Will Wilkinson - Latest Comments in Easter Thoughts of Culture War

Re: Easter Thoughts of Culture War

Paul_G_Brown — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:48:48 -0000

I make the claim ("There is no god.") with the same degree of certainty that I make a number of negative claims, such as "There is no Santa Claus.", and "There are no unicorns.", and "There is no juju-zombie lurking beneath the lilly-pads."

I make the claim with considerably more certainty than I make claims like "Aliens are not amongst us." and "9/11 was not an inside job."

Perhaps the better way to characterize the difference is to say that athiests have a model of the world utterly lacking in such supernaturalism. It isn't simply that we 'do not believe'. Rather, I think athiests would claim to have a reasonably coherent mental model for how the world works, and a set of tools and processes for learning more about it.

We're sorry, but your 'god talk' is superflous to that model. Except as childish conversations along the lines of Santa Claus, unicorns, and juju-zombies. Rather than say 'do you believe?, it might be more helpful to ask 'do you accept as reasonable?'.

Re: Easter Thoughts of Culture War

uknowbetter — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:45:39 -0000

I've known at least a few who claim that. Even Will claimed something like 99.98% certainty.

It's generally an article of faith for atheists just like it's an article of faith for theists. Neither side has proof.

The argument that the word 'agnostic' is meaningless is ridiculous. People use it all the time and not just to be polite. They use it to describes themselves as someone who doesn't know, doesn't have faith in either atheism or theism, etc.

Re: Easter Thoughts of Culture War

Jim Lippard — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 19:22:28 -0000

"I believe god does not exist" doesn't entail "I believe with 100% certainty that god does not exist."

I don't think I've ever met an atheist who claims the latter, and I've known a lot of atheists.

Re: Easter Thoughts of Culture War

Josh — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:16:07 -0000

Absense of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Re: Easter Thoughts of Culture War

uknowbetter — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 13:37:13 -0000

Many atheists that I know, have read, or otherwise make this claim.

Those who say I really don't know shouldn't label themselves atheists. They should label themselves agnostics. Because there are those who do claim certainty or near certainty and they identify themselves as atheists. When I hear 'atheist' (and this is from a wide variety of experience), I take that to mean 'I believe god does not exist'.

Re: Easter Thoughts of Culture War

Julian Sanchez — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:41:37 -0000

Have you done a survey? Folks love to claim that atheism somehow entails some kind of apodictic certainty, whereas the attitude of most nonbelievers I know (which is most people I know) seems a lot closer to: "There's no good reason to think this is true, and it seems pretty improbable."

Which is to say, I agree that in practice there's no significant difference between atheists and agnostics. The latter are functional atheists who are trying to sound polite.

Re: Easter Thoughts of Culture War

Anon — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:09:45 -0000

Heather Mac Donald did a blogginghead.tv with Ross Douthat recently that focused a good deal on the problem of evil (especially natural evil). Perhaps you could use your sway with Bob Wright to arrange another such bloggingheads encounter involving you and a theist?

Re: Easter Thoughts of Culture War

uknowbetter — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:44:15 -0000

Not to mention all the leftists who have an irrational belief in government.

Re: Easter Thoughts of Culture War

uknowbetter — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:34:14 -0000

"No one was ever converted to faith through reason..."

I don't know about that. There are all sorts of reasonable arguments. Pascal's wager, humans needing a god, etc.

Re: Easter Thoughts of Culture War

uknowbetter — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:30:53 -0000

Will, you definitely come across as quite rude in posts like this. I thought TheOctagon was quite right in calling you out on it.

Re: Easter Thoughts of Culture War

uknowbetter — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:18:35 -0000

It's not trivial. Generally, atheists claim 100% certainty (or close to it) that god does not exist.

Agnostics say they don't know, it's not possible to know, or they don't know with enough certainty.

Claiming 100% certainty is a bit ridiculous. Just look at quantum mechanics...those physicists who claimed 100% certainty about their scientific world-view probably felt a bit silly once quantum mechanics started getting fleshed out.

