Atheism-EN

An argument often used by religious apologists when confronted with the need to present evidence or at least evidence of the existence of the deity they believe in, and otherwise can not quote any, is the following: "the proof is only this: the universe exists , and we exist in it. So how is there something rather than nothing? God! "

I hope this post demonstrate why this argument is fallacious and simply invalid.

1. It is an argument from ignorance, unfortunately a very common logical fallacy. Saying "I do not know / know explain, so was God" (or any other supernatural explanation) is, sorry to say, a silly argument, thoughtless and childish. It can be difficult for those who have problems in admitting that does not have all the answers or to live in a world where there is no simple answers to everything, but if we do not know something, the only correct and honest thing to say is "I do not know / know ". Nothing more. Otherwise we are no different from cavemen who constantly invent supernatural explanations for phenomena (eg storm is a sign that "the gods / spirits are angry" (and the best is to sacrifice someone to appease)) today fully explained as natural. Another name for this specific case the argument from ignorance is "god of the gaps" (the god of the holes), ie: "put up" (or hides) God has "holes" of existing knowledge with the problem ... that these "holes" are constantly decreasing as the science and human knowledge progresses, and reaches to a point where it practically nothing remains for "God" to do.
2. Saying "nothing can exist without a cause, then the universe must have one, it was God" has the small problem that is often obvious even to children in the catechism or other religious classes (and makes them inconvenient to ask questions): then what is the cause of God? Who created God? To argue, without any justification for this, that God is, who knows as an exception to its own rule (that everything must have a cause) is obviously intellectually dishonest, who is the apologist to "decide" that the universe requires a cause, but God has not?
3. Finally, even if the above issues do not exist, there is still a problem: which god? Why "must have been something supernatural in origin of the universe" (wrong, as I mentioned, due to the points above) is to involve "the most popular god in my geographical area of the planet" or "the god in whose belief I was educated "? Why can not there be a completely different god, he is of another religion today (more or less popular), be it a religion of the past, be it something never conceived in the history of mankind?
   Why a god, and not several? Why god (s) and not some other type of supernatural creature? Why necessarily supernatural, and not some kind of technology that goes beyond time and space such as we understand them? And why is that such a being (or beings) would require our worship, or care about our behavior, our food or our sexuality?
   There is no logical path between "must have been a supernatural cause for the existence of the universe" and "God is so and so and so and so wants us." In other words, "there must be a supernatural origin to the universe" does not imply in any way "the Christian god exists" (or whatever). Do from the first implication and somehow reach the second does not, for no logical reason, but only cultural. And you should seriously think a bit about the fact that their belief is not more than an accident of geography ...

Now you know how to respond to someone tell you, naively, "Surely God is real, otherwise how does this all there is?" As if it were an argument against which there is no answer ...

(Note: comments like "But that is your blog, you can not talk about the issues you want it," or like "you are obviously wrong, but I'm not going to say," will be deleted. The comments are there to answer the post ... or, of course, are free to the / ignore me. )

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Possibly related posts:

1. FAQ: "The atheism / materialism does not explain the love / friendship / good and evil / poetry / beauty / irrational numbers in mathematics / <another abstracto> example of human concept, then they are wrong / God exists!"
2. FAQ: "I had an experience that proves to me that God exists."
3. Pope: Condoms * * worsen the problem of AIDS
4. FAQ: "How can you be an atheist? You can not prove that God does not exist! "
5. Ireland, the Catholic Church ... "ah, then, but atheism is that it is the real problem"

Labels: argument from ignorance , god of the gaps , because the first

Article of Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 22:40 and is filed under Logic , Religion . You can follow any responses to this entry through the feed RSS 2.0 . You can comment on or create a trackback to here on your site.