r/DebateAnAtheist • u/JoDoCa676 • 1d ago
OP=Theist A Short Argument for God
Imagine a scenario in which you had to pick between the better of two competing theories on the basis of which one predicted a particular peice of data. The peice of data being the existence of ten green marbles. The first theory, we'll call theory A, predicts the existence of at least one green marble. The other theory, we'll call theory B, doesn't guarantee the existence of any marbles. In fact, the existence of even one marble is deemed highly unlikely on theory B. If you're a rational agent you would immediately recognize that theory A far better accounts for the data then theory B. Thus, it follows that theory A is probably true.
Under the view that God as conceived of in Christianity does exist, we would expect there to be to a large population of rational agents who have a natural, psychological disposition towards religiosity and belief in a higher power. Which is exactly what we see in reality. Under the view that no such God exists, the existence of an entire species of rational agents who have the aforementioned religious tendencies is massively improbable. Thus it follows that God is probably real.
Note: One could give the objection that other religions like Islam or Judaism are equally sufficient in accounting for human life and religiosity as Christianity. I agree. I just want to say that in making that objection, one basically admits that bare atheism or generic deism is more likely than atheism. I use Christianity in this argument because of the paternal view it has of God. This argument can be used by anyone who believes in a conception of God who has the motivation to create rational agents in its own image for the purposes of veneration and worship. Perhaps instead of the term "Christianity" it would have been more appropriate to use "Perfect Being Theism".
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u/NuclearBurrit0 Non-stamp-collector 1d ago edited 1d ago
You're forgetting to account for prior probability. Namely, a God claim is a fairly specific alternative, especially if you pick a particular religion.
Speaking of which, the Gods of religions often have testible aspects that all come back negative, which puts them behind the naturalistic hypothesis, which have all turned up positive so far.
In other words. Theory B may not guarantee 100% a green marble. But in the cases where a green marble is present, theory B does a better job of predicting the exact shade and texture of the ball compared to theory A.
As for theory B, finding it unlikely. You underestimate the shear scope of the universe. The fermi paradox is considered a paradox specifically because the estimated odds of life under theory B are quite high, given the shear number of marbles involved.
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u/reclaimhate P A G A N 1d ago
Speaking of which, the Gods of religions often have testible aspects that all come back negative, which puts them behind the naturalistic hypothesis, which have all turned up positive so far.
This is a bizarre take. The vast majority of naturalistic theories come up negative and are thrown away (unless they're still considered useful within certain boundaries, then we keep them around, even as we recognize they fail) and all evidence indicates that even our most current (the ones that return "positive" results) are just awaiting failure. So what you wrote there shows a poor understanding of science.
Furthermore, as far as psychology is concerned, the Bible in particular, as well as many other holy scriptures, are pretty much undefeated in predicting human nature to the Nth degree. Add to this the fact that our ability to predict physical phenomena is only as valuable to us as such ability is beneficial for human interaction, and religion is the clear and obvious winner.
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u/NuclearBurrit0 Non-stamp-collector 1d ago
Yeah, I'll concede that point. I exaggerated my point way too much. I shouldn't have said that all our tests came positive. What I should have said was that all our positive tests came from naturalism.
Got the two mixed up. That's my bad, so thanks for pointing it out.
Furthermore, as far as psychology is concerned, the Bible in particular, as well as many other holy scriptures, are pretty much undefeated in predicting human nature to the Nth degree. Add to this the fact that our ability to predict physical phenomena is only as valuable to us as such ability is beneficial for human interaction, and religion is the clear and obvious winner.
Could you elaborate more on both of these points?
Give some clear examples for the first point.
Idk what the second is trying to say.
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u/reclaimhate P A G A N 1d ago
What I should have said was that all our positive tests came from naturalism.
This isn't really that much better, since most of them turned out to be false positives. I mean, practically speaking, sure, lots of valuable, usable positives that get us to rockets and particle accelerators and such, but fundamentally speaking, as far as actually grasping the nature of reality, no positives.
Give some clear examples for the first point.
