The merits of strong atheism: PoodleLovinPessimist vs. bkawcazn

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

This thread has been set up for a formal debate between PoodleLovinPessimist and bkawcazn who will debate the following resolution:

Resolved: “It is rational to conclude on the basis of evidence that no god exists.�

PoodleLovinPessimist will affirm and bkawcazn will oppose. The debate will have 3 rounds and PoodleLovinPessimist will go first, per the parameters (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showpost.php?p=2963541&postcount=14).

A Peanut Gallery (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=146831) is set up in the Existence of God(s) forum for the rest of us to comment on the debate.

May we have a stimulating debate from both participants!

- NS, FD Moderator

[PoodleLovinPessimist]

Is Strong Atheism a meaningful, logical and sensible position with regard to the existence of a creator god? Or does the weakness of the assertion require that we cannot hold anything more than Weak Atheism? These are good questions, worth exploring in a dialectical manner.

Strong Atheism with regard to a particular definition of a god is the explicit and direct denial that such a god does in fact exist. Weak Atheism, on the other hand, is the position that the existence of such a god can rationally be neither asserted nor denied. Under what circumstances can we rationally assert Strong Atheism? What sort of existential assertions are rationally deniable, and what sort can we take no rational position on?

In order to rationally take a cognitive true/false position on an existential assertion, we must satisfy the following conditions: The statement must be intensionally meaningful: It must have some sort of well-defined definition. I can neither affirm nor deny the assertion that gnorts exist, since I have no definition whatsoever specifying the meaning of “gnorts�. The statement must be truth-functional: It must be capable of being true or false. This criterion is, however, redundant in this context; all meaningful existential statements are truth functional; either such a being does in fact exist, or it does not.

In order to affirm or deny a meaningful, truth-functional existential assertion we must satisfy the following conditions: The proposition must be knowable in principle: There must be some way to know if the assertion is true or false. Furthermore, we must actually have some way to satisfy the epistemological criteria in one way or the other, at least indirectly. And last, we should have no good reason to doubt our conclusion.

It’s important to add that we do not have to be absolutely certain to affirm or deny an existential proposition. It is sufficient to simply have some good reason to go one way, and no good reason to go the other way.

If a statement is meaningless, it is simply gibberish. If a statement is not knowable in principle it is irrelevant. If we have no good reason to affirm or deny a statement, or if we have good reasons for both affirming and denying it, we should adopt a position of uncertainty.

It is my position in this debate that there are some senses of the assertion that “a creator god exists� which are meaningful, truth-functional, knowable in-principle, and for which we have good reasons to deny and no good reasons to assert. Furthermore, there are no senses of the assertion which are meaningful, truth-functional, and for which we have good reason for affirming.

There are, of course, senses of the assertion which are not meaningful. There are senses of the assertion that are not in principle knowable. There are even senses which are technically knowable, but any reasons for affirming or denying the proposition are unavailable. In these senses I profess Weak Atheism. But the debate parameters do not explicitly specify these senses.

Thus my opponent will have to show that there are no senses at all of the assertion which are meaningful, truth-functional, knowable in-principle, and for which we have only good reasons for denying, and no good reasons for affirming.

There are senses of “a creator god exists� which are meaningful. A god is widely held to be a conscious being which has purposes. Since only human beings are already known to be conscious and purposeful, we must mean these qualifiers in the same sense or at least in an understandably analogous sense. A creator god, then, is such a being who actually created the observable universe.

This definition, then, allows us to consider the assertion of the existence of a creator god to be knowable in some senses. Since consciousness and purpose are the essential characteristics of the definition, we can say that a creator god would consciously create the universe for a knowable purpose.

Since this sense of “A creator god exists� is knowable in principle, we can then attempt to look for reasons to affirm or deny it. Specifically, we can assert that the purpose should be determinable by observation. But there is simply no evidence that the observable universe satisfies any determinable purpose. And any phenomena that might indicate such a god is interacting with the universe (which would be an understandable purpose) are rationally deniable. Because we have looked and not found what we should expect if an understandably conscious and purposeful being created the observable universe for an understandable purpose, we have a good reason to believe that the observable universe was not, in fact, created for a purpose, and therefore we have a good reason to explicitly deny that a creator god exists.

It is irrelevant that we might later discover some purpose. The Strong Atheist denial of the existence of a creator god is not absolute, it is conditioned, as are all existential statements, on the reasons we actually know, not on those we don’t know. If some actual purpose were substantiated, I would change my position. It is irrelevant that there are some senses of “a creator god exists� which are not meaningful (e.g. a being with unspecified properties such as unknowable purpose). I already admit that for those senses, weak atheism is preferable. It is irrelevant that there are some senses which are meaningful but in-principle unknowable (e.g. a being which created the universe as a work of art). Again, in those senses, I am already a weak atheist.

