[SIZE="4"]This is a three part "God" series (i.e., posted in three different threads here in the Religion Sub-Forum).
For "God (Part 1): Anti-God Reasoning Blunders," in this thread I will point out what I see as seven major reasoning flaws atheists and agnostics often make in reasoning against the possibility of God. My objective in Part 1 is to identify deficient conclusions and premises, and set up concepts for Part 2 & 3 of the series. (Just so it is clear, I am
not religious, I am not going to argue that there is a God, and by the term "God" I don't necessarily mean anything described by religions.)
The next thread in the series is where I suggest there is a very long history of individuals pursuing another way to know God (whatever that is) in "God (Part 2): God Epistemology," found here:
http://www.philosophyforum.com/forum/philosophy-forums/branches-philosophy/philosophy-religion/3632-god-part-2-god-epistemology.html
Finally the last segment in the series, "God (Part 3): God As Self-evolution of Consciousness," I suggest the people who practice and work to learn the so-called "God epistemology" are really developing a relatively little-known consciousness potential, and so it is time to disassociate that specific effort from the practices of religion, found here:
http://www.philosophyforum.com/forum/philosophy-forums/branches-philosophy/philosophy-religion/3633-god-part-3-self-evolution-consciousness.html
So here we go, starting with . . .
ANTI-GOD REASONING BLUNDERS
Reasoning Blunder #1: Religious Concepts, Beliefs, and Practices are synonymous with the existence of God.
Religion and God are two completely different subjects; God's existence is not disproved if the religious are deluded, if the religious harbor ridiculous beliefs, if religious practice nonsense, or if the religious fail to prove God exists. This fallacy is commonly seen in the atheistic improbability arguments against religious concepts like supernaturalism, OT portrayals of God, the omniscience-omnipotent character of God, the trinity, and other such traits that aren't necessary to a plausible creator-consciousness model, but which atheists treat as defining the entire issue.
The possibility the universe, as a whole, is conscious somehow (and that some have managed to detect it and called that consciousness "God") is not decided by what the religious are, believe or do.
Reasoning Blunder #2: Religion causes people to do bad/stupid things.
Unreserved religion-hater Richard Dawkins has said, "The achievements of religion in past history --- bloody crusades, torturing inquisitions, mass-murdering conquistadors, culture-destroying missionaries, legally enforced resistance to each new piece of scientific truth . . . [has] all been in aid of . . . absolutely nothing at all."
Mr. Dawkins' mistake is one many atheists/agnostics make, the fallacy of equating correlation with causation. If an earthquake occurs while I'm sleeping, should I conclude sleeping caused the earthquake? Many find religion insufferable, but if humanity weren't religious would we be any less violent or selfish, or is it that humans are already like that and it shows up in religion just like it shows up in politics and business and marriage and everything else we do?
Bloody crusades, torture, mass murder and culture destroying are not proven caused by religion simply because some people do them in the name of religion. Human beings have been doing such things since our beginnings in the "name of" glory, political ideology, moral grounds, revenge, racial superiority, and, yes Mr. Dawkins, even science.
The Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele collected about 1,500 sets of twins for scientific research where one twin served as a control while the other endured some horrible experiment, and that was followed up by lethal injections of chloroform into their hearts to ready them for post-mortem dissection. Atheists Stalin and Mao killed or caused the deaths of millions. Were science and atheism the evils in those instances?
Reasoning Blunder #3: God can be logically confirmed or refuted.
To try to prove or disprove God through reason alone is the height of folly, yet every discussion forum I've visited still has people beating their heads against the wall arguing one side of the debate or the other.
Why is it futile? Because the standard of proof today is experience, and therefore no rational argument alone proves anything unobserved. That kind of rationalism, thankfully, is dead (it's just that some diehard philosophers still refuse to accept it). And of course, it is utterly hopeless endeavoring to
disprove God since we can't possibly look everywhere to check if he/she/it is tucked away somewhere that's hard to get at.