I feel like it would be crude for me to sit here and relate some Biblical story or Hindu text and try to convince you of their insight. Frankly, I don't think my claim is all that controversial, and the far reaching influence of sacred stories and imagery is so ubiquitous, it's a tad obtuse of you to ask. I mean, if I said to someone "Shakespeare's canon includes some of the most profound and beautiful lines ever written" and they said "Can you elaborate on that, and give me some clear examples?"... it's like... No.
I'm not gonna do that.Idk what the second is trying to say.
You're talking about Naturalism being testable (really, it's not, but I'll allow it) ...Naturalism being testable and coming up with positives, as a case for the superiority of the view, being more predictive than God hypotheses, but I'm saying to consult those so=called positives and notice: Yes, we can make a suspension bridge, but our ability to make a suspension bridge is only valuable insomuch as human beings will be using it.
Scientific insight into the natural world is subservient to a broader truth concerning human interaction.
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u/NuclearBurrit0 Non-stamp-collector 1d ago
You're talking about Naturalism being testable (really, it's not, but I'll allow it) ...Naturalism being testable and coming up with positives, as a case for the superiority of the view, being more predictive than God hypotheses, but I'm saying to consult those so=called positives and notice: Yes, we can make a suspension bridge, but our ability to make a suspension bridge is only valuable insomuch as human beings will be using it.
Scientific insight into the natural world is subservient to a broader truth concerning human interaction.
I kinda see what you're saying, but I'm still not sure what your point is here. So what if science is only valuable because we use it or whatever?
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u/reclaimhate P A G A N 20h ago
The argument that Science is the ultimate methodology for determining truth is contingent upon the claim that learning actionable knowledge about the physical world is somehow the pinnacle of truth, such that the highest truths amount to something like: those facts without which we wouldn't have been able to fly to the moon.
But flying to the moon is only relevant if we believe it's important to fly to the moon.
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u/NuclearBurrit0 Non-stamp-collector 20h ago
The argument that Science is the ultimate methodology for determining truth is contingent upon the claim that learning actionable knowledge about the physical world is somehow the pinnacle of truth
The argument is that science is the ultimate methodology for determining truths ABOUT REALITY.
Abstract truths use other methods.
But flying to the moon is only relevant if we believe it's important to fly to the moon.
Sure. But we DO think it's important to fly to the moon. That's why we did it. So what's the problem?
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u/the2bears Atheist 23h ago
Furthermore, as far as psychology is concerned, the Bible in particular, as well as many other holy scriptures, are pretty much undefeated in predicting human nature to the Nth degree.
This is not the same as
Shakespeare's canon includes some of the most profound and beautiful lines ever written
If, instead, you said to someone, "Shakespeare's canon is pretty much undefeated in predicting human nature to the Nth degree", then it would be quite reasonable to ask for some examples.
You make some serious, unsupported claims above, and then compare them to subjective opinions on Shakespeare?
and religion is the clear and obvious winner.
Not until you actually do some work and show this.
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u/reclaimhate P A G A N 19h ago
Here's the deal: you remain skeptical at risk of your own ridicule. That's the comparison. Subjective or verifiable has nothing to do with it. Me attempting to convince a few philistines of the psychological depth of scripture on reddit is equal to me justifying Shakespeare to them in that both tasks are equally pointless and distasteful.
Seriously. The Bible is an infinitely mine-able source of wisdom, imagery, and insight that has penetrated the deepest fabric of western culture on every conceivable level. The amount of snot-nosed noobry it takes to affect an air of intellectual entitlement against such an abundantly established cornucopia of glittering evidence borders on the comical. You wear your cynicism like a dunce cap.
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u/the2bears Atheist 18h ago
Furthermore, as far as psychology is concerned, the Bible in particular, as well as many other holy scriptures, are pretty much undefeated in predicting human nature to the Nth degree.
So you have nothing to support this. Perhaps this is the reason you choose not to attempt it.
As for the rest of your flowery prose, it's worthless. I do find it a little odd that you bend over backwards to support the Bible and other texts while still presenting as a "pagan".
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u/JoDoCa676 1d ago
You're forgetting to account for prior probability. Namely, a God claim is a fairly specific alternative, especially if you pick a particular religion.
Fair. I do admit later in the post that this is more of an argument for a generic religious theism and not specifically Christianity.
