Why are you atheist?

[Munch]

"I poo gold" - extraordinary claim, requires extraordinary proof
"I poo poo" - ordinary claim, requires no proof

Phew, for a while there I thought this thread was doomed never to have its tone lowered.

 

[ArneHD]

The key word here is experience. Most atheists (I think) do not demand 100% proof for a given position and embrace the notion that there can be no certain proof. Rather we look for what is likely: if I threw a rock in the air a hundred times and it came back down into my hand, I would conclude that in these conditions it would be likely that the rock will return to earth. By continuing this process under different positions, I can form a general theory of "Rock returning to earth".

This does not mean that I am certain that the rock will always return down to my hand. It simply means that this is more likely than any other case being true. Since I cannot be certain that my senses are correct, I can never have certain knowledge. In the case of induction, I use it to make a prediction about the future. If this prediction comes true, and I repeat the experiment, I can come to the conclusion that using induction in these conditions work. This does not mean that induction always works, but it means that it is likely to work.

In the case of god there is no reason to suppose that god exists. God is not a logical tool like induction, nor does it have any noticeable effect on my life. I cannot observe god, I cannot conduction experiments on, or about god and I cannot even hypothetically conceive of any testable difference between god and not-god. There is therefore no reason to suppose that god exists, because a universe with god would be identical to a universe without god as far as we can tell today.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

@askthepizzaguy, I love the black rook, white king metaphor. That's all

 

[warpus]

here is therefore no reason to suppose that god exists, because a universe with god would be identical to a universe without god as far as we can tell today.

That is actually a very good way to put it

 

[Greizer85]

It is a comforting thought that God exists, for many people. For an artist, the concept of a Divinity makes him/her the instrument/channeler of its forces, not a shaper of his/her own crude fancies - which can make him/her more dedicated to his/her work. (You English people and your illogical words... We Finns have one word for "him" and "her" - "hän" - and it's much easier to use that! ) Are those not good enough reasons - provided no harm comes to anyone from your belief?

In other words - why must everything be so damn logical? Induction is not (i.e. it can't be justified with deductive logic).

@warpus: that I haven't pooped gold in the past is no proof that I won't do it today, no matter how extraordinary a claim that is. If it is proof, you have yet to show why. Meanwhile, I'm still trying; perhaps if I prayed to God more often I would be successful. (This is a golden example btw, if also a crappy one. )

@ArneHD: Just because something has happened many times in the past, why is it most likely to happen the same way also in the future?

Edit: That point about the reliability of the senses is true, but I want to show that taking things on faith runs a few layers deeper. Or shallower (is that a word?), whichever way you may put it.

 

[warpus]

@warpus: that I haven't pooped gold in the past is no proof that I won't do it today. If it is, you have yet to show why. Meanwhile, I'm still trying; perhaps if I prayed to God more often I would be successful. (This is a golden example btw, if also a crappy one. )

I'm willing to extend my $5,000 bet to you, my fellow wannabe gold pooper.

You have 48 hours to poop gold. If you fail, you owe me $5k

 

[lovett]

Greizer has grasped exactly what I’m trying to say: Inductive knowledge is unjustified, we believe it without justification therefore why do we demand justification to believe in God?

I think a few people don’t really understand the problem of induction clearly. My fault; I haven’t really illustrated it. I’ll attempt to do so now (borrowing pretty heavily from Blackburn).

----------

Let us imagine a fantastical scenario. You are a disembodied spirit floating around in some sort of heaven. God tells you that he’s decided to give you lives to lead in this physical universe he’s prepared for you; Earth. Unlike normal human life you will all live the same period; Eight acts, let us say.

To make things interesting he is going to offer you a kind of lottery. Everyone will get a ticket. This ticket corresponds to the colour of the midday sky for each individual acts. He promises (or covenants, gods are wont to do that) that he won’t change the colour of the sky at any other time but the beginning of each act. Only one person will have a ticket that actually corresponds to the colour of the sky in each act; this person wins a 1963 Rickenbacker when they get back to heaven. This is pretty cool; Heaven is good but heaven with an electric guitar is even better.

So a ticket might look like this:

Red..............x....................................x
Orange....................x...............x..................x
Yellow............................x.....................................x
Green
Blue................................................................................x

|.................1........2........3........4........5........6........7........8


This ticket corresponds to the sky starting red, going orange then yellow. Turning orange again followed by red before going orange, yellow and even blue.
Call the person with this ticket Wavy.

Some of you (five in fact) get straight tickets:

Red
Orange
Yellow
Green
Blue.............x........x........x........x........x........x........x........x

|.................1........2........3........4........5........6........7........8



Lets call this ticket straightie. If there is one ticket for everyone then there needs to be 5^8 people for everyone to have a ticket corresponding to each possible distribution of colour. Consequently, your chance of winning is 1/5^8 which is a rather small number.