Reasoning Blunder #4: Entangling the mind in a false dilemma over being unable to "believe" in God.
Isn't belief without relevant supporting experience a delusion? So if one hasn't experienced God, why should the inexperienced feel obliged to decide the issue? The "false dilemma," then, is to feel compelled to decide there is not a God because one hasn't enough experience to believe there is one. Personally, I think refusing to believe fully or have strong opinions about what one hasn't experienced is a sign of intelligence.
Reasoning Blunder #5: Egocentric opinions.
While it may be a sign of intelligence to resist believing what one hasn't personally experienced, it is incorrect to conclude that what one hasn't experienced does not exist or is not true. What if, in the God's existence question, one lacks the specific experiential skills necessary to experience God? It is always a mistake to use one's own abilities as the standard for judging what is possible (or impossible) for the rest of humanity; objective truths of reality do not revolve around what one individual knows, believes, values, or is capable of.
Reasoning Blunder #6: Ethnocentric learning filters.
The priorities of the culture we are born into begin at birth relentlessly shaping our personal priorities, views, and what we wish for; that in turn determines what we learn in order to achieve our priorities, sustain our cherished views, and attain what we wish for.
In Western culture we are exposed very early to at least two major influences that are now intertwined. The first is a set of mental skills, skills if learned will create a logical mind oriented toward understanding the physical world. The heritage that gave us this learning priority can be traced back to the Greeks, and now seems to have culminated in scientific expertise. One might argue that our second huge cultural influence, free market capitalism, was a good fit to a democracy, also Greek-inspired.
The basic techniques of science and capitalism are applied in most professional walks of life. What are those techniques? Use your senses to observe how reality works, and use your intellect to figure out ways to manipulate reality so that it has market value (I realize there is "pure" science too).
Because success in life and social acceptance are so tied to these priorities, we assume the priorities of our lifelong environment:
to prepare for successfully participating in our culture entails accepting the epistemology required to "know" how to participate.
The end result is that Western culture produces a strong predilection for understanding the physical world; and because the type of knowing needed for that relies on sense experience and the intellect, we tend on the one hand to approach all subjects determined to "know" them with senses and intellect, and on the other to "filter" out any claims to knowing that are not verifiable by the senses and intellect. This in turn often leads to the last blunder . . .
Reasoning Blunder #7: Replacing blind faith in religion with blind faith in physicalism.
As Michael Shermer wrote in his column
Skeptic for
Scientific American magazine some years back, "being the Age of Science, it is scientism's shamans who command our veneration." The inside track to universal ontology offers even more status to a group who is already powerful because scientific discoveries are applied to technology, and technology is now counted on for everything from healthcare, transportation, household comfort, entertainment, business and construction to ecology, national defense, education, computer science and more.
It is a physicalistic god we are encouraged to believe in by accomplished mechanic priests who, after having been born into the deeply-organized situation of our universe, pronounce their god responsible for its creativity. Yet observation fails to support the theory of mechanistic creativity, which instead at every turn is witnessed as dry, ordinary, and repetitive. Likewise, science thinking hasn't shown itself to be wisdom, it has only demonstrated it is advantageous to physical understanding and mechanical know-how. That's it, nothing more (or less, of course-there is no question about the impressive physical accomplishments of science).
So those scientism devotees using society's openness to, interest in, and dependence on science as a bully pulpit to push their belief in a mechanistic god are hawking blind faith. Their faith in a physical creator cannot yet stem from actual experience, but it may be born from religious distaste, an eagerness to claim understanding of the foundation of existence, and a desire for the prescriptive rights that come with that understanding.
What does all that have to do with God? Well, what if senses and intellect so useful to science and everyday survival aren't part of the epistemology that produces God knowledge? Thus we've arrived at Part 2 of this series, to be continued as "God (Part 2): God Epistemology" here:
http://www.philosophyforum.com/forum/philosophy-forums/branches-philosophy/philosophy-religion/3632-god-part-2-god-epistemology.html[/SIZE]