Re: Easter Thoughts of Culture War

uknowbetter — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:13:27 -0000

"None of these arguments are any good, of course, as there is no God, Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, and so on."

LOL! Will, I didn't realize you were so ignorant. To claim 100% certainty on these points belies your ignorance.

Can you prove there isn't a god? Until then, maybe you might get more respect for your beliefs (that there is no god) if you show some for the beliefs of others (that there is a god).

Re: Easter Thoughts of Culture War

Mr. Econotarian — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:36:59 -0000

The important thing is that God does exist - inside people's heads. It is a widespread enough behavior to believe that it may be an evolved trait.

Twin studies should that religiousness is partially genetic:

http://www.eurekalert.org/p...

Re: Easter Thoughts of Culture War

DMonteith — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:47:47 -0000

You should read

Re: Easter Thoughts of Culture War

Will Wilkinson — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:21:19 -0000

Another way you could say it is that I imply that falsehood has corrosive cultural consequences. But I agree that this oversells it, and that neutered and civilized religions are probably good enough.

Re: Easter Thoughts of Culture War

Aaron — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:56:23 -0000

Your post equivocates between arguing for atheism out of concern for truth and arguing for atheism for purpose of scoring propaganda victories in the culture war. The former motive is likely to appeal to philosophy professors, but precisely for that reason they are probably less interested in writing polemics and more interested in debating Plantinga and his ilk.

Those interested primarily in fighting culture wars may find that advocating a watered-down Christianity is more effective than marginalizing themselves with a frontal assault on theism.

Re: Easter Thoughts of Culture War

JB — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:33:04 -0000

Using the Bible as evidence of the Christian God is as reasonable as using the Iliad as evidence of Zeus, Ares, and Athena.

Re: Easter Thoughts of Culture War

SRdV — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:41:11 -0000

Actually miracles didn't end 2000 years ago. The Vatican continues to certify events as miracles. A biography of a Russian priest that was sent to the Gulag, which I saw in my father's house, also mentioned miracles happening to the priest. I've even seen descriptions of angels appearing and doing things in Reader's Digest.

Maybe all of these events have naturalistic explanations, but they are the same sort of events that were called miracles 2000 years ago.

Re: Easter Thoughts of Culture War

Jack — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 20:09:47 -0000

GBM did a decent job. Sorry for double teaming you like this.

2/3. I'm not in any way suggesting throwing the gospels out as evidence. When I ask for a non-biblical source I do so because facts are best proved by giving multiple sources. Claiming that the biblical account was wrong does not commit me to any kind of conspiracy theory since the gospels, as GBM mentioned, WERE NOT eyewitness accounts. They were written 40-80 years after Jesus had died. The gospels did not begin early Christianity they likely sprung from the oral tradition of the early Christians- at least according to the consensus view among mainstream historians. Further, given that it was written partisans would it be at all surprising to you if they exaggerated some events to make their savior look better?

And the thing is, I don't think you disagree with this. There are thousands and thousands of religious texts and there is no way you take them at face value. If you did you'd be a Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim and Pagan in addition to being a Christian. You need to provide a standard that will lead me to accept the gospel claim of resurrection but doesn't at the same time require us to accept the evidence for other miracles. You wanted to know what I think would constitute "very reliable evidence" for the resurrection. Frankly, I don't think Jesus's disciples even if they saw and talked to someone who said he was Jesus had very reliable evidence that their leader had really rose from the dead. Its not surprising that they believed he had since these were superstitious times. But if some friend of mine died and then someone appeared to me looking just like my friend and claiming to be him I'd ask him a lot of questions to ensure he knew things no one else could know. And then my conclusion would be that he had never really died- not that he had been resurrected. That might change if I saw him floating up into the sky... but the point is even if the disciples really saw everything they claimed to have seen they still barely have enough evidence to justify a belief in the resurrection. Mass hallucination is actually way more likely in retrospect given that such events don't violate known laws of nature.

