East. All of this is just not going to happen. God never answers prayers if there is no possibility of it happening coincidentally WhyWontGodHealAmputees.com/5. Examples are WhyWontGodHealAmputees.com/11:
- God never answers the prayers of amputees. If he did, we would see amputated limbs spontaneously regenerating every day.
- God never answers impossible prayers — if he did, people would be flying through the air like superman on a regular basis.
- God never answers prayers that break the laws of nature — if he did, then scientific equations and computer models would have to take God’s random antics into account.
- When two people pray opposite one another, obviously someone’s prayer will go unanswered. If a million people pray for the same thing but only one can have it (e.g., winning the lottery), then by definition 999,999 people will have their prayers unanswered.
- God doesn’t answer medical prayers — otherwise the U.S. would not need to spend $2 trillion a year on health care.
- God doesn’t answer prayers to avert natural disasters — if he did, hurricanes would not hit the U.S.
- People who pray do not experience better weather than people who don’t [Marshall Brain: How God works / 74].
To go beyond individual prayers, consider the developing nations, where many people live in misery. These places happen to be among the most religious places on Earth (see my essay on Why are poor countries poor? / Religion). Every day, millions of these people pray to God. And yet, these places suffer the most from natural disasters, famines, and wars. A concrete instance of this phenomenon is the Pater Noster prayer, the main Christian prayer. Among other things, it asks God to “give us our daily bread”. It is recited daily by millions of believers. Yet, every year, thousands of Christians perish from malnutrition.
Thus, we cannot validate the theory that prayer would be effective. On the contrary, we have a huge number of counter-examples for the theory. Thus, we can safely conclude that prayers can never cause what would not be possible anyway by coincidence.
Prayer does not even increase the probability
Now we can still hope that the prayer at least increases the chance of a coincidence. Yet, this is not the case. Consider, e.g., the royal family in the United Kingdom. In the Sunday mass, faithful Britons pray in the thousands for the health of the British queen and her family. Yet, as the Victorian scientist Francis Galton remarked, the royal family gets ill as often as everybody else (Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion; Wikipedia / Studies on intercessory prayer).There are several studies on the matter. The majority show no effect of prayer (Wikipedia / Studies on intercessory prayer; Wikipedia / Efficacy of prayer). The largest study was the “Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP)”, which was conducted by the Templeton Foundation, a religious think tank. It was published by the American Heart Journal in April 2006. It asked hundreds of people to pray for the health of hospital patients, and then compared their health to the health of patients that received no prayers. The study showed that prayer had no effect. Worse, those people who knew that someone else was praying for them had lesser chances to recover from surgery, suggesting that they saw the prayer as a proof for the difficulty of their situation (Templeton Foundation: Largest Study of Third-Party Prayer Suggests Such Prayer Not Effective In Reducing Complications Following Heart Surgery, Wikipedia / Studies on intercessory prayer).
Thus, these studies invalidate the theory that prayer can influence physical events. This is, by the way, how science works. The mathematical formula that computes the distribution of lottery numbers does not include a factor “unless John prays to God, in which case the probability of this number is greater”. This is because prayer has no influence whatsoever on physical things — and we know it.
Thus, prayer cannot be used to show the existence of God. On the contrary, the ineffectiveness of prayer shows that the God who grants prayers does not exist. This, however, is a conclusion that believers are somehow unable to draw.
Prayer doesn’t even work “sometimes”
It follows that praying to God is no different from praying to a water kettle. If we pray to the water kettle, the prayer may also work sometimes, and sometimes not. It will actually work with exactly the same probability as when we pray to God. For example, pray to God that there is no lethal car accident in the US tomorrow. Tomorrow, pray to the water kettle that there is no lethal car accident in the US the next day. You will see that both prayers have the same effect: none. And the reason is simple: Both the prayer to God and the prayer to the water kettle are just you talking to yourself in your head. It has no influence on reality whatsoever.
The idea that prayers work “sometimes” and “sometimes not” makes no prediction at all. The theory is unfalsifiable and hence nonsensical.
Why we think that prayer works
We can often read in the newspapers how survivors of earthquakes or plane crashes testify that their prayer saved them. Yet, no-one talks about the hundreds of people who also prayed and were killed nevertheless. Suppose that 100 Christians are diagnosed with a cancer that has a survival rate of only 5%. All 100 Christians pray fervently. In the end, only 5 of them survive. What you will read in the press are only those 5 cases where the prayer “worked” (Marshall Brain: How God works). This is because “Person prays, then dies” is not a great headline WhyWontGodHealAmputees.com. Thus, prayer appears to work simply because we are counting the hits and not the misses. Furthermore, we tend to remember only the cases where the prayer actually worked. This predisposition is then used by religious figures to claim powers that do not exist.People may also have an interest in claiming that their prayers work: If you don’t have a story [of a successful prayer] to tell, it appears that you have lost favor with God. Therefore, you may be willing to exagerate a little, and even make something up, in order not to lose face with your peer group. GodIsImaginary.com
James 5:16: The prayer of a righeous person is effective.In other words, God doesn’t listen to the prayers of assholes. Why should he? I guess if you’re finding that your prayers are neither powerful nor effective, that can only mean one thing.
