Hypothetical: If we assume God does not exist, is theism unreasonable?

[Walter]

@Aluneth

3. Where do philosophical arguments fit?

Also, you described a two‑step move: science, then emotional leap. The kind of believer I had in mind wasn’t really someone who just feels strongly after looking at science. It was someone who also digs into philosophical arguments, like why there’s something rather than nothing, or fine‑tuning, and tries to weigh them. I’m not sure where that fits in your picture. Would you file that under emotion too? I struggle myself to tell where reasoning stops and emotional rationalization begins, so I’m curious if you’ve got a clear way to separate them. Right now it feels like there’s a big chunk of thinking that just disappears in your description.

I can demonstrate my thinking with a worked example, picking something you mentioned, Aluneth.

Take the Fine Tuned Universe argument for the existence of God. This argument is used, not just by Christians, but also by Muslims, Jews and people of other faiths too. If it only pointed to the existence of Jesus, then none of these followers of other faiths could use the argument. But they do. And with equal validity to the Christian apologists who use it.

The reason why not just Christians can use this argument is that it doesn’t specifically identify who the Fine Tuner is. It only supports the possibility that a Fine Tuner exists. What happens when people read this argument is exactly what I described earlier. People insert the God of their choice into the role of Fine Tuner.

But in doing this they have gone beyond what the scientific evidence can tell them. The evidence itself cannot tell them the identity of the Fine Tuner. So they leave the evidence behind and identify the Fine Tuner themselves, through an act of faith.

But faith has no place and no role in science, as I’ve already explained elsewhere in this thread.

So, now we must ask ourselves if this act of faith is rational. Well, on this occasion, it can’t be. Because faith is going where there is no evidence. Drawing a conclusion based upon no evidence. Deciding that the Fine Tuner is Jesus, based upon no evidence. These are not rational decisions based upon rational thought processes. Declaring that something is so on the basis of nothing is not rational.

But this is the kind of behaviour we would expect from our emotions. They make us do irrational things, think irrational thoughts and feel irrational feelings.

Does this better explain the line of demarcation between the rational and the irrational?

Thanks,

Walter.

[Kevin_Levites]

@Aluneth

Now, if someone believes something that turns out to be false, does that automatically make them irrational?

I don’t believe so.

As an example, consider the obstetrician Ignaz Semmelweis, who died at the age of 47 in 1865.

Semmelweis figured out that hand washing prevents disease long before Pastuer formulated his germ theory of disease.

Semmelweis seems to have believed that leftover dead tissue from cadavers caused disease when “cadaverous particles” entered the vascular system, and the resulting sepsis was something like an allergic reaction to the microscopic pieces of cadaver circulating through the bloodstream after being introduced by the doctor’s hands (while helping a woman give birth after said doctor just completed an autopsy).

He reasoned that if these cadaverous particles were “destroyed chemically,” then there would be no sepsis.

He instituted rules where all doctors had to wash their hands in a strong solution of “chlorinated lime” (which seems to have been a dilute bleach solution) before working on a pregnant woman.

This process worked very well at preventing sepsis, yet Semmelweis was wrong. He wasn’t destroying leftover particles of cadaver . . . he was killing germs.

Was he irrational? I don’t think so. He was wrong about the details, but his conclusions made sense at the time, and he demonstrates that someone can do the right thing for the wrong reasons.

Unfortunately, he met a lot of resistance to his ideas. His ideas about cadaverous particles didn’t make sense to a lot of people, because (as one doctor pointed out) a man can eat a huge steak or potroast for dinner, and such a steak can be thought of as a large cadaverous particle, and surely eating a huge steak would be much, much more dangerous than merely being touched by hands that have also touched a cadaver.

So, his ideas about hand washing weren’t accepted until Louis Pasteur’s germ theory of disease put Semmelweis’s findings in their proper context, and this resistance to Semmelweis’s ideas cost the lives of uncounted hundreds of thousands of new mothers and their babies. (please see post script below)

Sometimes, we know something is correct without knowing why it is correct, and I don’t think that this lack of knowledge should prevent us from utilizing something that is useful and/or life-saving.

