Friday, May 11, 2007

.: Theism VS Atheism :.

The battle between science and religion has been raging on an epic scale for centuries, and having been an agnostic caught in the crossfire between the atheist and theist camps I believe I have heard enough from both sides to make a small generalization about the rough situation of the debate.

I could not help but realize how the arguments put forth by the atheist camp were generally of a higher quality. Proofs for the inexistence of a being of greater power are commonly well-founded and well thought out logical thinking that inevitably point to the atheists’ favored conclusions. In comparison there are few self-standing arguments from the theists for their case; most of what they say are simply counter arguments attempting to take advantage of loopholes or gaps left by the atheist arguments. The general quality of their statements is a far cry from what their adversaries come up with. Let us examine a short example.

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/nogod.php#occam

For those who are too lazy to read the section, the main argument here put forth by the atheist is that the existence of a god creates unnecessary complications to what can be a simpler explanation. The theist response is that the physical laws of the universe must be “crafted” with amazing “precision”, since the atheists’ explanation that the universe came about by chance would require the existence of a zillion other universes unlike ours. Apparently there is no doubt that there are a whole lot other ways that the universe can exist, but does this necessarily mean that all of the possible permutations must exist in reality? The writer of this particular theist argument apparently has little idea of what probability is. He says that if the universe were in any way different from ours, life would not exist. The more correct version, though, would be that if the universe were in anyway different from ours, life familiar to us would not exist. The point here is that even if the fundamental physical laws of a universe is different, it can still have its own stellar structures, and very possibly still evolve life of a different form. Hence the case here is not really pulling out a red coin out of a mountain of blue coins, but pulling out a coin out of a mountain of coins. The difference, which the writer has chosen to leave out cleverly, is humongous. The first case implies either unimaginable luck or unimaginable permutations of existence, while the second does not.

The next argument following that is of even lower standard. The theist here was either careless or stupid enough to not realize how he actually made huge efforts to lift a rock only to drop it on his own foot. He starts with the assumption that god is eternal and has no cause, and then goes on to attack how it is improbable it is for the universe to exist without a cause (from the previous argument we already know it is not really improbable at all). What then happens if we put his beginning assumption to scrutiny under his own argument? For god to exist eternally and without a cause is definitely possible, but 1 in 10^10000 is not exactly what I would call good betting odds either! Furthermore, there are many ways in which god can create the universe, and hence by this argument’s own logic the possibility of the theist theory being correct would be somewhere along the lines of 1 in 10^20000. Here we have it, bad betting odds and worse betting odds.

It is clear enough how the theist camp is definitely losing out in this war of logic. Unfortunately for them, there is insufficient proof and convincing evidence supporting their case, and hence the theist camp does not have arguments of its own. The only thing the theists can do is to hopefully be able to pick apart each and every one of the atheist’s attacks, and defend their stand from the atheists’ endless barrage of logical arguments. To make matters worse, each of the atheists’ arguments are independent, and hence the failure of any number of their arguments does not mean their stand is defeated, but the theists simply have to be unable to rebut one of the many arguments, and the debate is over.

However, does this necessarily mean that religions are necessarily an incorrect explanation of the universe? Let us look closer at the nature of this ongoing argument between the atheists and the theists. Clearly, what we are trying to do here is to proof non-existence of a greater power through logical means. Yet if the greater power here is really of greater power, and is almighty enough to create the universe, and then surely it must be exempted from the logical laws which our reason follow. In fact, this “argument” is the only powerful weapon the theists possess in their arsenal in a logical struggle. By placing god at a level higher than what human comprehension can ever hope to reach, they have exempted themselves from answering any attacks from the atheists. This makes sense. How can it be fair to place a being such as "god" under the mortal constraints of cause and effect?

Of course the downside to using this “weapon” would be that by ignoring all existing atheist arguments and saying all of them does not apply to god, the theists are effectively admitting to the conclusion that the existence of god is irrational and illogical, since the only reason and logic which we have access to is the human one. The theists do have a justification for doing this, however. In the first place religions, believes and faiths are known as such with a reason. As the follower of a religion you do not need to be convinced that the religion is definitely logically sound and plausible. You just need to believe in it, and hence explanations of the logical kind are alien to most religions, preferring to simply accepting what is being taught. By forcing the argument to be on logical grounds we are effectively deciding before hand that the theists must be fought over basic assumptions they do not usually make. This argument was biased from the start, with the theists destined to lose because they have to prescribe to the atheists’ set of rules.

The conclusions here would therefore be that if we were to be strict followers of the rules of logical reasoning, religions are definitely illogical, irrational, inexplicable and unsubstantiated. We must recognize however, the fact that religions don’t actually need to be substantiated in the first place, since firstly believes are spiritual and therefore substance does not apply, and secondly logical reasoning is simply another system of thinking compared to religious believes, and no one can really conclude convincingly which is the correct system of thinking. In fact logic and science both have their own set of loopholes and inconsistencies even in the logical sense, which makes them even less convincing than religions, since religions are absolutely flawless if we have faith in religions, while the believe in logic can conflict with itself in certain circumstances. (If I am bored enough maybe I’ll blog about that in the future) Hence as much as the atheists would like to call religious believes to be blind faiths, their own system of thinking is actually not much better.

Rejected instrumentality at 9:56 PM