My opponent will have to show one of two things: He might show that the sense of “a creator god exists� that I offer above and which I explicitly deny is somehow unjustified, incoherent or otherwise illegitimate, and that only the senses which can be neither affirmed nor denied remain. He might also show that the epistemological justification is equivocal: That there are good reasons to both affirm and deny the assertions, and that we have grounds for reasonable doubt.

[bkawcazn]

Looking for purpose in the cosmos

Since this sense of “A creator god exists� is knowable in principle, we can then attempt to look for reasons to affirm or deny it. Specifically, we can assert that the purpose should be determinable by observation. But there is simply no evidence that the observable universe satisfies any determinable purpose.

Identifying purpose is difficult at best.

It is known that the universe has a variety of qualities and is home to a variety of phenomena. Some of them are known to be isotropic (stellar fusion), other are merely suspected to be (life).

Let us imagine that the universe was created to bring about stars. Stars are interesting (at least to us, the only conscious and purposeful creatures), distinct from the vacuum around them, and identifiable from great distances. Also, the formation of stars could be easily predicted with an understanding of gravity, nuclear forces, and mass-energy equivalence. If there is but one purpose to the universe, then life would be a simple accident, not intended, and perhaps not even predicted by the god.

It has been argued (perhaps ‘stated’ is more apt) by many people that life is the purpose of the universe. So let us imagine that the universe was created for life to flourish. In this case, stars would be merely incidental tools used by the god. Stars would serve as a means unto his ends.

Imagine a third universe, one that was created by no god at all. Humans might find or create their own purpose, but it was created with no purpose at all.

If we can agree that either stars or life could be interesting and meaningful enough to a god to cause him to create a universe then we can agree that one of the first two universes is possible. The third one is undoubtedly possible.

Could any these three universes be distinguished from each other in any way? They could not. They would be identical.

It is entirely reasonable that a god would find enough beauty or purpose in either life or stars to create an entire universe to house them. We are the only creatures known to be intelligent and purposeful, and we find stars and life to be certainly worthy of existence, and we would certainly create them if we had the power. A classic creator god has much in common with man.

In fact, the book of Genesis even states that man was made in the image of God. I do not mean to suggest that the god of Genesis is a possibility, only that a god with some of his qualities could be a possibility.

Evidence for and against purpose

In order to affirm or deny a meaningful, truth-functional existential assertion we must satisfy the following conditions: The proposition must be knowable in principle: There must be some way to know if the assertion is true or false. Furthermore, we must actually have some way to satisfy the epistemological criteria in one way or the other, at least indirectly. And last, we should have no good reason to doubt our conclusion.

Because each of the three above universes would be identical to any human observer within the universe, there would be no way to know if the assertion would be true or false If identifying purpose (or the lack thereof) was the only method to determine if the universe was created.

I will not pretend that evidence has been found of divine purpose in the universe. Indeed, doing so would undermine my central argument at this point: There is no way to distinguish a universe that was created with one of its features as its purpose, and a universe that contains the same feature for an entirely different reason, or for no reason whatsoever.

Conclusion

It is irrelevant that there are some senses of “a creator god exists� which are not meaningful (e.g. a being with unspecified properties such as unknowable purpose). I already admit that for those senses, weak atheism is preferable. It is irrelevant that there are some senses which are meaningful but in-principle unknowable (e.g. a being which created the universe as a work of art). Again, in those senses, I am already a weak atheist.

It is relevant. It could not be shown that any purpose would be identifiable, whereas the ‘work of art’ purpose or the unknowable purpose would not be identifiable. My opponent singles out a particular purpose as one that is unknowable. Yet, if we are to discuss anything, it must be argued that one theoretical feature of a universe (a) does not exist, (b) could not exist unless it was the purpose of the universe, and (c) could not exist in a universe with another purpose or no purpose.

There are, of course, senses of the assertion which are not meaningful. There are senses of the assertion that are not in principle knowable. There are even senses which are technically knowable, but any reasons for affirming or denying the proposition are unavailable. In these senses I profess Weak Atheism. But the debate parameters do not explicitly specify these senses.

Again, if purpose is not knowable, and no other evidence of creation is knowable, then Weak Atheism prevails.

My opponent will most likely have to show that (a) purpose would be detectable, or (b) it would be possible to determine that a universe was not created without relying on a lack of visible purpose, or (c) a god is an impossibility, or (d) creation by a god is an impossibility, or (e) the non-existence of god should be assumed even if no empirical evidence suggests or demands it.