As it stands I imagine some disciples really did think they saw Jesus. Their beloved leader had just been murdered and claiming to have seen him would have brought any disciple extra respect in the movement. Over time I think those stories were exaggerated and merged until we were left with the resurrection myth which was then written down.

I guess to answer the question very reliable evidence of Jesus's resurrection would be the same kind of evidence it would take to convince you that someone rose from the dead today. And frankly that kind of reliability didn't exist back then. So its probably true that even if the resurrection did occur we still wouldn't have enough reasons to believe it really happened (though certainly one can imagine MORE evidence then exists now). But then this is true with just about every supernatural myth of the ancient world.

3b. Sure, if I believe that someone rose from the dead it makes sense to consider his claims a lot more carefully. It might even shift the probability toward God existing. But a guy dying and coming alive again does not make it the case that that guy is also a omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent creator who answers prayers and sentences people to eternal punishment for finite crimes and awards people eternal happiness so long as they believe he's the guy responsible for it. (Apologies if I included something you don't believe, I'm merely pointing out that theres a whole lot more to the God thing that coming back from the dead).

I wonder, without considering the evidence you think you have for his existence, what probability would you assign God's existence independent of anything else. What is the probability that a being so incredibly complex comes to exist? My answer is somewhere on an asymptote approaching zero. I mean its really a staggeringly unlikely event even if it really did happen- far more unlikely than a 747 being put together by a tornado for example. Given an initial probability anywhere in this range however, it seems strange that a guy claiming to be God dying and coming back to life is sufficient evidence to reverse the probability.

Re: Easter Thoughts of Culture War

Captain Awesome — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:11:55 -0000

I'm not sure that you aren't being a bit too restrictive in how you define God if you're coming up with such a low p-value. I think people often fail to notice how much broader the concept can be because those making the God arguments the loudest are the adherents of revealed religions. I agree the the p-value of all the revealed religions is really, really, low, but I wouldn't say that about something as broad as "God exists." For instance, Nick Bostrom's arguments to the effect that we are sims seems to me to be effectively an argument for a kind of deism.

Re: Easter Thoughts of Culture War

H. — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:51:10 -0000

"There is no God, when you die you just rot in the ground lol."

We can make it sound more positive than that. For example, we can build a beautiful story from the big bang through evolution to us and note how incredibly lucky we are to exist, and why we must make the most of our lives because this is all we have, etc, etc.

Re: Easter Thoughts of Culture War

JB — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:14:14 -0000

Even if he does need to explain this, there's still a difference between this view and theistic ones. Namely, there is no undefeated evidence of theism, but there's lots of evidence that the universe was once condensed into an infinitely hot and dense point.

Note, also, that you should not assume that this point "came into existence". Logically speaking, there's no grounds for assuming that if something exists, it came into existence, i.e., that there must have been a time in which it didn't exist prior to when it did.

Re: Easter Thoughts of Culture War

GBM — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 13:32:47 -0000

and saying 'god did it' requires more when you actually cash out all the things that are going on. You need plausible explanations for non-physical causation, non-physical minds, causation without time, and change without time (to name a few off the top of my head) in order to even tell a story about what happened 'before' the universe was created. Then, even if you are successful at that, you still haven't gotten within light years of theism, let alone Christianity, since the first cause argument tells us nothing about the identity of this thing, how powerful it was, how complex it was, whether it still exists, whether it is capable of 'knowing,' 'whether it knows about us, or whether it would care if it did, or even if this is a singular entity or a multiplicity entities.

Re: Easter Thoughts of Culture War

Kevin — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:51:44 -0000

You know, I really don't think this culture war stuff is important. We live in a pluralistic country, so why are other peoples beliefs relevant to me? If they are trying to coerce me, that is one thing. But its easier to win the warm and fuzzy argument for tolerance than it is the mean sounding "There is no God, when you die you just rot in the ground lol." argument.

Re: Easter Thoughts of Culture War

Kevin — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:39:47 -0000

Excellent work. 10/10