Faith Healing
Unfortunately, they don’t. Scientific studies have repeatedly shown that faith healing does not increase the chances of healing over a placebo. According to the American Cancer Society, “available scientific evidence does not support claims that faith healing can actually cure physical ailments” American Cancer Society / Faith Healing. Reported effects of faith healing can all be attributed to one of the following:
- Spontaneous remission
- This is “the unexpected improvement or cure from a disease that appears to be progressing in its severity” Spontaneous remission. Some serious ailments like cancer and multiple sclerosis abate for months or years for reasons we don’t understand Skeptic’s dictionary. However, these effects happen independently of any faith healing. Some instances of faith healing have entailed spontaneous regression, others did not. Hence, we may not conclude that faith healing cures. On the contrary, Littlewood’s law states that even if a thing has a chance of happening of 1 in a million, an average person will observe such a thing on average once a month Littlewood’s law.
- Psychology
- Quite a number of physical ailments are caused by psychological factors Somatoform disorder. For example, conversion disorder is a somatic symptom disorder involving the actual loss of bodily function such as blindness, paralysis, and numbness due to excessive anxiety [ibid]. Pain disorders are subjective experiences of pain due to psychological causes (ibid). Such ailments are real, measurable physical sufferings, but they have a psychological reason. Therefore, it is in some cases possible to heal them with psychological methods. Faith healing is undoubtedly one of these methods. However, such healing is a purely natural process. It does not pop a god into existence.
- Fraud
- Faith healers have an interest in making the public believe that their methods work. Several have been found to deceive their patients or followers Faith Healing/Fraud. One of the most notorious cases was Peter Popoff, who would put able people into wheelchairs and then “heal” them Peter Popoff. It is easy to fake the inability to walk, the inability to see, or pain. It is equally easy to fake that these ills have suddenly disappeared. Stories of successful healings are also eagerly promoted and disseminated by believers — either bona fide or in an attempt to boost the legitimacy of their religion.
- Placebo effect
- It is well established that if the patient believes that a cure will have an effect, the cure will indeed have an effect, even though the cure is useless in itself Placebo. Since faith healing patients believe that faith healing works, they are susceptible to a cure. However, this works with any technique that the patient believes in, no matter whether it refers to supernatural beings or not.
- Falsehood
- Some claims of faith healing are outright false. In 1956, a woman appeared in a faith healing TV show testifying that she had been miraculously healed, with the evangelist’s prayers, of cancer. Twelve hours after the show was taped, the woman was dead. In the same year another woman appeared in this show, giving an enthusiastic testimonial about her miraculous cure of spinal cancer. She succumbed to the disease three days later. Pascal’s wager / Faith Healing
- Unproven illness
- In some cases, an illness is “healed” that was never a confirmed illness in the first place. For example, a televangelist would claim that “There is a woman in Cincinnati with cancer of the lymph nodes. I don’t know whether its been diagnosed yet but you haven’t been feeling well, and the Lord is dissolving that cancer right now!”. So if there is any women in Cincinnati who doesn’t feel well, she will think she has a cancer, and will then feel miraculously healed — of a cancer that was never a cancer in the first place (Pascal’s wager / Faith Healing, Marjoe).
- Shotgunning
- In TV shows, the faith healer would announce the curing of a disease of an unnamed individual. For example, he would say things like “There is a woman in Kansas city who has sinus. The Lord is drying that up right now. Thank you, Jesus!”. Either there no such healing takes place, and then no-one would be able to complain. Or there is such a healing that takes place spontaneously, and then that woman would call the show and tell of her miraculous healing. She would then be brought forward as a proof for the faith healing Pascal’s wager / Faith Healing.
- Unfalsifiability
- If the faith healing does not work, the standard reasoning is that the patient did not have enough faith in it. With this, we can always explain why the healing did not work. However, we can never predict upfront whether faith healing will work in one particular case or not. This means that we can never prove that faith healing doesn’t work. Hence, the statement that faith healing works is unfalsifiable and thus nonsense.
You don’t see faith healers work in hospitals
for the same reason that you don’t see fortune tellers win the lottery.
I talk to God!
A person’s personal relationship with God is often presented as evidence for the existence of God. If God did not exist, then believers would basically imagine this relationship, and talk to themselves when they pray. So, do atheists claim that people who pray talk to themselves?Yes. To an atheist, people who pray talk to themselves. They subvocalize their thoughts. This is nothing unnatural or rare. Most people talk to themselves, often constantly. This is known as “intra-personal communication”, as “internal monologue”, or as “private speech” (Wikipedia/Self talk, Wikipedia/Private Speech). Self-talk helps us order our thoughts, memorize things, concentrate, de-stress, and learn. It fulfills essential functions for our psychological comfort. Both theists and atheists use it. Some people imagine that they talk to their deceased spouse or grand-parent. Others conduct imaginary dialogues with their friends in order to formulate their thoughts and wishes. Some people call that friend Jesus (“What would Jesus do?”). The reader is invited to try it out. It suffices to imagine talking to a person under the hypothesis of complete confidence, and say what you always wanted to tell that person. This is a very helpful technique. Yet, it remains self-talk.