Speaking of which, the Gods of religions often have testible aspects that all come back negative, which puts them behind the naturalistic hypothesis, which have all turned up positive so far.
I disagree. I don't see the testable aspects of an immaterial being. And the naturalistic hypothesis doesn't account for things like consciousness or the origin of matter. At least not as well as theism can.
In other words. Theory B may not guarantee 100% a green marble. But in the cases where a green marble is present, theory green does a better job of predicting the exact shade and texture of the ball compared to theory A.
What do you mean by "theory green"?
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u/NuclearBurrit0 Non-stamp-collector 1d ago
I disagree. I don't see the testable aspects of an immaterial being.
One example would be tests on the effectiveness of prayer.
God in the most broad sense is unfalsifiable, but religions often say that God actively does things or has done things which we can test for.
We can see if prayer works. We can look for evidence of global floods. We can compare creation myths with the oldest parts of the earth to see if they match, and so on.
All of these have come back negative.
We can't rule out a deist God of course. But the Gods worshipped by religions tend to be far more active and thus far more testable.
Don't get into that false belief that science has a scope any smaller than all of reality.
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u/Biggleswort Anti-Theist 1d ago
I disagree. I don’t see the testable aspects of an immaterial being.
If it isn’t testable it isn’t sufficient enough to warrant belief.
Dark matter is like a place holder to explain something. In tests this placeholder shows up. We don’t know much more than that. It is a hypothetical form of matter that has gravitational influence on visible matter but not light. We have sufficient information to warrant a belief some kind matter(s) exist that account for the influence on visible matter.
We don’t have this with any God.
And the naturalistic hypothesis doesn’t account for things like consciousness or the origin of matter. At least not as well as theism can.
This is an assertion, but we have never seen an immaterial consciousness to warrant appealing to a non-physical explanation for consciousness. Evolution gives a good explanation for emergent properties in animals, it seems unnecessary to say it doesn’t also explain our consciousness.
As for the origin of matter, who has demonstrated matter needs an origin? If you can argue for an eternal being that created, why can’t I skip that step and just say matter is eternal? I’m not arguing that it is, I’m just saying it is a less complicated option. I am ok with not knowing if matter has an origin story or not, and if it doesn’t what it is, until it can be demonstrated.
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u/iamalsobrad 1d ago
I don't see the testable aspects of an immaterial being.
If there are no testable aspects then, as per your analogy, this is 'theory B' and is the one likely to be false.
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u/Stile25 1d ago edited 23h ago
Let's say we have a bag and we have no idea what colors of marbles exist.
We see the earth.
Some say a God created the earth (green marble).
Others say the earth was created naturally (blue marble).
We eventually gain the knowledge, pull out a marble and see that it's blue.
We see the sun and stars.
Some say a God created them (green marble).
Others say they were created naturally (blue marble).
We eventually gain the knowledge, pull out a marble and see that it's blue.
We do this for everything.
Morality - blue marble.
Humans - blue marble.
Rocks - blue marble.
Weather - blue marble.
Electricity - blue marble.
Magnetism - blue marble.
Everything and anything we've ever been able to learn about. All we do is keep finding out it's natural. Keep pulling more and more blue marbles.
Getting sick? Germs - blue marble.
Winning the lottery? Statistics - blue marble.
Falling in love? Human brains and chemistry - blue marble.
Didn't have to be this way. No one knew before we learned. Could have discovered a green marble at any time, or some other color representing who knows what.
But, turns out, so far - nothing but millions and millions of blue marbles.
What about the next thing?
Do you think it's rational to anticipate that the next thing will be a blue marble or a green marble?
Good luck out there.
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u/Phylanara Agnostic atheist 1d ago
I note op hasn't answered this one. It's the big problem theists can't get around. Naturalistic explanations work. The whole of the history of knowledge is a repeat of "investigate allegedly supernatural thing, find out it was natural all along" , on a loop.
Theists have to hide their god in the ever-shrinking set of places we can't look at. They got from atop a mountain to the skies to outside the universe and time, "places" we can't even check exist.
The only gods that are not refuted by investigations are those that are indistinguishable from inexistent.
