There is a popular view held by many atheists that in the absence of positive evidence for God’s existence, we ought to accept atheism as true by default. This view is called the presumption of atheism. I have written a full treatment against it on my website (“Not so Fast: There is no Presumption of Atheism“), but I thought it was fitting to share a great quote from philosopher William Lane Craig on the subject:
I hear all the time that atheism wins by default – in other words, if there aren’t any good arguments for God, then atheism automatically wins. So many of these fellows don’t offer any arguments for atheism; instead, they just try to shoot down the arguments for theism and say they win by default. In reality, however, the failure of arguments for God wouldn’t do anything to establish that God does not exist. The claim that there is no God is a positive claim to knowledge and therefore requires justification. The failure of arguments for God would leave us, at best, with agnosticism, not atheism.[1]
Nobody can say it so succinctly, and so powerfully as Craig!
[1]William Lane Craig, during an interview with Lee Strobel, “Bill Craig on the New Atheism,” available from http://leestrobel.com/newsletters/2009MARCH/thenewatheism.htm; Internet; accessed 18 March 2009.
Thinking to Believe 
March 29, 2009 at 5:13 pm
There are an infinite number of claims I cannot prove, but in the absence of evidence for any of them I am justified in doubting their veracity.
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March 29, 2009 at 9:19 pm
Samuel Skinner,
Your point of view is perfectly in line with the point of this post. One can/should be skeptical (agnostic) about something they have no reason to believe is true. But the absence of evidence in its favor is not itself evidence of its absence. To positively believe something does not exist, we need positive evidence against its existence.
When it comes to Christianity, there are plenty of evidences in its favor.
Jason
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March 30, 2009 at 9:09 am
Hi Jason,
It seems to me you’ve mischaracterized the atheist’s position. When atheists speak of atheism as “the default position,” they generally mean that people start out lacking a belief in god(s), and that theism must be taught to them. As far as I’m aware, it’s not meant to imply, contra Roberts, that if there are no good arguments for God’s existence, atheism wins “be default”.
If there’s one thing theists are good at, it’s constantly creating new arguments for God’s existence, typically because advances in our scientific knowledge make the previous ones untenable.
Atheists realize full well that there is a limitless supply of arguments for God’s existence, because there will always be gaps in our knowledge. Some of these arguments may even have a ring of plausibility. But when one observes the track record of theistic arguments over the centuries, one is struck by how poor the record is.
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March 30, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Robert, read Jason’s article on the “God of the Gaps”.
We do not need to separate God from science as if they are in opposition to each other. God is not supposed to be a tool that theists use to explain gaps in knowledge, rather, God is the Author of all that we discover through science. Science is not a good tool to use to prove the existence of God because God by definition is beyond the physical realm. You need to use tools like philosophy in conjunction with scripture to know what God is all about. Science deals with physical stuff, God is a Spirit (non-material)
I think many theists over the centuries may have been misled to take an anti-science position. I assure you that this is a wrong position to take. As a believer, I see no dichotomy between science and God. Science is a tool or means we use to explain and learn about God’s creation. The creation itself should speak to us and say an intelligent being (God) created it. I think if people would be intellectually honest, this would the “default” position they would take.
What has happened is that mankind has intentionally suppressed the truth about God and have chosen to believe a lie. The result is a dulled and misinformed conscience that leads to all kinds of errors in understanding the most basic principles of our existence. The first and foremost being that there is a GOD !
“The fool has said in his heart, there is no God” (Psalms 14)
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March 30, 2009 at 1:21 pm
“But the absence of evidence in its favor is not itself evidence of its absence. To positively believe something does not exist, we need positive evidence against its existence.” NO! To abandon the null hypothesis (i.e., that there are no gods) in favor of a positive effect (i.e., the existence of a god or gods) in the absence of evidence in support is utterly irrational. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim for a positive effect.
For example, let’s say we are testing the efficacy of drug ‘X’. The null hypothesis is that there is no effect. We have a control group that receives a placebo, and several groups each of which is given a certain dose of ‘X’. If no concentration of drug shows any sign of effect, do we abandon the null hypothesis in favor of an effect? I hardly think so. But by your logic we should not abandon the claim to a positive effect. Ridiculous. So’s Craig.