When people pray, God does not answer. He answers neither physically nor verbally. What happens when people say God talks to them is that they become aware of their own thoughts. While this has undoubtedly a positive function, it is no proof of the supernatural. On the contrary: If there were really a god, then it would be sufficient to talk to this god in order to sort out religious conflicts. People could just ask him whether Jesus is the son of God, how many gods there are, or whether a particular prophet was sent by him. Clarifying this once and for all would appease roughly half of the world’s most deadly conflicts. And yet, God seems to say different things to different people. To be precise, he always tells people what they believe anyway. And the reason is that God is imaginary. He exists only in the believer’s head. Hence, he tells the believer always what their conscience or social background would tell them anyway.
To see this, let’s say that the all-powerful, all-knowing creator of the universe was going to transmit personal messages to believers. Wouldn’t you expect the people receiving these messages to blow the rest of us away in every intellectual endeavor? God could, for example, tell the believer how to build a nuclear fusion reactor that will completely solve the world’s energy problems! However, what the believer typically gets from God is more like “Also search for your keys behind the couch”. That message, of course, is the believer’s own reasoning. Never has God said anything that the believer could not think fo himself anyway. This shows that talking with God is just talking to yourself. GodIsImaginary If God really talked to people, Church services would look very different: Everyone would just sit quiet and let God speak to all of them together. When finished, they could all compare notes and they would have all heard the exact same thing from God. The fact that this doesn’t happen tells us that God is not speaking to people. The fact that we need pastors, priests, and preachers shows us that God is not speaking himself [Marshall Brain: How God works / 205].
The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.
Numerology
[unknown source]
- The Quran code is the discovery that the number 19 occurs in various forms in the Quran. The Quran’s first verse, e.g., consists of 19 letters. Each of its words occurs in the Quran in multiples of 19: The first word “Ism” (Name) occurs 19 times. The second word, “Allah” (God) occurs 2698 times (19×142). The third word “Al-Rahman” (Most Gracious) 57 times, 19×3, and so forth. Quran code. This is sometimes seen as a proof for the divinity of the Quran.
- In Judaic numerology, 36 is the number of those people who could potentially be the Jewish Messiah. In gematria (a form of Jewish numerology), the number 18 stands for “life”, because the Hebrew letters that spell the word “chai” (living) add up to 18. Since 36 = 2×18, the number 36 represents “two lives” Numbers in Judaism.
- The Bible code is the assumption that, by taking every n-th letter of the Bible, secret messages can be revealed Bible code. For example, by taking every 50th letter of the Book of Genesis, we find the word “torah”. This method has been used to postdict the appearance of Osama Bin Laden. These discoveries are seen as proofs for the divinity of the Bible.
The problem with these calculations is that the parameter space is so large that we can find anything in it. Let us take the Bible code as an example. The idea is to arrange the Bible text in a square, and to find vertical sequences of letters that yield words. Since we may choose the width of the square to be anywhere between 2 and 1000 characters, and since we may start our vertical sequence anywhere we like, there are millions of possible combinations. If one of them coincides with a word or phrase, that is just to be expected. Indeed, the Skeptical Inquirer was able to find such secret codes also in a 1987 United States Supreme Court judicial opinion Dave Thomas: Hidden Messages and The Bible Code. Skeptical Inquirer, 1997-11-01. In a similar vein, Cornelis de Jager has found that a bicycle can accurately predict the physical constants of our universe (“cyclosophy”). Let P be the diameter of the pedal of the bicycle, L be the lamp diameter, and B be the bell diameter. Then P²×L½×B is exactly the proportion of the mass of the proton to the mass of the electron! In a similar way, de Jager can reconstruct the gravity constant, the distance to the sun, and many other constants! (Cornelis de Jager: Adventures in Science and Cyclosophy. Skeptical Inquirer, Vol 16, No 2, Winter 1992; Carlo H. Séquin: Music of the Spheres / Slide 32). This phenomenon is known as the look-elsewhere effect, or the problem of multiple comparisons: the more variables we analyze, the more likely it is that one of them will show the desired behavior just by chance (Wikipedia / Look-elsewhere effect, Multiple comparisons problem).
It is the same with the Quran code: any correlation of numbers would have been accepted as miraculous. For example, if the number of suras was a multiple of the number of words in the first sura, and if this factor was the same as the number of letters in the first word of every 10th sura — that would have done the trick. Since there are arbitrarily many of such constellations, one of them was poised to work.
In general, such mysterious correlations are only ever found after the fact. No Bible researcher could predict that Bin Laden would become the head of a terrorist organization. Otherwise, they could have warned the United States not to support him financially when he was still an ally Operation Cyclone. Only when Bin Laden turned against the United States did the researchers find the message in the Bible. And the reason is that such numerical correlations are only ever found after the fact has been known anyway. Hence, they are no proof of the supernatural.
Picking the results you want, and ignoring the ones you don’t is a great way to reinforce whatever it is that you want to believe. It’s just not a great way to arrive at truth.
Predictions
Many religions have sacred scriptures. Some of them contain very accurate descriptions of things that science discovered only centuries later.Predictions from scripture
Examples for predictions made by holy scripture are:- Hindu Scripts
- The Hindu short script “Hanuman Chalisa” says: “Yug sahastra yojan per Bhanu ”. This means “The sun is at a distance of yug shastra yojan”. Now, 1 Yug = 12,000 years, 1 Sahastra = 1,000, 1 Yojan = 8 Miles. Multiplying these numbers yields 153 million kilometers — which is nearly exactly the distance we know today.