[PoodleLovinPessimist]

To recap my opening, the argument for strong atheism with regard to the general concept of a Creator God rests on three principles:
1. There are no senses of “a Creator God exists� which are cognitive, knowable, and known to be true.
2. There are no senses of “a Creator God exists� which are cognitive, knowable, and for which there is actual equivocal evidence available.
3. There are some senses of “a Creator God exists� which are cognitive, knowable, and known to be false.

Obviously, the falsity of (1) would entail some sort of Theism, or at least Deism, and entail the falsity of any sort of atheism at all, weak or strong. Since my opponent and I are arguing which type of atheism to support, I will take (1) as stipulated.

The falsity of (2), if there were indeed some conception of a Creator God for which both undermining and supporting evidence existed, and the supporting evidence did not fail in and of itself, would require a weak atheism of indecision. As it stands, however, there is no evidence for the existence of a Creator God that does not fail of its own accord (as opposed to failing to overcome other undermining evidence). My opponent has not yet challenged this principle.

So that leaves (3). My opponent has given some excellent examples of cognitive but unknowable senses of our topic. And I certainly agree: To the particular senses of the topic which are unknowable, I indeed profess a weak atheism of epistemological noncognitivism. If these were indeed the only senses of the topic, then he would be correct with regard to the general sense, and weak atheism would be the rational position. But he is not correct.

A creator god might have created this universe to provide energy. However, the fact that an enormous amount of energy of the Big Bang has been converted to the expansion of the universe argues that no god created this universe for the purpose of extracting energy from it. At the very least, if it were to have done so, it has done so inefficiently; we would expect better, much better, from a being with the ability to create a universe.

A creator god might have created this universe in order to create terrestrial life. Again, the inefficiency of creating an enormous universe for the purpose of creating life on such a tiny planet seems more inefficient than we could reasonably expect from a being with the ability to create a universe.

A creator god might have created this universe to have open, unambiguous conversations with intelligent life. Again, that intelligent life does in fact exist, has existed for a long time, and no open, unambiguous conversations with our creator exist is definite evidence against this particular purpose.

A creator god might have created this universe as a work of representational art (i.e. in the sense of a landscape or a portrait). But all the observed features of this universe, from the quantum to the astrophysical, can be accounted for by relatively simple physical laws operating on relatively simple initial conditions. The evidence we do have argues against this universe as representational art.

The last item is very important. There appears to be absolutely no intervention in the working of the universe that requires anything more than simple mechanical laws and simple initial conditions. This constrains the working of any hypothetical creator god merely to creating those initial laws and conditions, and falsifies any hypothetical creator who would intervene in any more detailed manner.

It’s clear that there are some senses of our topic which are plausible, knowable, and known to be false; (3) is thus true.

It’s certainly possible to narrow the topic to where weak atheism is the preferable choice. The obvious way to do so is to add an “unknowable purpose� clause. I’m definitely a weak atheist towards a definition of a creator god with such a qualifying clause.

This is more than just a technical, academic discussion. Before the advent of modern science, without a naturalistic scientific description of many features of the universe, it appeared that mechanical natural laws and simple initial conditions could not account for many of the observed features of the universe. Before Newton, we had to have a god to move the planets around. Before Laplace, we had to have a god to at least get the solar system started. Before Darwin, we had to have a god to create terrestrial life. Even if we did not know the purpose of a god doing so, the only way to account for these features was to assume they were for some purpose, even if unknown.

But all of this evidence has fallen of its own accord. Gravity, the nebular hypothesis, Evolution, all show that not only is intelligent intervention not necessary, but the facts are against any sort of intelligent intervention of even today’s level of human sophistication.

Since we can positively exclude any interventionist creator, strong atheism and the definite conclusion of plausible falsity is favored towards the general proposition of a Creator God.

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

bkawcazn has informed me that he cannot continue with the formal debate:

Sorry.

I'm going off to basic training and cannot continue the debate. If we can resume in about 9 or 10 weeks, that would be great. If not, I'm sorry I couldn't keep up with my schedule and offer my congratulations to PoodleLovinPessimist.

Unfortunately, an extension of this length would not be permitted and unfortunately I must declare a forfeit. PoodleLovinPessimist will have the opportunity to post a concluding statement if he wishes to. After that, this thread will be closed.

- NS, FD Moderator

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

PoodleLovinPessimist has declined to submit a final statement. This thread will now be closed. Nevertheless, we would like to thank PoodleLovinPessimist and bkawcazn for their participation.

It's unfortunate that the formal debate had to be cut short in this way, but I'd like to remind future FD participants of the following statement from the FD Rules and Procedures FAQ:

we request that IIDB users, before committing to a formal debate, take reasonable foresight of his or her future schedule to ensure that other life priorities will not significantly interfere with his or her involvement.

Discussion can be continued in the Peanut Gallery.

- NS, FD Moderator