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March 30, 2009 at 2:41 pm
I believe you are confused about the actual issue on hand. This “presumption of atheism” is nothing more than an attack on atheism, it would be presumptuous if atheism was a belief system. Though seeing as atheists are defined through lack of belief, it acts as the null hypothesis. Scientifically speaking, you always start with the null hypothesis and try to gather evidence to support your main hypothesis.
Take a look on my post Atheism is the Default Position (Amazingly written before I even found this article).
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March 30, 2009 at 10:41 pm
Well spoke. Its amazing how Atheists go into a logical gymnastics trying to claim this mythical “default” position, when “default” is just code for, “I can’t and won’t articulate a coherent position; if I did, then I would be cirticized (to the same harsh degree that I criticize theists for giving theirs).”
In the abundance of philosophical views, there ARE fundamentally valid (and therefore respectable) Atheist perspectives; but the whole “default” thing is the meme of “new” Atheist bloggers methinks.
Formally, however, anyone with elementary knowledge of logic knows that B and ~B are logical statements, equally so. They both have truth functional statements. And in terms of ontology, these Atheists seem to have no idea the murky void they are stepping into by arguing that it is even possible to conceptualize a negation as a thing-itself. “~” alone is not a statement. Lastly, epistemologically, the mind only “knows” or experiences affirmative truths. In that regard, truly these “new” Atheists are but new magicians.
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March 31, 2009 at 6:46 am
Let’s say I claim that there’s a 20 foot tall elephant rampaging across your living room. You walk into the living room to check. You don’t see, smell, hear, or in any way detect the presence of an elephant.
If there had been an elephant in your living room, there would necessarily have been plenty of evidence. To observe that none of that evidence is present is not “an absence of evidence,” but in fact is evidence of absence.
There’s a difference between lacking any evidence, and having plenty of evidence but none of it supporting your claims.
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March 31, 2009 at 6:52 am
Let’s consider Craig’s argument, but replace God with something that none of us believe in: leprechauns.
I hear all the time that disbelief of leprechauns wins by default – in other words, if there aren’t any good arguments for believing in leprechauns, then disbelief automatically wins. So many of these fellows don’t offer any arguments for disbelief; instead, they just try to shoot down the arguments for leprechauns and say they win by default. In reality, however, the failure of arguments for leprechauns wouldn’t do anything to establish that leprechauns do not exist. The claim that there are no leprechauns is a positive claim to knowledge and therefore requires justification. The failure of arguments for leprechauns would leave us, at best, with agnosticism, not disbelief.
Do you believe that it’s just as rational to believe in leprechauns as to disbelieve? Do those denying the existence of leprechauns have the burden of proof?
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March 31, 2009 at 8:17 am
The Russell analogy is always funny, but even as the Atheist talking point straight off all the Atheist sites, it doesn’t say or accomplish anything. Foremost, it commits a classical empiricist error: you cannot derive a universal statement (~B) from case-by-case evidence. For one, most religious folks I know did not become religious because of some logical derivation or scientific proof; so it is a straw man. That’s what the concept of faith hinges on: what you can’t know. As for the burden of proof, is it on the guys who acknowledge their limitations through faith, or the guys who falsely derive a universal statement (~B) from empirical evidence? You can “logically” whittle down the existence of “God” all day–by defaulting–but all you succeed in doing is disproving the God of human representations. It’s a complete straw man.
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April 1, 2009 at 7:07 am
” As for the burden of proof, is it on the guys who acknowledge their limitations through faith, or the guys who falsely derive a universal statement (~B) from empirical evidence? ” You don’t get it. We do not claim ~B. We claim that there is no evidence to support B. Very different propositions. It is you which is making the absolute claim to B. We don’t need to disprove the existence of god to be atheists. All that is needed is a recognition of the complete paucity of evidence for god. That’s what Russell’s Teapot demonstrates.
“Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” ~ Mark Twain.
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April 1, 2009 at 8:30 am
I don’t think you guys understand. Regardless of the logical semantics at-hand, if you cede ~B, then you cede Atheism. That’s not any kind of stealth argument that you must therefore be faithful, or religious, or anything like that. (No, I am not religious, but by assuming so you are only proving your binary cultural logic.) Thankfully, the logic is so simple here there really isn’t any room for counterargument.