- Quran
- The Quran predicts “Their skins will bear witness against them as to what they have been doing” [Quran/41:21]. This accurately describes that fingerprints will be used one day to identify criminals.
- Bible
- The Bible contains a large number of prophesies. Among other things, it says that, in Israel, God will “turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched ground into springs [...] so that people may see and know that the hand of the Lord has done this, that the Holy One of Israel has created it.”. This predicts the creation of Israel as a wealthy state in the desert — something which indeed happened.
Skepticism
We first note that people only ever accept the predictions of their own holy books. No Muslim will accept the miraculous predictions in the Hindu scripts. No Hindu will accept the predictions in the Bible, and no Christian will accept the predictions in the Quran. That should make us suspicious. Why is that? There are several reasons:- Counting the hits and not the misses
- The holy books make thousands of predictions. If they make thousands of predictions, then it is quite natural that some of them will be correct. However, many of them will be false. The Quran, for example, predicts that “of every thing [God has] created pairs” [Quran/51:49]. This was widely hailed as a prediction about the two genders in animals and plants. And yet, there are animals that have only one gender Asexual reproduction. Hence, the Quran was just wrong. As long as we do not have a comprehensive account of the predictions made by the holy books, we cannot judge whether they are generally correct or not.
- No proof of divinity
- Even if a book makes a correct prediction, this does not mean that the book would be divine. For example, the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus predicted that matter would be composed of atoms. He correctly stated that atoms were physically, but not geometrically, indivisible; that between atoms, there lies empty space; that atoms are indestructible; have always been, and always will be, in motion; that there are an infinite number of atoms, and kinds of atoms, which differ in shape, and size Democritus. This is a remarkably accurate description 2000 years before science discovered the atom. Does that make Democritus divine? Surely not. He just happened to say something that turned out to be correct. Or consider Nostradamus Nostradamus. The medieval sage predicted hundreds of things that turned out to be true in modern times (Web search). And yet, does that make Nostradamus divine? Surely not.
- Contradictions with Science
- If we grant science the authority to judge that a religious theory is correct, then we must also grant science the authority to judge that a religious theory is wrong. So if a religion says that evolution is false, and science says that evolution is true, then we have to abandon the religious theory. This conclusion, however, is never drawn. People are happy to use science as a proof for their religion, but they dismiss it as soon as it contradicts their religion. This is inconsistent: either science does have authority or it doesn’t. If it does, then abandon the religion where it contradicts science. If it does not, then do not use it to confirm religion.
Scripture makes only postdictions
In fact, no tangible advantage ever came out of the predictive power of the holy books. If the Quran really contained scientific wisdom, the Muslim countries should be the most scientifically advanced places in the world. Yet, they are actually the most disadvantaged places. The Christian world, in contrast, is in many aspects scientifically advanced. Yet, this is not due to its Bible researchers. When was the last time that a Bible researcher made a big discovery in medicine, a breakthrough in physics, or a technological advance in computer science?
The reason why this does not happen is that the holy verses are usually so vague that nothing can be deduced from them. Only after the fact do we find that they can be interpreted in the right way. Then, however, they do not make predictions. They make post-dictions.
Please break an analog wrist watch. I guarantee that tomorrow it will accurately show the time twice — on the second! The problem is that in order to know the moment when it shows the right hour, you need to know the right hour from another watch. And it is the same with religious predictions.
Something Good
Sometimes, some really terrible things happen in our lives: We lose a loved one, our marriage breaks up, or we get fired. And yet, it seems that, whenever something bad happens, something good comes out of it. For example, if you’re fired, you may find afterwards the job of your life. If you had not been fired, you would never have gotten that job. Doesn’t that show that there is somehow a deeper pattern in life — that life is more than just a series of coincidences? And couldn’t this deeper pattern be the divine?The belief that everything bad turns into something good is very popular in the Western world. However, this belief only makes sense in a country that generally works well, has public welfare, a medical care system, and a stable society. It makes much less sense to believe that everything bad turns into something good if you happen to live in a war-torn zone of an underdeveloped country. Every week, hundreds of people are killed in the most brutal forms in war. Thousands of children die of hunger. Hundreds of women are raped. Millions of people suffer from crippling, painful, and ultimately degenerating diseases. Take the case of a woman, who was raped, gave birth, and then saw her child die of hunger. Would you go and tell her that this will somehow turn into something good? And then, what if, a few months later, she gets carried away by a malaria infection. What good came out of this for her? Or take victims of the Nazi concentration camps. Do you think that, the day before their death, they said to each other “Don’t worry, this will somehow turn into something good”? Well, if they did, then they were wrong. Millions of people perished. This shows that the theory that everything bad turns into something good is, unfortunately, wrong.
We tend to believe in the theory mainly because we have the habit of counting the hits and ignoring the misses. Those whose life did not turn into something good, and who perished from their mishap, do not get the opportunity to talk about it.
Luck is statistics taken personally.
Karma
Some people believe that a bad deed entails future suffering. For example, if you steal something, then something will be stolen from you in the future. This is the idea of Karma, a concept that is very prevalent in the Indian religions, and in particular in Buddhism. Now, if this is true, does this not prove the existence of an overall world justice?There are two variants of Karma: Some people believe that you will pay for your sins in your next life. In that case, we are assuming that the supernatural takes care of your Karma. This is an assumption of the supernatural, and not a proof for it.