P.S. We can’t lay all of the blame for the resistance to hand washing on Semmelweis’s contemporaries. Semmelweis acted like an obsessive crazy person (and was–quite possibly–a crazy person from a long-term infection with syphillis), and his contemporaries often treated him like a crackpot and/or a crazy person because of how he acted.

[Walter]

I wasn’t able to answer your fourth query Aluneth because no member may make more than three consecutive posts. This was out of my hands. But now that Kevin has posted, I can do so.

4. The galaxy problem

And one last thing. You said before that speculating about galaxies beyond what we can observe can still be rational, because it’s based on a kind of extrapolation. I’m just wondering why a philosophical guess about a cause of the universe wouldn’t get the same pass, if it’s built on something like “what best explains this?” Both go past what we can directly test. What’s the actual difference for you? I couldn’t quite pick it out from what you wrote. Maybe I’m missing something obvious, but it seems like if one kind of untestable inference is okay, the other shouldn’t be ruled out automatically just because it’s about God.
[/quote]

Well, what would this philosophical guess be based upon?

The scientific evidence I would imagine. And since everything science can tell us about the earliest epochs of our universe’s evolution is based upon extrapolation and not observation, informed speculation (inference) and guesswork is all we’ve got. The problem lies with the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.

Cosmic microwave background - Wikipedia

The CMB is the key experimental evidence of the for the origin of the universe. In the Big Bang , during the earliest periods, the universe was filled with an opaque fog of dense, hot plasma of sub-atomic particles.

This opacity blocks all light and all electromagnetic radiation from the earliest epochs, preventing us from observing anything earlier than 380,000 years after the theorized Big Bang event.

So, the question of the origin of our universe can be guessed or speculated about. But until better data comes in, that’s all we can do.

Thanks,

Walter.

[Sheldon]

@Aluneth

the claim that subjective experience itself completely vanishes at that point isn’t itself an observation. It’s an inference.

No I don’t think it’s an inference that it disappears, that is what is objectively observed,

@Aluneth

It relies on the assumption that consciousness is nothing over and above brain function,

Again that’s not the case, we observe consciousness, when there is a functioning human brain, every single time that brain dies and ceases to function, then that consciousness is no longer observed as it was when we had a functioning brain. No assumption is being made by me here, nor is any required for that assertion.

@Aluneth

not a direct empirical reading.

It is precisely that, it is observed when the brain is functioning, when the brain stops functioning we can no longer observe that consciousness.

@Aluneth

The same applies to the correlation between brain impairment and mental changes. Correlation tells us the brain and mind are intimately connected, but it doesn’t, on its own, tell us whether the brain generates consciousness or whether it mediates it in some way.

It is a statement of fact that when a functioning brain is damaged or impaired, then consciousness is seen to be impaired in direct relation to that damage. We never see human consciousness without a functioning human brain, and every single time the brain ceases t function, the consciousness ceases to be present in the way it had been.

These are not inferences, they are accurate and empirically testable assertions.

@Aluneth

A damaged radio distorts the sound, but that doesn’t demonstrate the radio creates the music.

A false equivalence since music can be observed t exist and be created without a functioning radio, we never observe human consciousness without a functioning human brain.

@Aluneth

we might expect specific lesion studies to show, for example, that damage to the olfactory cortex reliably removes smell in dreams,

Might we? Now that seems like a subjective inference to me, rather than a testable empirical observation.

@Aluneth

You’ve emphasised objective, testable evidence as the standard. I respect that. But the claims we’ve just looked at, about consciousness and dreams, are themselves supported partly by philosophical inferences that can’t be settled purely by a lab experiment.

Not mine, all my assertions are empirical observations, that make no unevidenced assumptions.

@Aluneth

If that’s the case, then maybe the line between “rational” and “irrational” isn’t simply “has been proven in a lab.”

If any assertion I have made violates any principle of logic, I’d be happy t hear why? Like your radio / brain analogy above, which I think is bordering on a false equivalence.

@Aluneth

That brings us back to the original question. If we accept, for the sake of argument, that God does not exist, can a theist who carefully weighed philosophy, experience, and the arguments available still be considered rational in their belief?