I’m actually curious how various philosophers circumvent making an absolute claim (~B), in order to go ahead and make one anyway (or, in the case of so many Atheists, to repeatedly make the claim as a rhetorical scare crow, but never to examine it comprehensively and philosophically. A common-sense realist position might reduce it to probabilities (99.99% argument), but even that has the same shortcomings.
What this requires, is that ultimately Atheism is merely its own position of belief. Not B, or, Not Atheist.
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April 2, 2009 at 7:35 am
Actually, most atheists I know of do reduce it to probabilities. To me, it’s highly improbable that the gods of the Abrahamic faiths exist; the evidence for them is exceedingly poor. The existence of the deist’s god is slightly less improbable, but even if there is such a being, we might as well live as atheists.
Jesse, what is your belief as to the existence of leprechauns?
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April 2, 2009 at 1:03 pm
But probabilities are not philosophical positions, nor are they really even reductive or just intuitive ones. The error is applying the logic of existence of things to something that–we would assume–applies to all things “immanently.”
That’s only like a pantheist counterpoint, but per your leprechaun example, identifying “God” through reductive principles means reducing him/her/it to a thing, which contradicts a theist definition of what “God” is or would “be” and ultimately turns “God” into a straw man. The concept is more like Heidegger’s “dasein,” which cannot be reduced–through language, measurement, or taxonomy–to a thing (as things exist among other things). For example, we speak of things as being (is, are, was, did); you cannot identify God as a thing, as that sort of concept would be all things (pantheism) or the state of being itself (ontology).
I’m not a theist, I’m just trying to show some of their arguments and how they lead into more independent philosophical views (An ontological progression: Spinoza’s “Immanent” substance > Heidegger’s “Dasein” > Jaspers “Existenz” > Sartre’s “Existence” > Derrida’s “Alterity”). While philosophy quickly leads away from simplistic conceptions of God as a thing of attributes, philosophy does not thereby mandate or lead to Atheism.
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April 22, 2009 at 1:34 pm
I’ve been busy, and hadn’t had time to read the comments, but I have a moment so I’m jumping into the fray. Sorry for the delay!
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April 22, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Naz,
Actually, that’s not the way atheists generally use the term. J.L. Mackie was the philosopher who defined the presumption of atheism, and he clearly meant that atheism is fully justified unless and until positive evidence for God’s existence is established. And I would disagree that people start out as atheists. I think the knowledge of God belongs to everyone, and they have to be “educated” out of it, or talk themselves out of it.
What new arguments do you refer to? Most of the theistic arguments have been around for centuries. What changes are the evidences used to support the premises (as science and knowledge advances).
You are mischaracterizing theistic arguments when you imply that they appeal to gaps in our knowledge. They appeal to no such thing. They appeal to what we know. Consider, for example, the kalam cosmological argument:
P1 Anything that begins to exist has a cause
P2 The universe began to exist
Therefore the universe has a cause
Where is the appeal to ignorance here? Premise one is a metaphysical intuition that all of us share. Premise 2 is fully supported by modern scientific discoveries as well as sound philosophical reasoning. The conclusion, then, necessarily follows. There is no appeal to ignorance. This is a straw man argument that atheists love to put on theists, because it allows them to easily dismiss our arguments without engaging them.
Jason
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April 22, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Shamelessly atheist,
I do not deny that a person who makes a claim has the burden of proof to defend it, but that has nothing to do with whether or not the absence of evidence is, in itself, positive evidence for something. Clearly it is not. If person X committed a murder, but so thoroughly covered his tracks that no evidence remained, would you say the fact that there is no evidence that he committed the murder is positive evidence that he didn’t? Surely not, because as a matter of fact he did commit the murder!
At best, in the absence of any positive evidence for God, we should remain agnostic on the question. To evolve into a full-orbed atheist, one must acquire actual positive evidence against God’s existence, such as demonstrating that the very notion of God is incoherent. No atheist has successfully done so.