In the other variant of Karma, you pay for your sins in this life. However, this variant of Karma typically leaves open how exactly you will pay for your sins. It just says that “something bad will happen to you”. For example, the bad thing may just be that you miss the bus. Now, bad things happen all the time. In particular, people who have done no harm also occasionally miss the bus. Hence, the theory is no better than chance in predicting what will happen.
Now let’s make the theory more concrete. Let’s say: “If you commit a serious crime, then you will suffer consequences that are as severe as the punishment that the secular law provides for them.” This theory is still quite vague, but it is concrete enough to show that it is false. Out of the world’s 100 most brutal dictators, 50% ruled until their deaths by natural causes [Matthew White: The great big book of horrible things, 2011]. 11% enjoyed peaceful retirement, and 8% died peacefully in exile. Only 9% were put on trial and executed, 8% were assassinated, 4% were imprisoned, and 4% committed suicide [ibid]. As an example, take Chinese dictator Mao Zedong: He was responsible for the torture and killing of more than 30 million people (that is half the population of France). And yet, Mao died peacefully while still in office at the age of 82.
So, unfortunately, the theory of karma is wrong... Thus, it cannot be used to prove the existence of the supernatural.
That a particular specified event or coincidence will occur is very unlikely. That some astonishing unspecified events will occur is certain. That is why remarkable coincidences are noted in hindsight, not predicted with foresight.
On Proofs
The two parents
A friend of mine tells the following story: There was once a young girl who wanted to become a singer. She sang at various events, always hoping to be “discovered”, and brought to fame. Her mother believed in her, and supported her. Her father, in contrast, told her that she has no chance whatsoever to become famous. She should rather focus on school and on finding a job. One day, she was invited to participate in a talent-finding TV show. She did — and won the contest. With flying colors, she proved her father wrong. Her father saw that, during all these years, he actually hindered her success. He acknowledged his error, and apologized. In her thank-you speech, however, the girl did not talk about the father. She thanked her mother, who had always believed in her.This story shows that there is no value in acknowledging something that is obvious (that the girl won the contest). There is value only in believing something that is not obvious (that she would succeed eventually). And, the argument goes, it is the same with God: God cannot be proven. If he could be proven, then there would be nothing to believe — there would only be to acknowledge his existence. Such an acknowledgment, however, does not have any value. What has value is believing in him even though his existence cannot be proven.
While belief without proof has its value, it is also a dangerous endeavor: It can be used to justify belief in just about anything. Imagine that the girl had wanted to become an alchemist. Her dream was to convert sand into gold. Her mother believed in her, and her father discouraged her. She starts mixing chemicals in the basement. She spends months with her passion, and even drops out of school. For years, she mix different materials, ignite them, and re-mix them — without success. Her father tells her that nobody has ever succeeded making gold out of sand, and that it is a futile endeavor. He tells her that she should go back to school, and then enroll in university to study chemistry. Only her mother kept believing. But that was of no use: the girl never produced a single grain of gold. She died impoverished.
This shows that a belief in something is only of value if that something has a chance of succeeding. Now apply this to the belief in God. There are thousands of gods . Of course, one can choose one of them (most likely the god we were brought up with), and devote one’s life to that particular god. However, none of these gods has ever appeared. And so, from an atheist’s point of view, devoting one’s life to one of the gods is no more reasonable than devoting one’s life to converting sand to gold.
But unfortunately, nobody talks about the alchemists who failed to convert sand to gold. Nobody talks about the people who wanted to cure cancer by spiritual means Disproven cancer treatments. Nobody talks about the thousands of young girls who also dreamed of being a singer. Nobody talks about thousands of people who aspired to be an actor — and work as waiters Los Angeles Magazine: Actor-Waiter. People talk only about the one person who made it — and assume that they, too, are on the right track.
Ontological argument
The ontological argument goes as follows: By definition, God is perfect. If he did not exist, he would not be perfect. Hence he exists. This argument defines God in such a way that he must exist. It was first put forward by Anselm of Canterbury. However, a definition cannot pop something into existence. For example, Bertrand Russell’s famous set of all things that do not contain themselves can be defined, but it cannot exist Russell’s paradox.To show the flaw of the ontological argument, we can use it to prove the existence of unicorns: A unicorn is a horse with one horn. If unicorns did not exist, they would not have a horn. Hence they must exist. Nevertheless, they don’t. In fact, we can use the ontological argument to prove the existence of nearly everything. A French monk, Gaunilon, wrote a reply to the argument entitled “On Behalf of the Fool”: Suppose that beyond the boundary of man’s known world (this was in the eleventh century), there is an island. Suppose that this island is perfect and greater than all islands: an island than which none greater can be conceived. To use Anselm’s logic, if this island exists only in the imagination it would be less great than that which exists in reality. Hence the “island than which none greater can be conceived” must exist in reality. Rejection of Pascal / Ontological Argument.
Since the argument can be used to prove anything, no matter whether it exists or not, the argument cannot be valid.
Strawberry cake with whipped cream —
the only proof of God that I can accept.