I answered this in my first response, present your strongest argument, and best evidence, and then we can assess whether they are rational, the belief is a choice, but since irrational arguments represent poor or weak reasoning, why would we invest credulity in them, anymore than in a poor evidentiary standard.

[Sheldon]

@Get_off_my_lawn

I don’t know what you mean by “transcendent mind”. You need to define that.

And evidence the claims, else it’s simply begging the question, and again no argument can be asserted t be rational if it uses a known fallacy like begging the question.

@Aluneth

I’m not sure that’s as obvious as it sounds. It seems to assume all causation has to be physical,

Since your claim asserted and you are now implying, a deity can interact with the universe in a “non-physical” way, it is for you to evidence these assertions, no one needs to present contrary evidence.

@Aluneth

I gave a definition: a transcendent mind of immense power,

It is vague, see the objection offered by @Get_off_my_lawn above, and it is entirely unevidenced. Does that sound like strong argument / reasoning to you? It does not to me.

@Aluneth

what exactly makes a belief rational?

The supporting arguments and reasoning, if they are irrational, then why invest credulity.

@Old_man_shouts_at_cl

And yet this metaphysical brain has a sex?

A projected inference in the claim that contradicts aspects of the definition, nicely spotted.

[Sheldon]

@Aluneth

What counts as being rational?

Wikipedia explained this rather neatly:

A belief is considered rational - “when it is based on adequate evidence, logical reasoning, or reliable cognitive processes, making it properly aligned with the truth rather than wishful thinking or bias.”

So as I have said now several times, in order to assess the rationality of your belief, you need to present your strongest evidence and argument for that belief.

[UKAtheist]

@Aluneth

Strictly for the sake of argument, let’s assume God does not exist.

Assume? Doesn’t that imply that everyone else has to prove what is ultimately a claim without validatable evidence? Why not simply sit back accept that there is likely no god and that the onus is upon anyone who claims otherwise to prove it?

UK Atheist

[Walter]

Thank you for this, Sheldon.

It neatly fits into the discussion Aluneth and I were having about the rationality of the Fine Tuned Universe argument.

I’ve already mentioned that this argument cannot identify the Fine Tuner because there is no body of evidence that tells us its/his/her name. So a leap of faith claiming that the Fine Tuner is Jesus cannot meet the standard described in Wikipedia.

There is no adequate evidence for this. Therefore it cannot be properly aligned with the truth and must therefore be wishful thinking and bias. Here, the truth is only what the evidence can tell us. In the absence of evidence, the identity of the Fine Tuner remains unknown.

That is as far logical reasoning and a reliable cognitive process can go. Any further and we leave rationality, reason and logic behind - moving into irrationality, unreason and illogic.

Thank you,

Walter.

[Sheldon]

I’d also argue that there is insufficient evidence to assert that the universe is fine tuned. In science the term is simply a metaphor used to describe certain characteristics of the universe, and how were they to vary even to a vanishingly small amount, life as currently exists would not be possible.

[Walter]

Yes.

But to some, rather than this just being an interesting scientific curiosity, it is clear evidence that the universe has a Fine Tuner. However, as we have seen in this thread, science can say nothing about the identity of or even the existence of this Tuner.

That outcome is emotionally unsatisfying for some and so they beyond the science and the rationality underpinning the science, into what is not science and what is not rational. Their emotions causing them to need this and their emotions tricking them into thinking that their arguments are entirely scientific and entirely rational.

But they aren’t.

Thanks,

Walter.

[Sheldon]

@Walter

to some, rather than this just being an interesting scientific curiosity, it is clear evidence that the universe has a Fine Tuner.

Except any argument that something is impossible due to extreme odds, would represent an appeal to improbability fallacy.

@Walter

That outcome is emotionally unsatisfying for some and so they beyond the science and the rationality underpinning the science, into what is not science and what is not rational.

Indeed they do.

FYI there is a pretty good critical argument against The Fine Tuning argument, HERE.

[Walter]

Thanks for the link to that critique, Sheldon. Good stuff.