As for your illustration, you are only pointing out something that I myself noted in my article (linked to in the post):
“There are times, however, in which absence of evidence is evidence of absence. This happens when we would expect to find evidence of something’s existence, but in fact find none. For example, if Santa Clause exists we would expect to find his home in the North Pole, or have empirical evidence of flying reindeers, elves, or Santa being caught on a security camera while delivering presents inside someone’s home. Where evidence should be found, none is found, and thus the absence of evidence is good evidence that Santa Clause does not exist. The principle here is that “the justification conferred…will be proportional to the ratio between the amount of evidence that we do have and the amount of evidence that we should expect if the entity existed. If the ratio is small, then little justification is conferred on the belief that the entity does not exist.”6 If the ratio is large, then we are justified in believing the entity does not exist.”
Jason
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April 22, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Rokusho,
You are making my point. You are a presumptive atheist, not a traditional atheist. Traditionally, atheism was understood as a positive claim that God does not exist. J.L. Mackie was the one who redefined it so that it is no longer a positive claim/belief, but rather the absence of belief in God. Craig’s point, and my article, show why this definition of atheism doesn’t work. It guts atheism of any meaning, and is virtually indistinguishable from agnosticism. As I wrote in my article, “This new definition of atheism as ‘non-theism’ rejects the traditional epistemic and volitional content of the traditional definition. In doing so it ceases to be explanatorily meaningful. Indeed, it ceases to be a view at all. Babies, and even dogs would qualify as atheists according to this definition.2 That seems patently absurd. There is a cognitive element to atheism that this new definition does not take into consideration. Without any epistemic or volitional content, the presumption of atheism is more akin to agnosticism than it is to atheism in any meaningful sense of the word. Indeed, it is difficult to see any meaningful distinction between the two. It appears to be a distinction without a difference. As such, atheism collapses into agnosticism.”
As for science, that may be true, but the question of God’s existence is not a scientific question. It is a philosophical question. Even if it were a scientific question, I don’t see how that would affect the meaning of atheism. Besides, for atheism to be a working scientific hypothesis, it has to have positive content.
Jason
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April 22, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Jesse,
You are right (post 7). As I wrote in my article:
“This new definition of atheism seeks to shirk its epistemic responsibility by engaging in meaningless word games. Every negative claim is an affirmative claim in reverse. If I say ‘I don’t believe in Santa Clause’ (a negative claim), it reflects my positive affirmation that ‘I believe Santa Clause does not exist.’ The same goes for the claim, ‘I don’t believe God exists.’ The contrapositive of that negative claim is the positive affirmation, ‘I believe God does not exist.’ Seeing that every negative claim is a positive claim in reverse, the presumptive atheist cannot avoid making a positive claim, and therefore must shoulder his burden of proof for that claim.
“Beliefs and affirmations (epistemology) are intra-mental propositions that have as their object extra-mental realities (ontology)-or at least what we perceive to be extra-mental realities. If I believe grass is green, the intentionality of my belief is not about my belief itself, but about the real world: that grass is actually green. In other words, beliefs are epistemological affirmations about what we perceive as ontological realities. What then, of the atheist’s affirmation, ‘I do not believe God exists’? As stated, the object of this affirmation is not the world, but about his psychological state. Stated positively, however, ‘I believe God does not exist’ is an affirmation about what is real in the world. Since all negative claims are positive claims in reverse, the presumptive atheist is making an implicit ontological claim, and that claim must be defended. He needs to justify why we should believe the world lacks the presence of a deity.”
Jason
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April 22, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Arthur,
What about leprechauns? See post #17 for a response.
Jason
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April 23, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Arthur,
I wanted to say a few more words about leprechauns as it applies to the principle that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence (this applies to you too, Shamelessly Atheist). As I wrote in #17, there are exceptions to this principle, namely that when we would expect to find evidence of a thing’s existence, and find none where we would expect to find it, then we are justified in concluding that the thing does not exist. Seeing that don’t find evidence for the existence of leprechauns where we would expect to find it, we are justified in concluding they do not exist.
Having said this, we must admit that this conclusion is not certain. It is a probabilistic assessment. Logically speaking, it could still be the case that they exist (even if this possibility is so remote that it is not worth seriously considering). Only by showing some logical incoherence inherent to the very concept of leprechauns themselves, could we be certain of their non-existence. The same is true of God. If there was no evidence for God where we would expect to find it, one would be justified in concluding that He does not exist, but could not do so with apodictic certainty. His existence would still be possible so long as there is nothing incoherent about the concept of God.