It is impossible to prove inexistence
It is easy to prove that something exists. We can simply show it to people and then people will see that it exists. In contrast, it is much harder to prove that something does not exist. Since positive atheism holds that God does not exist, atheism can never be proven right.Atheism can indeed never be proven right. The reason is that theism can never be proven wrong. There is nothing that a believer would accept as a proof that God does not exist. As the attentive reader will immediately notice, this means that theism is not falsifiable. This means that theism is meaningless. It does not make any predictions about the world. It is just a hypothesis without any consequences.
Atheism, in contrast, can be proven wrong: As soon as a god appears, atheism is proven wrong. Until that day, it makes concrete predictions such as “Prayer does not work”. This makes atheism meaningful.
Atheism cannot be proven right. Theism, in contrast, can be proven right. It’s just that it has never been.
The Burden of Proof
Many people think that if we want to discuss the existence or inexistence of gods, then the burden of proof lies on atheists, because theism is the normal state.Atheists believe that the burden of proof lies on theists. This is because it is very easy to claim something that can only be disproven with an immense amount of effort. Bertrand Russel has illustrated this idea with his flying teapot analogy. He wrote: “If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion — provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense.” Russell’s teapot. The reason is that there is no evidence for this teapot. If there is no evidence in favor, then there is no need to find evidence against it either. The hypothesis is just a baseless invention. As Christopher Hitchens put it: “What can be claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”
There are people who do not agree with this conclusion. Let us therefore postulate more entities: There are also three-headed flying snakes on Jupiter. Since this belief cannot be proven wrong, it is as valid as theism Rejection of Pascal / Definition of Atheism. Some people argue that orbiting teapots and flying snakes are different from gods, because gods are non-material or grander. However, we can easily ascribe any of these properties also to our teapots and snakes. The flying snakes are not material, and they are omnipotent and grand. This claim is still completely absurd. We would require proof in favor of it rather than proof against it. Atheists apply the same logic to gods.
Atheism cannot be proven true, because there is nothing that can happen in the present or future that a believer would accept as a proof that God does not exist. Thus, technically speaking, the claim “God exists” is unfalsifiable. This entails two things: First, the claim does not tell us anything about the real world. There is no tangible conclusion that we could draw from “God exists”. We are just as wise as before. Second, we can come up with arbitrarily many contradictory claims. For example, we can say “Two gods exist”, or “Gayatri exists and created God”. These claims are also non-falsifiable and hence equally non-sensical. Unfalsifiable claims are just literally meaningless, and hence there is no use in proving them wrong.
While atheism cannot be proven true, it can at least be proven wrong. This distinguishes it from theism.
- I have superpowers! I can fly if I want to!
- That is nonsense! Prove it!
- What do you mean, prove it? Prove me wrong!
All beliefs are equally valid
We may argue that all beliefs deserve equal respect until proven false. This seems a democratic and tolerant solution to the conundrum of gods.People are usually happy to subscribe to the principle of “equal validity”, as long as it is applied only to their own belief. However, if we go for equal validity, then the principle will apply to all beliefs. It is a mistake (in fact, the principal fault of many religions) to assume that there would be only one god. There are hundreds of religions, and thousands of gods. If all beliefs are equally valid, then all of these gods exist the same way our gods exist. We should start believing in Allah, as well as in Vishnu, in Brahma, in the Horned God of the Wicca religion, and in all the other gods. We would not even know how many gods we have to believe in. Few people will consider this world view plausible.
Worse, the beliefs are all contradictory. Each supernatural system usually has one or more powerful gods, which are assumed to dominate over the others. This cannot be upheld if all beliefs are true. Particular instances of this phenomenon are the monotheistic religions, which all claim that their god is the only one. One cannot believe in this god and in other gods. This is one of the main problems of the abrahamic religions. Insidiously, this problem will also apply to a Hindu (or to an adherent of any other non-abrahamic religion) who wishes to uphold the principle of equal validity: As soon as this person starts believing in the abrahamic God, they have to believe that this god is the only god. Thereby, they catapult all the other gods into non-existence. This, in turn, contradicts the principle that all supernatural beliefs would be equally valid.
Worse, each god usually comes with his or her own ideas of how people should behave. Some gods require us to follow certain dietary restrictions, others want us to pray to them, and again others want us to perform certain rituals. Most gods want all of this. Even the abrahamic god requires different things according to different religious beliefs. The Muslim belief, e.g., requires fasting during the month of Ramadan, while the Jewish belief prohibits pressing elevator buttons on Saturdays. If all beliefs are equally valid, then we should follow all of these constraints.
In addition, all other supernatural beliefs will also claim equal validity. Unicorns, ghosts, fairies, and good and evil spirits will all be equally true. If our children believe in tooth fairies, we have no right to disturb that belief. We have to respect their belief in tooth fairies as we wish that others respect our belief in gods. Superstitions will deserve the same validity. Some people pray to God, others touch their testicles in order to avoid bad luck. All of these beliefs would deserve equal respect.
Furthermore, atheists will take the opportunity to invent all types of other unfalsifiable entities. Bertrand Russell has proposed a teapot that orbits the sun between the Earth and Mars. Bobby Henderson postulates the existence of the flying spaghetti monster FSM. An entire religion has been built on the Invisible Pink Unicorn Invisible Pink Unicorn. Theists usually oppose these beliefs as heretic, and ridiculing. Yet, under the principle of equal validity, they would have to believe in all of the entities that atheists postulate.