Clearly we do not have any prior knowledge about which ticket will win. Antecedently there is no reason to prefer one ticket to another. God may favour wavy or straight lines. Or maybe he likes Kinkie:

Red
Orange
Yellow
Green..................................................x........x........x........x
Blue.............x........x........x........x

|.................1........2........3........4........5........6........7........8

The clear midday sky starts off blue for the first four acts then turns green, and stays like that for the remained. So in heaven before we get any experience of the world God is going to put us into, no ticket has any better chance than any other.

Now to Earth. Immediately 4/5 of us can throw away their tickets; any ticket not showing blue in the fact act is a loser. Similarly on each subsequent act 4/5 of us can throw away their ticket until, at the beginning of the eighth act, only six remain. A day after that there is but one single winner.

Anyway, let us intercede towards the end of the fourth act. Both Straightie and kinkie have done rather well. They have seen their competitors drop out on four previous occasions; the number of survivors has fallen from 5^8 to 5^4 and their chances of winning have risen accordingly.

But suppose they get into an argument with each other; straightie urges Kinkie that his ticket is far more likely to be the winner and he will swap it only for a terrific price. We would probably side with straightie. But suppose Kinkie resists urging that there is no reason in what has happened so far to bet on straightie rather then him; how do we resolve this?

Each point to their track record of success. It is the same track record for each of them; each has four hits. There is nothing else they can go on. Like us they cannot peer into the future; they’re stuck.

Straightie would like an argument in favour of uniformity in nature. In other words, he would like to point out that since God has started with the blue sky, and has stuck to it so far, he will probably continue to do so. But Kinkie can retort that God has started with an as-per-Kinkie sky and by equal reasoning he will continue to do so.

The argument Straightie wants is one that is impossible to find. To argue that nature has been uniform so far and will therefore continue being uniform is predicated on the very idea that nature will continue being uniform. All argument proving the resemblance of the past to the future are founded on the supposition that the past resembles the future.

Our insistence on using these arguments is not based in logic it is based in habit and custom. When we reason inductively there is a way for our premises to be true yet our conclusions false. Nature can change. Indeed there are many ways; nature can change in many ways.

There is no contradiction in imagining this and we cannot even argue that such change is improbable. We only think that because they have not occurred within our experience. But taking our experience as representative presupposes uniformity of nature; We have linked the past and the future but we cannot reason that this link is reliable.

In all cases of induction we have this problem. The fact that the sun has risen everyday in the past fits as perfectly with the ‘Straightie’ arguments that it will rise tomorrow as with the ‘Kinkie’ argument that it will not rise tomorrow. The fact that the sky has been blue everyday in our lives fits as well with the sky being green tomorrow as with the sky remaining blue. We can’t distinguish between the two arguments via reason.

Nevertheless, we believe that the sky will be blue tomorrow. We justify this through induction and we simply don’t care that induction is unjustified. Yet we care very greatly that God is unjustified. We need to show that there is an epistemological distinction between God and Induction or this double standard is completely unsupportable.

 

[warpus]

Yes, but we also know that the sky is blue because of the way sunlight hits the atmosphere.

We don't only think it's gonna be blue tomorrow because it's always been blue. Although that is a good indication of it being blue tomorrow - there are other reasons.

Same with the sun going up tomorrow.

 

[Greizer85]

Thank Heavens! *plays Jimi Hendrix on electric guitar* The Seer has arrived and demostrated what we the unruly rabble cannot see! What say ye now, false believers? Gird thyself manfully and answer to thy God - God called Induction! As the Good Book says (Rev. -4:i12): "There will be trials and tribulations; the tribes of men will come to know that logic whirling in on itself cannot stand. He who sows Inductive Statements, shall reap Deductive Mayhem..."

@warpus: it is no indication. Didn't you read what he just wrote? As for certain wavelengths being blue, well, why are they blue and not something else? Why can't it change tomorrow, so that that particular wavelength will be red?

 

[Lone Wolf]

Yes, but we also know that the sky is blue because of the way sunlight hits the atmosphere.

How do you know that tomorrow the sun will hit the athmosphere the same way?

The arguments from the uniformity of nature are circular logic here.

Personally, I'd recommend thinking about probability and statistics.

 

[warpus]

How do you know that tomorrow the sun will hit the athmosphere the same way?

The arguments from the uniformity of nature are circular logic here.

I have no reason to think that it won't. If you have a good one, I'd love to hear it.

 

[Greizer85]

I have no reason to think that it won't. If you have a good one, I'd love to hear it.