But is this the situation we find ourselves in with God? Not at all. There is, in fact, positive evidence for God’s existence. If a personal Creator exists, we would expect to find evidence of His existence in His creation. And we do. The specified complexity of the universe and biological life points to an intelligent designer. The existence of objective moral values and duties points to a personal moral-law giver. The contingent nature of the universe points to a self-existing, necessary being, who is Himself the sufficient reason for the existence of the universe. The beginning of the universe points to a transcendent, uncaused, eternal, immaterial, non-spatial, and personal Mind. The objectivity and universality of mathematics and logic point to a rational and transcendent Mind in whom they are grounded. So in the case of God, we are not dealing with an absence of evidence. We are dealing with a good deal of evidence, all of which points in the direction of His existence.
Jason
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November 11, 2009 at 2:26 pm
“The specified complexity of the universe and biological life points to an intelligent designer.”
A man of your education and intelligence is arguing for irreducible complexity? A ridiculous myth perpetrated by pseudo-scientist Michaeal Behe? Come on, I hope you’re better than that, good sir.
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November 11, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Please explain to me upon what basis you label Behe a pseudo-scientist. Is it because he has not been trained in the scientific discipline? No, that can’t be it because he got his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania. Is it because he is making false claims about the structure and functions of the biochemical systems he discusses? No, that’s not it. Is it because he is not using the scientific method? No, that’s not it. I know! It must be that he doesn’t adhere to methodological naturalism, a rather recent philosophical innovation in the field science. So because Behe allows for the possibility that natural phenomenon may have either a natural or an intelligent cause, he is a pseudo-scientist? Why should he be constrained by the philosophical view that natural phenomenon can only be explained in terms of natural causes if that phenomenon points to an intelligent cause instead? Is the goal of science to arrive at a true understanding of why nature is the way it is, or is the goal of science to find a certain kind of answer, even if it is wholly inadequate and even defies common sense at times?
Jason
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November 11, 2009 at 4:31 pm
http://thepragmaticdenial.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/myth-2-the-universe-is-so-complex-there-must-be-a-creator-irreducible-complexity/
In response to your last comment, Jason. I don’t wish to be flippant, but I don’t want to type the same stuff twice.
Also, smarter and greater men than me have debunked IC theory – Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris…etc. I’d refer you to them as well.
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November 11, 2009 at 5:19 pm
The person who wrote the article you linked to doesn’t seem to even understand what irreducible complexity is. He is confusing specified complexity with irreducible complexity (in fact, I think he is confusing mere complexity with specified complexity and irreducible complexity). an irreducibly complex system is one that needs many components to be in place before it can exhibit any function at all (so that if even one were removed, it wouldn’t just not work as well, but it wouldn’t work at all). Specified complexity, on the other hand, means that something is not only complex, but that its complexity matches some independent pattern or function. For example, if I spilled the box of alphabet cereal on the floor, the letters would form a complex series, but it would not conform to any independent pattern or have any function, and thus it would not be specified and would not be thought of as designed. But if you came home and saw the box of cereal lying on the floor with the contents spelling “When you get home call Karen so she can pick up the drycleaning before they close,” you would immediately interpret this as design because not only was there complexity, but there was specification within that complexity that conformed to an independent pattern, and thus has function.
Furthermore, the argument is not that since no naturalistic process can account for X, God must have done X. That is an argument from ignorance. The argument from design rests on positive evidence for design. We recognize design when something is both sufficiently complex and specified. From experience (and in some cases) and probability theory we know that naturalistic causes are not adequate for producing specified complexity. Intelligent agents, however, are. In fact, they are the only known cause of specified complexity (and irreducible complexity). So when we see either, we are justified in inferring that an intelligent agent produced them.
And no, irreducible complexity has not been debunked, because no one has been able to show a plausible chemical pathway for how an irreducibly complex system can develop.