It quickly becomes clear that such a world view cannot be upheld. It is nonsense. Not all beliefs are equally valid. On the contrary, it is dangerous to accord all beliefs equal validity, as we discuss in the Chapter on Criticism of Religion.
If two people disagree, this does not mean that they are equally right.
It may mean that one is wrong, or the other, or both.
We believe so many things
In our daily life, we believe many things without proof: we do not verify whether a medicine really has the desired effect, whether Barack Obama really had more votes than his opponent, or whether a signature on a contract really stems from the person who supposedly wrote it. We just believe these things. So then the question arises why we should not just believe in God in the same way.When we believe without proof, we risk a lot when the belief turns out to be wrong. We may be taking a harmful medicine; we may follow a president who was never duly elected; or we may do injustice to the person who supposedly signed the contract but never did. The same goes for the case of God: If God does not exist, our prayers, our time spent in Church, and our tithes are in vain. Worse, our life choices such as whom we trust, how we educate our children, which value system we follow, and whom we marry may be wrong.
Now, in all of the worldly cases, we would eventually find out if we were wrong. If a medicine consistently does not deliver results, we would become suspicious. If election results grossly differ from the exit polls, we would demand a re-count. If the person did not really sign the contract, they will for sure tell us when we ask them. In the case of God, however, none of this will happen. We can never find out if we are wrong. This is because the belief in God is unfalsifiable: There is nothing that a believer would accept as a proof that the belief in God is wrong.
Thus, the belief in God gives us restrictions for our lives, but makes it impossible to find out whether it is wrong. This is, in atheist eyes, a folly.
“Happy are those who have not seen yet still believe.”If you think about this statement, what you realize is that it creates the perfect cover for a scam.
Logical proofs are inadequate
Some people argue that logical proofs are not the right way to argue about God.Logical proofs and scientific proofs are so popular because they can predict the truth. For example, if it has been shown by the laws of science and logic that a stone dropped from a tower will fall down, then the stone will indeed fall down. This predictive power makes science and logic highly useful. If you have an alternative technique that can predict facts with verifiable certainty, you are invited to propose it.
If you have no alternative technique of predicting unknown things with verifiable certainty, then your arguments will not convince people — simply because the arguments may not lead to true conclusions. Scientific method
The good thing about science is that it is true whether or not you believe in it.
God is outside the realm of science!
The "Non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA) is a view advocated by Stephen Jay Gould. It holds that science and religion each have their domain of teaching authority, and these two domains do not overlap Non-overlapping magisteria. In practice, this means mostly that religion is responsible for the sense of life, the very beginning of the universe, and the questions of ethics, while science is responsible for all natural phenomena on Earth and in the Universe. In the NOMA view, these domains are disjoint, and science should not address questions about the divine while religion should not address questions of the physical universe.In this view, we should not (and cannot) prove or disprove the existence of gods with scientific means. The NOMA protects religious statements from scientific intervention, because it states that the realm of science and the realm of faith are strictly separated. Yet, few people actually believe in the NOMA. The following assumptions go against the NOMA:
- Praying
- Asking gods for something in a prayer assumes that the gods are able to have an influence on Earth. Praying may assume divine ability to make certain things happen, to influence people’s thoughts, or to prevent certain things. All of these items belong to the realm of science. People who pray do so because they believe that their god will increase the probability of something to happen. This is a scientifically verifiable hypothesis. Thus, people who pray for something to happen do not believe in the NOMA.
- Divine design of man and animals
- Some religions teach that gods designed the animal kingdom, including man. The animal kingdom, however, as well as human anatomy, psyche, and social behavior, fall into the domain of biology, psychology, and the social sciences. Thus, people who believe in divine creation do not believe in the NOMA.
- Divine creation of the World
- Many people believe that God or gods created the world. The creation of the world is a physical act, which falls in the domain of science. Even the assumption that God only initiated the cosmos is a scientific theory, because it assumes that the cosmos has a definite starting point. It may be that science finds that the universe oscillates, is part of a larger universe, or alters time. Thus, people who believe that the world was created by a supernatural being defy the NOMA.
- Miracles
- Some believe that God or gods perform miracles. Miracles intervene in the physical world in a way that can be measured by science. Thus, people who believe in divine miracles believe in an interaction between the divine and the physical, and thus not in the NOMA. This is independent of whether the miracles happened in the past or present, because science can extend to the past by carbon dating, archeology, and an ever-growing array of other techniques.
- Proofs of the divine
- Science has its limits. There are many things that it cannot yet explain, and may never be able to explain. When people hear that science has encountered a problem, they are quick to point out that only God can be the explanation. Yet, by attempting to explain a problem in scientific discovery with God, these people defy the NOMA.
- Rituals with a purpose
- Some religions put forward rituals in order to win the grace of God or gods. In fact, many people perform rituals of one kind or another in order to avoid bad luck. As soon as a ritual is assumed to have an effect on the world, it falls into the domain of science. Thus, people who are superstitious, or who perform religious rituals in the hope or belief of changing their fate do not believe in the NOMA.