Why do you have no reason to think that? Because it has never happened in the past? This is like mental Nascar.

 

[lovett]

Yes, but we also know that the sky is blue because of the way sunlight hits the atmosphere.

We don't only think it's gonna be blue tomorrow because it's always been blue. Although that is a good indication of it being blue tomorrow - there are other reasons.

Same with the sun going up tomorrow.

When did you learn that Rayleigh's scattering made the sky blue? 8? 14? 20?

Probably not much earlier then eight. Hell, you'd have to be pretty precocious to understand it at 14. I'm almost certain that if someone had asked you 'What colour will the sky be tomorrow?' at the age of eight you would have said 'blue' and wondered if they were a bit of an idiot. Just like I'm certain that the Romans thought the sky would continue being blue. You know the sky will remain blue through induction.

I have no reason to think that it won't. If you have a good one, I'd love to hear it.

Did you read the big post? I hope you did but I don't see any better way of explaining the point.

Basically, the sun rising every day in the past is just as indicative of the sun not rising tomorrow('Kinkie') as it is of the sun rising tomorrow ('Straightie'); both approaches have a completely accurate track record.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Lovett: a question to make your position more clear.

What if I say: "I am not completely sure that the sky will be green one day. However, the fact that it had been blue for such a long number of days and the fact that I see nothing that would change the color, makes it highly unlikely, though not impossible, that the sky will change its color"?

 

[lovett]

Lovett: a question to make your position more clear.

What if I say: "I am not completely sure that the sky will be green one day. However, the fact that it had been blue for such a long number of days and the fact that I see nothing that would change the color, makes it highly unlikely, though not impossible, that the sky will change its color"?

Thanks.

We cannot make a probabilistic assessment. Let us say there are only two possible sky colours: Green and blue. The idea that the sky will remain blue is formed from pointing at all those other instances of blue skies and saying 'This corresponds with the sky being always blue'. This is right. The problem comes in that it also corresponds to the sky being blue up until now and then changing to green. There are no grounds on which to distinguish between these two possibilities. They both have the exact same record in terms of being right and thus we cannot distinguish which one is more likely from their record alone. As this is all we have to go on we cannot distinguish which one is more likely at all. Thus our belief that the sky will be blue tomorrow is unjustified.

 

[warpus]

Why do you have no reason to think that? Because it has never happened in the past? This is like mental Nascar.

Let me put it this way: What reason would I have to think that it will be different tomorrow?

If anyone claims that it will be different tomorrow, let them present their case. So far nobody has.

When did you learn that Rayleigh's scattering made the sky blue? 8? 14? 20?

Probably not much earlier then eight. Hell, you'd have to be pretty precocious to understand it at 14. I'm almost certain that if someone had asked you 'What colour will the sky be tomorrow?' at the age of eight you would have said 'blue' and wondered if they were a bit of an idiot. Just like I'm certain that the Romans thought the sky would continue being blue. You know the sky will remain blue through induction.

Yeah, but now I'm not 8 and I know why the sky is blue

Basically, the sun rising every day in the past is just as indicative of the sun not rising tomorrow('Kinkie') as it is of the sun rising tomorrow ('Straightie'); both approaches have a completely accurate track record.

Really? So how come you aren't willing to accept my bet? Is it maybe because you are 100% certain that the sun will come up tomorrow, like it did this morning?

 

[lovett]

Let me put it this way: What reason would I have to think that it will be different tomorrow?

The idea that it will be the same is exactly as credible as the idea that it will be different. Less in fact, since there are lots of ways the idea could be different as opposed to only one way it could be the same.

I think someone else said this, but the question sounds very much like someone saying: 'Prove to me God doesn't exist'.

 

[Greizer85]

Let me put it this way: What reason would I have to think that it will be different tomorrow?

If anyone claims that it will be different tomorrow, let them present their case. So far nobody has.

I give up now. Lovett has explained it as well as anyone can (at least much better than I can fwiw).

Really? So how come you aren't willing to accept my bet? Is it maybe because you are 100% certain that the sun will come up tomorrow, like it did this morning?

That certainty is irrational, 's all. Nothing wrong with that imo. But then there's this whole business with God...

 

[warpus]

The idea that it will be the same is exactly as credible as the idea that it will be different. Less in fact, since there are lots of ways the idea could be different as opposed to only one way it could be the same.

We can easily test your hypothesis that the chances of the sky being blue are the same as it not being blue by checking what the colour of the sky is tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that.

If the chance is 50/50, as you claim, then on average the sky will be not blue about 50% of the time.

 

[warpus]

@Greizer, I understand the position, but you are not answering my questions. You can't just point to the position every time I have a valid question.