As for the “who created God” question, this is sophomoric. Dawkins smiles when he offers this because he thinks it reveals his genius, not realizing that all the philosophers who read his material are laughing hysterically at his ignorance. Dawkins would do well to stick to what he knows (biology), rather than what he doesn’t (philosophy).
How does it follow that because all the members of a certain group of things went extinct, that they were not designed? Would that mean that if 10 members in the group had survived, it would be evidence for design? This is fallacious. Humans design many things that go extinct in their use. Nobody is using a 1980 Apple computer anymore, but clearly it was designed.
Jason
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November 11, 2009 at 7:02 pm
“So when we see either, we are justified in inferring that an intelligent agent produced them.”
Cite your source, sir! I love your repetitive mentioning of evidence, without, you know, mentioning any evidence. Irreducible or specified complexity that naturalism doesn’t answer? Let’s see it! The burden of proof is upon you.
“As for the “who created God” question, this is sophomoric.”
Evidently, it’s too sophomoric for you to answer at all. Attacking Dawkins character by saying that he’s not a philosopher, and thus, could NEVER comprehend the deep nature of God’s existence makes you look very mature. Keep it up.
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November 12, 2009 at 1:27 pm
So much could be said here. First, this is not the kind of thing you should be requiring a source for. When you see the spilt cereal on the floor, do you need a source cited for you to be able to conclude that an intelligent agent was involved, as opposed to just random chance? No. You know by both intuition and experience that an intelligent agent must have been responsible. People working in information theory have tried to spell out what informs this intuition, and what they have come up with is the notion of specified complexity (if you really want a source, then see the works of information theorists like William Dembski). When we see things that are both complex and specified, we intuit that a designer was responsible, even if we don’t know who it was. If we traveled to Venus, and when we got there we discovered a hotel, no one would think that this was the product of random chance. They would immediately recognize that it was designed, even though they wouldn’t know who the designer is. Why? Because a hotel is both specified and complex, and we know from experience that random acts of nature cannot produce something like that, whereas intelligent agents can.
Why can’t chance, natural events be responsible? This has to do with probability theory. Stick with me here. There are specific probabilities assigned to producing any particular thing. Take for example, a bike combination lock with four dials containing 10 numbers each. There are 10,000 different possible combinations. Your chances of getting the combination right by random chance is 1 in 10,000. If one more dial was added to the combination, it would decrease the odds by a factor of 10 (1 in 100,000). If you only had only one try, the odds of you getting the right combination are overwhelmingly against you, so much so that if you got it right, everyone would suspect that your selection was not random, but based on knowledge of the combination. Of course, if you are given multiple tries, then eventually you would get the combination right through random attempts (if each try took 10 seconds, you could crack the 4-dial code in about 28 hours, and the 5-dial code in about 11 days.
Since for every new part you add you increase the odds by a factor of 10, when you get into sufficiently complex things like proteins and DNA, the odds of them forming by chance are effectively 0. Why? Because there is not enough time for even half of the possible “combinations” to have been formed by chance. Consider proteins. The shortest functional proteins in the cell consist of at least 150 amino acids. The chance of getting those amino acids to form in the right sequence by chance is 1 in 10 to the 164th power (a 10 followed by 164 zeros). To put this in perspective, there are only 10 to the 80th power number of protons in the entire observable universe! That means the chances of finding a specified particle in the observable universe are a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion times greater than the chances of producing a functional protein of 150 amino acids.
When you take into account the fact that the simplest living cells require at least 250 proteins, the chances of forming even a simple cell is is 1 in 10 to the 41,000th power! But wait, you say, given enough time, the odds could be met. Wrong. On a liberal estimate, there have only been 10 to the 139th power number of events in the entire universe since the Big Bang. So even if every event in the history of the universe was devoted to building a single functional protein, the number of sequences produced thus far would be less than 1 out of a trillion trillion of the total number of events needed to even give it a 50% chance of success! Anyone who believes chance can succeed with those odds is being irrational and unscientific. That’s why I say random chance cannot be responsible. The only cause capable of producing such specified complexity is an intelligent agent.
I’ll tackle the who made God question next.