I’ve used the sample space rebuttal myself in discussions with Christian apologists years ago. As it happens there are quite a few papers submitted by theorists on the percentage of separate inflationary universes that fall within the ‘life friendly’ range of constants. But that fact cannot be used to populate the sample space with other data points because all of this work is…

A) entirely theoretical and not empirical

and…

B) untestable because these separate universes are forever beyond our power to observe them.

Leaving us stuck with a single data point (our observable universe) in the sample space. Which is insufficient to tell us anything much.

Thanks,

Walter.

[Sheldon]

@Walter

Leaving us stuck with a single data point (our observable universe) in the sample space. Which is insufficient to tell us anything much.

Unless like religious apologists, you are happy to use argument from improbablity and hasty generalisation fallacies. Which are in every fine tuning argument I have ever read.

FYI, I would not consider basing belief on such an argument rational.

[Walter]

I agree Sheldon.

But the heart wants what it wants.

I think that Aluneth might have recognised this in himself. Which is perhaps why his line of questioning concerned whether certain beliefs were rational and the processes by which they were derived were also rational. Of course, here I’m only speculating. I can’t see into his heart and know just what his feelings and motivations are.

For what its worth, I hope that he does return and re-engage with us. He seemed to be genuine and on the level and I appreciate that.

Also, I think we could have had a fruitful discussion on the relationship between evidence and faith. There are certain Bible passages which are very illuminating on this subject and I would have liked to have heard his thoughts about them.

Thanks,

Walter.

[Aluneth]

For your information, consciousness itself has not been empirically measured. In philosophy, this is called the problem of other minds. It’s not about theism versus atheism; even if I were an atheist, I would say the same: there is no “consciousness particle,” and we have no “consciousness meter.” The only thing we can empirically measure, at best, is whether the brain is still active. We cannot actively and empirically measure a “lack of subjective experience/qualia.” The best we can do is infer that a lack of brain activity likely means the person no longer has subjective experience, but that is an inference, not a direct measurement. We cannot observe consciousness: the only things we observe are low or no brain activity and a lack of physical movement. However, that does not necessarily mean the person has no subjective experience; that conclusion is also an inference.

[Aluneth]

I wanted to have a rough idea about where you guys stood about what you considered rational, and what standards of evidence you considered sufficient to not be irrational for holding a private belief about the existence of God. Still helpful to know, yep. I’m starting to have a clearer picture.

@Walter

Also, I think we could have had a fruitful discussion on the relationship between evidence and faith. There are certain Bible passages which are very illuminating on this subject and I would have liked to have heard his thoughts about them.

You can go ahead if you want.

[Bluedoc]

@Aluneth

standards of evidence you considered sufficient to not be irrational for holding a private belief about the existence of God

What evidence do you have that your god exists, or is even possible?

Personally, I think humans have a moral and intellectual responsibility to proportion their belief strictly to the supporting evidence to avoid falling into superstition, or flat out believing something to exist based upon no evidence.

[Aluneth]

What publicly available direct empirical evidence do I have that a mind created the universe? None.
What direct empirical evidence do atheists have for the multiverse, a belief many consider rational, and can we take a direct measurement of it?
What direct empirical evidence do atheists have that a non‑mind created the universe, and can we empirically verify the absence of a mind?

Do not claim that most atheists merely lack belief. Many make positive claims: they claim theists are irrational, argue for the low probability of God’s existence, and hold definite views about what constitutes rational belief.

[Old_man_shouts_at_cl]

You have a problem, like many before you, you enter the debate attempting a reasonable sounding argument.

Then like so many before you, and bad poker players, you have series of ‘tells’ that show the experienced poster and reader on this site that you are not wanting to elicit information, rather trying to find a way to introduce your version of a god or gods.

The ’ tells’ you wrote are amusingly obvious showing your ingrained personal upbringing and beliefs. They are ingrained and obvious in your English usage and red flags to a practiced debater.

It all ends the same way, the kind of post you just made here trying to label atheists with false beliefs, and then a flounce as you depart with your mission unrealised.

[Aluneth]

I didn’t want to “introduce or explain why belief in God is true or not true in reality.” I only wanted to talk about rationality, methodology, and the way we form beliefs regarding theism or atheism. Other posters in the thread wanted to know more about my beliefs, so I elaborated.