Debating Belief

I was talking to some friends the other day about my unbelief. I told them my deconversion story, and one of them mentioned that she'd rather believe in god and be wrong than to not believe and be wrong. This is a very old argument and is usually called “Pascal's Wager”. The idea being that you're better off believing because there's no downside, whereas atheists would go to hell if they were wrong.

There's an issue with this idea though. How do you know your god is the right one? A normal atheist retort to this is to ask something like, “what's the difference between me believing in Yahweh and believing in Zeus?” They'll usually respond by either defending Yahweh (or whatever God of choice) as the true god which is very hard to do without any proof, or they'll respond with a universalist / pantheist argument that all gods could be (or are) derivative of the same god or force.

I think this argument makes more sense than trying to prove your god is right using only your sacred documents, however there are some serious flaws. If they're fundamentalist and give this response they're definitely violating their dogma, however if they interpret their holy book more liberally it's more reasonable. This is slippery slope though. Once you claim the book can be interpreted differently over time you have to see how far this can actually go. To go from the idea that Jesus is the son of the one true god to Jesus is the son of one of the many derivatives of god is to move quite far from the original intent – not to mention arguments that the trinity actually makes Christianity polytheist.

Usually, as an atheist, you stop here and argue that since there's no proof for god and the books are highly flawed that god probably doesn't exist. However, for some reason I took the fallacious argument of “no evidence for absence” to the next level – insisting that if all gods lead to the same place, maybe there's a rationalist god, call Him “Flying Spaghetti Monster”, that actually doesn't want to be known, worshiped, etc. The only way to honor Him is to try to act as rationally as possible. There is no evidence for absence, right? I know that I always get a good feeling when acting rationally – I'm sure this must be His saucy Spirit guiding my way. If you look around, you can see the beauty of His fruits of rational living: curing the sick, uplifting the poor, etc. The holy sacraments of noodles and tomatoes are clearly good for you – look how healthy Italians are!

Of course, this is ridiculous, but in fact it's really the Christian argument without the history – and I should add without any contradictory history either. I really don't see the difference, but I'd love to hear why I'm wrong!

Comments

[jon]

Nick,

Clearly, I don't think you're wrong. But even an irrational god would not indicate that we should assess Pascal's Wager irrationally. Based on what we know of religion, it is just as reasonable (I would argue *more* reasonable) to assume that the True God is *none* of the revealed/recognized deities. Your "rationalist god" illustration is good because it puts atheists back in the realm of the Wager, flawed as it is.

[Nick Pinkston]

Thanks for the comment, Jon!

I guess I really don't know how an irrational god would want us to assess Pascal's Wager. Yea, it's true about an unrecognized god being as likely. Since all the holy books seem to be deeply flawed - if there be god he couldn't fit any one of those (often very contradictory) narratives very well. Therefore, god would have to be different in some way from the current idea of god in all religions. I guess it's not a far stretch to say that if a god exists, it might be in a completely different form than current conceptions - perhaps a rationalist form?

I'm also wondering about an alien-creationist view where ETs somehow seeded the Earth with life. They say sufficiently sophisticated technology is indistinguishable from the supernatural - perhaps aliens could "fake it"? Perhaps "god" is actually just the producer of a cosmic reality show called Earth? Or maybe god is a computer programmer running our simulation?

I don't think any of these is less probable than a traditional god, and if anything more possible because those things are both within the bounds of physics and reality.

[jon]

Right. "More reasonable" is not an intuitive phrase here; I have heard many theists mock Dawkins for suggesting that aliens seeded life on earth.

What I meant by bringing up an "irrational god" is that many Christians would openly admit that God's ways (or the proof of his existence) are irrational, "higher than our ways," or something like that. I.e., you have to have an experience and "just know," not assess the evidence with reason.

I agree that sufficiently sophisticated technology is indistinguishable from what we might recognize as a manifestation of the supernatural. Yet we can see obvious "flaws" in human and animal "design" -- the byproducts of natural selection and tag-along genetic traits. If we indulge in the thought experiment of aliens seeding life on earth in some primitive form, the result has been a bit of a mixed success, wouldn't you say?

[Nick Pinkston]

Oh okay - or maybe a "suprarational" god? Aliens seeding life is interesting, but I'm not sure that they need to be perfect. Throwing a bunch of spores might generate life.

The interesting part of the alien hypothesis is view it in light of the Miller experiment. They showed that amino acids self-assemble from the original materials and conditions of earth in only a day or so. This means that aliens probably weren't needed to seed life, and since we have no evidence for them it seems logical to reject the ET hypothesis.

[Frank]

Not being that familiar with the Miller experiment, other than what you have said, did the amino acids he formed then go on to form some sort of living organism? If so, what was that called so I can research it myself? If not, what is the next part of the puzzle?

[Neo]

You both are silly fools. You see, long ago, a guy who looked like George Carlin had sex with a black woman and they made the universe from math and logic, and emotions (sperm and eggs). They added in constructs to make people think that their lives meant something. Eventually, people came to realize the universe was made out of math and logic and George Carlin was pissed and tried to kill them all. But he didn't account for the black woman's love of her creation and she empowered a computer programmer to defeat him and his horde of assassins. Little did she know that George Carlin knew she would do that all along and he remade the world from the remnants of the computer programmer after he died.

Now that you know the truth, you can be free.

[Frank]

I would have believed you if you would have put "a guy who looked like George Carlin" in all of the spots instead of slipping back to George Carlin. Or, was it really George Carlin??? That might be the missing piece of the puzzle I was looking for!

Thanks!

[Nick Pinkston]

Hey Frank,

Links to some experiments are below. The basic gist is that, over many millennia, simple inorganic compounds form the organic precursors of life through self-assembly. The theory goes that the precursors kept randomly colliding and adding complexity until one of them could self-replicate. This has never been fully shown though. However, looking through the articles below you can see that there is some good evidence that this is how life was first created.

+Miller-Urey Experiment:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment

+Abiogenesis (the forming of life from inorganic compounds):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

[Frank]

Very interesting information. And, there is evidence there that supports amino acids can be formed in the manner of the experiment. At the same time, from the article that you presented, "There is no truly 'standard model' of the origin of life." So, science does not seem to have an agreement here.

Also in the article, "As of 2009, no one has yet synthesized a 'protocell' using basic components which would have the necessary properties of life (the so-called "bottom-up-approach"). Without such a proof-of-principle, explanations have tended to be short on specifics."

I would have to conclude that science is no where near an explanation for the origins of life. There are plenty of ideas and experiments. But this is science and I want the specifics. I am not saying science can not fill in the blanks on any of this. Today, the data is not there... there are too many holes...

[Nick Pinkston]

Yea, I don't think anyone says "science knows all", rationalism just says that you need evidence to point the way to the truth. These experiences lack plenty of support for a full an conclusive theory, but they do show us a very plausible explanation.

Not to put words in your mouth, but many Christians I debate with tend to treat science as religion does - an all or nothing proposition. In religion, the ideas are supposed to be divinely inspired and infallible, if something is proven wrong everything should be thrown out. This is interesting because religion has evolved so much of its dogma so that it can claim plausible credibility.

Science, however, admits that it's fallible and that it's only a useful model of nature's laws - not the real laws. This means that scientists want to keep changing / refining their model in light of new evidence. At any one time though, they try to piece together reality from all information. I think abiogenesis research has done a pretty good job of explaining the beginning of life and the universe - obvious it's not perfect though.