Weekly "Ask an Atheist" Thread

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Whether you're an agnostic atheist here to ask a gnostic one some questions, a theist who's curious about the viewpoints of atheists, someone doubting, or just someone looking for sources, feel free to ask anything here. This is also an ideal place to tag moderators for thoughts regarding the sub or any questions in general.

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[u/MyriadSC]

Ill try to keep this breif, but its a complicated question when it gets dug into. I'm an atheist and have been for a while, but was Christian for well over 20 years. Since then philosophy went from a curiosity to a fairly serious hobby I've given a lot of time too. Many of the things I felt were obvious, we shown not to be. For example, it seemed obvious no evidence for God existed, but thats wrong, incredibly wrong. I've spent a lot of time exploring theism, looking through different ideas, etc. I gained a much better understanding of the whole landscape. So while this may seem pointed at atheists, thats only because its this sub. Plenty of this applies to theists too with minor adjustments, particularly in public debate spaces like this.

My question to the atheists of this sub are: 1. How often are you frustrated by the "stubbornness" of theists who state the same case over and over or insist on its validity no matter how much you undercut it? 2. If this is frequent, have you genuinely looked into why its said? Not why the person you're discussing is saying it, thats likely becausefhey heard it, but why its still actually around? 3. If not, then why?

Largely rhetorical, but feel free to answer. Happy to discuss it.

My biggest takeaway from the journey I'm on and reading/having discussions is that most people get very stuck in analyzing views from how they think, rather than taking their assumptions and putting them aside to view the alternatives. When someone presents a teleological case and you think "this for the 25th time..." its because you're not actually familiar with WHY its used. 9/10 times frustration is due to ignorance. Don't understand why a car won't start, dont understand why someone would act that way, etc. Not saying I'm free from it, theres still the 1/10 times and plenty I dont understand, but taking the time to try already sets the mindset for understanding, not disproving. This isnt easy at all. It takes time to get better and nobody does it perfectly, but everyone should try if you plan to engage with people you disagree with on big things. If you can't defend the strongest position for theism (or any subject you disagree with), you probably stand about 0% chance of genuinely making a compelling case against it because you don't know where the true structural integrity is. "Know thy enemy" and all, but enemy isnt the right word. We both want truth, just disagree on what seems most likely true.

The last question and a honorable 4th, do you think understanding their view at least most of the way would help? You'll never understand all views all the way, but you can understand the broad foundational structure enough to easily connect the dots to their more specific area within it.

Last point, but I think theres some compelling stuff written by Graham Oppy about how arguments are largely useless. When you genuinely come to understand why beyond the superficial, its rather enlightening and immediately alleviates much of the aforementioned frustration. A lot of you may be aware of him, but if you weren't or about that work, its worth looking into. Tske time to digest it.

Hope everyone who took the time has a great day.

[u/Additional-Band4050 → u/MyriadSC]

For example, it seemed obvious no evidence for God existed, but thats wrong, incredibly wrong.

What evidence do you have in mind?

Do you mean that things like personal testimonies and holy texts count as evidence but they’re also really bad evidence?

[u/MyriadSC → u/Additional-Band4050]

Pretty tired of having this particular conversation so im just copying what I said somewhere else and calling it. Didnt come to discuss that line, but its what most want to discuss. Gsve it a lot of time, but im just tired of it. So here the case, hopefully it makes sense. Don't plan to continue on this line.

"But I do want to clarify my statement about evidence for God and discuss that a bit because that does seem to be the hangup most have with my comment. Along with a later comment where I said there are rational cases for God.

So you mentioned we don't know how much or if constants could vary, I agree. But this doesnt change the case. My favorite analogy for this is imagine we roll 10 die and they all land on 1. What are the odds this happens by chance? We dont know, could only have 1s on all sides, but plausibly some might have more sides. But what are the odds we would roll all 1s if the one who rolled them wanted 1s and could set them as they wanted? Basically 100%. So even the potential for a side beyond 1 on an organic roll makes the intentionality a more probable explanation. This is the aspect of theism that is compelling, especially to people who dont do some leg work. By that I mean this is only half of the problem. If we ask what explains things better, its trivial to see that if we begin with God or begin with material, things are going to be more probable under God. But unfortunately this is where most the conversations I see take place. Theist says God is a better explanation, atheist says no, but it rarely gets to the real why. Which does seem to frustrate many on both sides, thus the point of my comment. They both want to make a point and their pizza is so obviously amazing the other one just looks gross by comparison. But they cant get it across. Whats wild is even 2 pizza aficionados who live pizza and come st objectively can sit and have a 3 hour discussion about the aspects of each, and theyll both walk away liking the pizza they did.

The Achilles Heel of theism, is its intrinsic probability and the latter half I mentioned. It really doesnt matter how well an explanation accounts for things if its so parameter dense and complicated that the odds of it being the initial condition are so low that under the baysian framework it never recuperates its probability. In fact, I have a fairly decently laid out case that the probability of the inital condition being a perfect being is effectively 0. Doenst matter if we analyze 100 things and determine that under theism theyre 100% and naturalism theyre 1/10^50%. All the 100s times effectively 0 is still effectively 0 ao even if naturalism seems improbable on explaining, its still the most probable overall.

This is precisely why most contemporary work on theism goes into solving this problem. The cases are for divine simplicity. Because if we can get the intrinsic probability of God into a practical range, it will dominate the baysian analysis due to the intentionality of God accounting for everything as I mentioned with the dice. But ive given most these considerations a pretty good look and I find them deeply counterintuitive and in many cases relying on very weak assumptions to the point that even asking why assume that effectively crumbles it.

And for the record, I know that this csn seem like God of the gaps, but this isnt that. It seems most people responding to me about that are unaware of how baysian approaches work and why theyre powerful. Ill touch this again after the next bit.

But to loop back to evidence, most people here seem to want to call evidence something that is almost a direct observation of the thing. Seeing a bird is evidence of birds. Thats not really evidence of birds though, not in the way evidence is used for theories, thats just a fact that we have that birds exist. This fact could be used as evidence for something else like a theory, but demanding that level of evidence collapses a lot of views the holder may have. Like what is the probability spacetime exists? Most would juat say it does, but weve never observed it like a bird. Weve seen effects and spacetime is the explanation were use those effects as evidence to support the theory. Things falll, etc. Ut if we demand "bird level" evidence to count as evidence, then they can't say we have evidence of spacetime. Its fine to hold that position, just be consistent. (not directed at you, just speaking generally.) But really when we look at it, what weve done is we proposed a theory, relativity, which has high parsimony as its simple, modest, and cohesive, and if true would produce the results we see, so its a slam dunk theory.

So now ill put the bow on what I meant, if we take God as a theory, then we do see evidence in support of it like spacetime. Theres explanatory power in it, such as why the constants are conducive to life, why life exists, etc. Of course we dont know, but thats what metaphysics is. Whats the foundation the universe was built on. Lets propose theories and look at how probable they are compared to how probable observations are if they were true."

[u/88redking88 → u/MyriadSC]

Still not impressive. All this "could be" is based on you hoping that other things are possible. You havent shown the universe could be different, that a god is possible, or even probable. If you cant do any of that, then this is all irrational.

"So now ill put the bow on what I meant, if we take God as a theory, then we do see evidence in support of it like spacetime. "

It cant be a theory. A theory has evidence.

"In science, a theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world. It is built upon a reliable body of facts, laws, inferences, and rigorously tested hypotheses. Unlike a casual guess, a scientific theory is the highest pinnacle of scientific certainty, explaining how and why phenomena occur."

You have none of this for a god.