Jason
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November 12, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Ok, who made God? Again, so much could be said. First of all, even if the question was unanswerable, it would not undermine the claim that God is the best explanation for why our universe exists (that God caused it to come into being). Dawkins falsely assumes that in order to posit a cause, one must know the cause’s cause. This is obviously false. Going back to my hotel on Venus analogy, the astronauts would not need to know who caused the intelligent agent(s) who built the hotel in order to correctly infer that the hotel was built by an intelligent agent. As William Lane Craig writes: “In order to recognize an explanation as the best, one needn’t have an explanation of the explanation. This is an elementary point concerning inference to the best explanation as practiced in the philosophy of science. … In fact, so requiring would lead to an infinite regress of explanations, so that nothing could ever be explained and science would be destroyed. [I]n order to recognize that intelligent design is the best explanation of the appearance of design in the universe, one needn’t be able to explain the designer.”
So who made God, or who/what caused God? Nothing. God does not need a cause, and indeed, cannot be caused. And no, I’m not engaging in special pleading. There is a rational reason for this conclusion. The only things for which it makes sense to ask “what caused X,” are things that come into being (begin to exist). Why? Because we have a rational intuition that being only comes from being, and that things don’t just pop into existence uncaused from absolutely nothing. So whenever we are dealing with something that has a beginning to its existence, it is appropriate to ask what caused it to exist. But such a question is meaningless for something that never began to exist. Eternal things never come into being, and thus they not only do not need a cause, but cannot be caused. As an eternal being, God never came into existence. He has always existed, and thus He has no need for an external or prior cause to His existence. He is self-existing, the uncaused causer of all else.
And lest you think it is ad hoc for me to say God is eternal, let me explain the rational basis for such a conclusion. We know from science (Big Bang, 2nd law of thermodynamics) and philosophy (the impossibility of an actual infinite) that both the universe and time itself must have a beginning. Because both begin to exist, both require a causal explanation. Whatever it was that caused time to exist cannot itself be temporal, otherwise it could not create time anew. If the cause of the universe is not temporal, then it must be eternal. And since eternal things don’t begin to exist, they have no, and need no cause.
Jason
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November 14, 2009 at 12:05 am
I’ll stick by my first statement; all your claims are purely hypothetical and conceptual, and they clearly lack corroborating evidence.
Your claims (much like theology itself) are totally useless when exposed in the light of free-inquiry intellectualism – rationality and evidence aren’t important to you or Christianity. Clearly, I was wrong to think this was the case at all.
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November 14, 2009 at 12:11 am
In closing, I’ll simply echo the words of Christopher Hitchens:
“Claims that are asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence”
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November 14, 2009 at 2:01 am
Such a typical atheist. You demand evidence, and when presented to you, you not only ignore it, but ignore it while slinging ad hominems and talking about how you are a man of reason. If you were a man of reason, and a man who was serious about the truth, you would engage the arguments with a real response, instead of a hand-waving.
Jason
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November 19, 2009 at 5:02 pm
[…] Posted by jasondulle under Apologetics, Atheism Leave a Comment See comments #22-31. The atheist, awfrick, is responding to some comments I made regarding positive evidence for the […]
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November 27, 2009 at 4:07 am
jason,
is this what you call evidence. is this what you call logical reasoning.
seriously?
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November 27, 2009 at 6:44 am
Is that what you call a response to the evidence I presented? You only highlight the point I made at https://theosophical.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/the-anatomy-of-a-dialogue-with-a-typical-atheist/.
Jason
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November 7, 2010 at 1:53 pm
This blog post is incorrect. There is a clear misunderstanding of what the term “atheist” means.
Atheism makes no positive claim. Atheism is simply that. A-theist. Not theist. NOT making a claim in the existence of God.
Atheism does not imply one asserts there is no god. Ahteism says one does not assert there IS a god. Those are two very different things.
You’re engaging in straw manning by painting the atheist as the “strong atheist” (the atheist who claims to know with absolute certainty that a God *doesn’t* exist), of which few atheists actually are.
Most atheists are in fact agnostic atheists, who do not believe in a God, but realize they can make no claim to know of his LACK of existence (That would require complete knowledge of all of existence). However, in light of no strong evidence that he exists, they do not believe.
So yes, the default position IS atheism.
Again, not believing something exists (atheism) is not the same as making the claim it DOESN’T exist (“strong atheism”). Atheism simply says “Don’t make a claim you can’t back up”, it is not a claim in and of itself.
