You’ve said a couple things in this thread, all of which I want to respond to. Rather than split my comment into individual replies, I’m going to do it all here.
I’m convinced that atheists (especially New Atheists) have a distorted, narrow idea about what the word God means. Problematically, many theists also have unsophisticated or inconsistent ideas about God. Often they confuse concrete analogies of God with actual descriptions of God. This is a serious theological error (idolatry).
This is more than just problematic. It means the theological establishment has completely failed to explain the most basic facts about “God”. Its as if, in learing propositional logic, undergrads came away believing Logic was a person they could talk to. Atheists get justifiably frustrated when theists come to us saying we don’t understand what God is-- we’re really not the audience this needs to be explained to first. In any case, it is hardly the fault of the New Atheists.
My belief in science (trustworthy observation, logic, epistemology, etc.) is equivalent with my belief in God, which is why I find belief in God to be necessary.
In what sense is your belief in science equivalent to your belief in God? Semantically equivalent? As in science=God. Or justifiably equivalent? As in: we have as many reasons to not trust the truth-giving power of science as we do the existence of God. Or something else?
Rather, I believe that science and reason could (in theory) explain everything that physically exists. This is an unjustified belief that can never be validated (or invalidated) by empirical observation.
Really? Is this just because of classic Cartesian skepticism… i.e. everything could be a demon tricking us? Because it seems likely that in the future there could be good evidence that a) there is nothing left in the universe to discover and b) we understand how everything works starting from the big bang. I would probably never trust such a finding beyond all doubt, but then there is no finding I would trust beyond all doubt. In any case, it seems a much weaker claim than “God exists” though I’m admittedly not clear what you mean by God yet.
Describing my own theistic beliefs only, I do believe that beliefs in whatever is necessary for things to make sense would be equivalent with beliefs about God. Surely, beliefs about God would include all the things required for things to make sense. (For example, if I believe that an external morality is required for things to ‘make sense’, then I would believe God asserts an external morality...possibly in a scientific way.) Also, beliefs about God should not include anything more than what is necessary. (If external morality is not necessary for things to make sense, then it is most reasonable to believe that God doesn’t assert one.) My main argument for this is that if something is not required to make sense, it’s not necessarily true, so how could we know it? So I recover the rationalist idea that you can’t just believe things because you want them to be true.
The reason why I write in the conditional tense is because I am not at all clear about what is necessary, and I don’t expect to be anytime soon. The reason I argue so persistently for pro-theism (even though when presented this way it seems so weak) is because I disagree with the New Atheist idea that science is enough (i.e., the set of things that are needed to make sense = Science). I tried it out and it was ridiculously weak – there were all sorts of beliefs that are intuitively obvious that I suddenly had no defense of. Even the concept of truth was a fluttery, uncertain thing. … It was the post debating mathematical truth that finally convinced me, the absurdity of not necessarily believing in the universality of mathematical logic. (The post didn’t get a lot of points, but I was disappointed by the rationalist response.)
I disagree with the New Atheist idea that science is enough (i.e., the set of things that are needed to make sense = Science). I tried it out and it was ridiculously weak – there were all sorts of beliefs that are intuitively obvious that I suddenly had no defense of. Even the concept of truth was a fluttery, uncertain thing.
So I haven’t myself decided where science ends and philosophy begins. But certainly there are some questions that can’t yet be answered by experiment and I think there are probably questions that cannot in principle be answered by experiment.
But there is space between experimental science and leaps of faith. If a proposition seems intuitively true that can be a reason for believing that proposition. Intuition (by which I mean this) ) isn’t a good reason for believing a proposition but often it is all we have. Reasons can come in other forms too. Parsimony, generality… there are all sorts of criteria by which some theories can be preferred to others. I wrote about this here and here. Anyway, there are definitely good reasons for preferring a theory that the world is comprehensible over a theory that it isn’t. For one we routinely come up with theories about the world that don’t get us killed when we act according to them. For another, we might find a theory that held that the world was incomprehensible to be self-contradictory (given that such a theory would be an attempt to explain the world).
I don’t think you can ever run a test that will prove you’ve made sense of the world. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t reasons for thinking you’re doing a good job. And having such reasons doesn’t mean you have to have faith or call anything God.
You’ve said a couple things in this thread, all of which I want to respond to. Rather than split my comment into individual replies, I’m going to do it all here.
This is more than just problematic. It means the theological establishment has completely failed to explain the most basic facts about “God”. Its as if, in learing propositional logic, undergrads came away believing Logic was a person they could talk to. Atheists get justifiably frustrated when theists come to us saying we don’t understand what God is-- we’re really not the audience this needs to be explained to first. In any case, it is hardly the fault of the New Atheists.
In what sense is your belief in science equivalent to your belief in God? Semantically equivalent? As in science=God. Or justifiably equivalent? As in: we have as many reasons to not trust the truth-giving power of science as we do the existence of God. Or something else?
Really? Is this just because of classic Cartesian skepticism… i.e. everything could be a demon tricking us? Because it seems likely that in the future there could be good evidence that a) there is nothing left in the universe to discover and b) we understand how everything works starting from the big bang. I would probably never trust such a finding beyond all doubt, but then there is no finding I would trust beyond all doubt. In any case, it seems a much weaker claim than “God exists” though I’m admittedly not clear what you mean by God yet.
Describing my own theistic beliefs only, I do believe that beliefs in whatever is necessary for things to make sense would be equivalent with beliefs about God. Surely, beliefs about God would include all the things required for things to make sense. (For example, if I believe that an external morality is required for things to ‘make sense’, then I would believe God asserts an external morality...possibly in a scientific way.) Also, beliefs about God should not include anything more than what is necessary. (If external morality is not necessary for things to make sense, then it is most reasonable to believe that God doesn’t assert one.) My main argument for this is that if something is not required to make sense, it’s not necessarily true, so how could we know it? So I recover the rationalist idea that you can’t just believe things because you want them to be true.
The reason why I write in the conditional tense is because I am not at all clear about what is necessary, and I don’t expect to be anytime soon. The reason I argue so persistently for pro-theism (even though when presented this way it seems so weak) is because I disagree with the New Atheist idea that science is enough (i.e., the set of things that are needed to make sense = Science). I tried it out and it was ridiculously weak – there were all sorts of beliefs that are intuitively obvious that I suddenly had no defense of. Even the concept of truth was a fluttery, uncertain thing. … It was the post debating mathematical truth that finally convinced me, the absurdity of not necessarily believing in the universality of mathematical logic. (The post didn’t get a lot of points, but I was disappointed by the rationalist response.)
So I haven’t myself decided where science ends and philosophy begins. But certainly there are some questions that can’t yet be answered by experiment and I think there are probably questions that cannot in principle be answered by experiment.
But there is space between experimental science and leaps of faith. If a proposition seems intuitively true that can be a reason for believing that proposition. Intuition (by which I mean this) ) isn’t a good reason for believing a proposition but often it is all we have. Reasons can come in other forms too. Parsimony, generality… there are all sorts of criteria by which some theories can be preferred to others. I wrote about this here and here. Anyway, there are definitely good reasons for preferring a theory that the world is comprehensible over a theory that it isn’t. For one we routinely come up with theories about the world that don’t get us killed when we act according to them. For another, we might find a theory that held that the world was incomprehensible to be self-contradictory (given that such a theory would be an attempt to explain the world).
I don’t think you can ever run a test that will prove you’ve made sense of the world. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t reasons for thinking you’re doing a good job. And having such reasons doesn’t mean you have to have faith or call anything God.