- Prophecies
- Some religious books contain prophecies. They make statements about what will happen on Earth, or how certain things behave, even though these were supposedly unknown at the time of the writing. The Quran, e.g., explains the development of the human embryo in the womb. The Bible predicts the end of the world. These are statements about the physical world that fall into the domain of science. It does not help that it is usually claimed that the holy books are not books of science. As soon as they contain one prophecy about the physical world, they defy the NOMA.
- Exceptions from birth and death
- Christianity teaches that Jesus was killed, and then came back to life. Islam teaches that the Prophet Mohammed did not die, but rose to heaven. Catholicism teaches that Mary (the mother of Jesus) physically rose to heaven. Christianity teaches that Jesus had no human father, and that Mary was a virgin before and after his birth. Many other religions have birth myths about their founder. All of these assumptions interfere with science. Science could (at least in theory) show the remains of a prophet, and identify him by DNA analysis. Thus, any claim about the birth or death of a person is a physical claim and falls in the realm of science. Hence, a person who makes such claims does not believe in the NOMA.
Thus, we are left with the conclusion that few people really believe in the NOMA.
Deistic view
Deism is a philosophy that holds that God created the universe, but then retired. Related to this view are metaphysical philosophies that hold that “God” is just a different name for a metaphysical phenomenon. Both view points say that god does not interact with the universe (a hypothesis called the “NOMA”). In this view, God does not have any particular properties. He is mainly the abstract cause of existence, and nothing more.This point of view has two consequences: First, we cannot deduce anything from this hypothesis. If the assumption of god is disconnected from the physical world, then nothing about the physical world can be deduced from it. Thus, we will know nothing more about this world than people who do not believe in God.
The second consequence is that there can be arbitrarily many contradictory, and equally abstract beliefs. For example, there could be no god, but rather a “universal principle of justice” — like the Tao in Taoism. Or there could be several abstract gods — one that is the principle of justice, one that is the reason for our existence, one that is the principle of one-ness in this world. Why not? Since none of these beliefs can be proven right or wrong, any belief about a god or gods is as valid as any other belief about a god or gods.
These are the problems that come with beliefs that do not concern the physical world: (1) they cannot make any prediction about the world and (2) there can be arbitrarily many contradictory beliefs. In the end, such beliefs are all nothing more than manipulations of words. These problems are so fundamental that this book proposes that such beliefs cannot be called “true” at all. They cannot even be called “false”. They are just meaningless. Thus, what the NOMA really entails when it is taken seriously is meaninglessness.
God is subjective truth.
This argument asserts that there is objective truth and subjective truth. Objective truth is everything that can be verified, or that concerns other people. Subjective truth is everything that is in a person’s mind. In a believers’ subjective truth, gods exist. In an atheist’s subjective truth, they don’t. This does away with the problems and disputes that arise between the two world views.This is indeed how the world looks from an atheist point of view: Gods are subjective truth, in the sense that they exist only in the imagination of some people.
On Discussion
It’s impossible to discuss about God!
Many people dislike discussing about God and religion in general. However, both Islam and Christianity are proselytising religions in their current mainstream interpretations. This means that adherents of these religions have the duty to bring their faith to other people. Scripture tells us:- Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect. [Bible / 1 Peter 3:15]
- You shall invite to the path of your Lord with wisdom and kind enlightenment, and debate with them in the best possible manner. Your Lord knows best who has strayed from His path, and He knows best who are the guided ones. [Quran / 16:125]
It’s impossible to discuss about faith!
It is often argued that it is not possible to discuss about gods or faith in general.However, people apply this view exclusively to their own faith. Most people are happy to discuss about tribal religions, sects, superstition, mysticism, or Scientology. This shows that a discussion about gods and faith is not only possible, but also quite common. Even if one person or the other does not discuss about faith at all, the fact that most others do shows that it cannot be impossible. In general, atheists can discuss about all faiths and gods, thus proving that it cannot be impossible.
Often, people claim that it would be impossible to discuss about faith just in order to avoid that this faith is questioned.
Historians have cataloged over 3700 supernatural beings, of which 2870 can be considered deities. So next time someone tells me they believe in God, I’ll point out that they are nearly as atheistic as me. I don’t believe in 2,870 gods, and they don’t believe in 2,869.
God’s existence needs no proof
It is a common claim that God does not need a proof. Whether or not this is the case depends on what goal we pursue.If our goal is to convince atheists to believe in the supernatural, then we do need a proof. Otherwise, atheists will not believe in gods.
If our goal is impact other people in any way with our belief, then we will also need proof.
If we have no such goal, then indeed we do not need a proof for what we believe.
I just want to believe without discussing!
A priori, nobody is forced to discuss about their faith. There are a number of exceptions to this rule:- It may be that your religion requires you to discuss your faith. This is the case in the current mainstream interpretations of Christianity and Islam.
- If you wish to convert an atheist to your religion, you will likewise have to discuss your faith.
- If you wish to implement religious measures in our society, or impact other people in other ways by reason of your faith, then you will also have to discuss your religion.
However, many people have no such aspirations. For them, religion is a private matter. In this case, there is indeed no necessity to discuss belief.
I believe in God and you don’t, so where is the problem?
There is no problem. I assume that you are reading this book not because there is a problem, but because you would like to know more about atheism. If you do not, then you are welcome to stop reading this book at any time.I take comfort in the thought that, in controversies as in mineral baths, the real effect comes afterwards.