It is quite impossible to *disprove* the existence of something like God, but it is equally impossible to disprove things we would both consider absurd, like Unicorns and Leprechauns. That would be an exercise in futility. But it is not up to us to disprove these claims. It is up to those making the claim to prove them.
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December 10, 2010 at 10:29 am
Spencer,
I deal with the heart of your challenge at http://www.onenesspentecostal.com/presumptionatheism.htm. But let me say a few more words here.
You are trying to redefine atheism. Historically, the term has been used to describe the belief that no god(s) exists. Consider how The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines atheism: “‘Atheism’ means the negation of theism, the denial of the existence of God.” (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/).
You object that the prefix “a” negates what comes after it, so that the proper definition is “not a theist.” But I ask you, What is a theist? It is someone who believes in the existence of a deity. If a theist is one who believes in the existence of a deity, and the “a” prefix serves to negate the meaning of “theist,” then an atheist must be one who does not believe in the existence of a deity. Even if we excise the notion of “belief” from our definition of theism, you’ll fare no better. In this case theism would be the proposition that “God exists.” A-theism is a negation of that proposition: God does not exist. Either way, atheism entails a knowledge claim.
The Greek roots of the English word make this even more plain. The word comes from the Greek particle a and the noun theos. It literally means “no(t) god,” not “lack of belief in god.”
Theism, agnosticism, and atheism are epistemological categories, describing one’s belief about the ontological status of a deity. Those who believe a deity does exist are called theists; those who do not believe a deity exists are called atheists; those who do not know if a deity exists are called agnostics. Atheism is “belief of absence.” You can’t take a term that virtually everyone understands to mean X, and start using it to mean Y and think everyone needs to update their dictionaries. If you want to have a separate category for “absence of belief,” and you are not satisfied with the term agnostic, then why not add a fourth term to the mix: non-theism?
Claiming the word “atheist” to represent your position just brings confusion, because a single term is being used to refer to very different ideas. If “atheism” describes both “no belief in God” and “belief in no god,” then it must always be asked of an atheist, “What kind of an atheist are you?” The purpose of labels is to clarify concepts and make distinctions. Co-opting “atheist” to describe a lack of belief in God does the opposite.
To say that those who think the proposition “God does not exist” is false, and those who say there is not sufficient evidence to support the proposition “God exists” should both be called atheists is just as confusing and misguided as suggesting that those who think the proposition “God exists” is true, and those who think there is not good evidence to support the proposition “God does not exist” should both be called theists! If it makes no sense to think that a person who lacks belief in God but does not think there is enough evidence to think God does not exist should be called a “theist,” then it makes no sense to think that a person who lacks belief in God but does not think there is enough evidence to think God exists should be called an “atheist.”
Anthony Flew is responsible for trying to redefine “atheism” to mean “not a theist.” He was wrong to do so both historically and linguistically, and has only confused matters. His intent was to try to shift the burden of proof on the God question entirely to the theist. But the theist is not the only one who bears the burden of proof. In the same way the theist bears a burden of proof if he wishes to claim the proposition “God exists” is true, the atheist likewise bears a burden of proof if he affirms the negation of this proposition. Only the person who makes no epistemological commitment to either proposition is without a burden of proof, because they aren’t making any claim. But those who want to claim there is no God (or probably no God) while also claiming they have no burden of proof are being disingenuous.
You made a distinction between strong and (presumably) weak forms of atheism, noting that strong atheism is the claim that God doesn’t exist, whereas weak atheism is just the absence of belief in God. The problem is that atheism does not come in strong or weak forms. Atheism is the view that there is no God. There is not a strong and weak form of such a proposition. It is simply true or false. What does come in strong and weak forms is the rational justification for that view.
Jason
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December 12, 2012 at 1:55 pm
[…] years there has been a lot of debate regarding the proper definition of “atheist,” even on this blog. Traditionally, atheism has been defined as the claim that God does not exist. In the […]
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October 23, 2013 at 11:20 am
[…] created God’ line. I never cease to be amazed at how many times Christians have answered this point, and how many times atheists don’t pay attention. On theism, God is a necessary and hence […]
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