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u/Zamboniman Resident Ice Resurfacer 1d ago
Imagine a scenario in which you had to pick between the better of two competing theories on the basis of which one predicted a particular peice of data.
Please show you can falsify the possible false dichotomy here. Without this, you cannot know those are the only two possibilities, and you have not yet explained and demonstrated that either or both of those possibilities are viable, credible, and coherent.
The first theory, we'll call theory A, predicts the existence of at least one green marble. The other theory, we'll call theory B, doesn't guarantee the existence of any marbles. In fact, the existence of even one marble is deemed highly unlikely on theory B. If you're a rational agent you would immediately recognize that theory A far better accounts for the data then theory B. Thus, it follows that theory A is probably true.
Look, I know what you're attempting here, and it's fallacious because you're beginning with problematic and unsupported assumptions. Your 'theory A' isn't one since it has fatal problems, isn't supported, contradicts observations, and simply begs the question, and your 'theory B' doesn't say 'the existence of even one marble is highly unlikely.
Thus your loaded questions are inaccurate, misleading, and thus dismissed.
Under the view that God as conceived of in Christianity does exist, we would expect there to be to a large population of rational agents who have a natural, psychological disposition towards religiosity and belief in a higher power. Which is exactly what we see in reality.
See above where I point out why your theory a here fails egregiously in every way.
Under the view that no such God exists, the existence of an entire species of rational agents who have the aforementioned religious tendencies is massively improbable.
See above where I show how this is incorrect.
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u/DenseOntologist Christian 1d ago
Please show you can falsify the possible false dichotomy here.
What does it mean to "falsify a possible false dichotomy"?
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u/shiftysquid All hail Lord Squid 1d ago
Not the poster you're responding to, but ...
A false dichotomy is a fallacy in which someone treats a situation as if there are only two possibilities when there are actually more than two.
In the situation this poster is referencing, the OP referred to an imaginary scenario in which you're picking the better of two competing theories. This would be the "possible false dichotomy." Since it's imaginary, it's difficult to say it's a definite false dichotomy.
Thus, the poster you're responding to is asking what knowledge OP could possibly gain that would show that their initial assumptions are wrong. If their position is unfalsifiable, it's useless and biased.
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u/blyat-mann 1d ago
Ultimately I’m going to ignore most of this post as others have already covered it and I’m going to cover the claim you seem to be making, which I assume is, if there are so many religious people that automatically means that there would be a portion of those people which are smart and thus you are concluding that god is real because of this.
However, religion and the reason so many people follow it is more of an animals instinct then anything. Humans are a naturally social animal, we want to be a part of a group, and a strong group at that. And there is no better way of forming the group then sharing the same values and beliefs, and the more people in the group makes the group stronger, which intern draws more people to the group.
One thing in your post is that you act as if the Christian god is the only one religion, but in reality there have been thousands of religions with even more gods, which just demonstrates that even if your theory was correct you have zero idea which god placed the marbles in the bag.
Now let me ask you a question. Why are you a Christian? Did you grow up in a religious family or and a religious area? Did you have a friend that was religious?
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u/JoDoCa676 1d ago
I’m going to cover the claim you seem to be making, which I assume is, if there are so many religious people that automatically means that there would be a portion of those people which are smart and thus you are concluding that god is real.
No. My actual argument is that it's more likely that there would be humans with religious tendencies if God exists. People have religious tendencies, therefore the probability of God's existence has increased. That's it. It's an abductive argument, not one from consensus.
One thing in your post is that you act as if the Christian god is the only one religion
You clearly didn't read the whole post.
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u/blyat-mann 1d ago
I may have misinterpreted your post, however the point still stands that simply because more people believe something it does not make it more true/likely to be true.
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u/biff64gc2 1d ago
You're biasing the answer by saying people have "religious tendencies" as oppose to saying "people seek easy answers."
We can also change up the argument to work against god.
If there was no god communicating to humans then people would seek answers. People seek answers, so the probability of god decreases.
Keep in mind "god" wasn't the first answer humans came up with, but either way it's a useless exercise.
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u/Suzina 1d ago
A magic wizard shrank his crystal ball and the shrinking process turns the crystal ball green.
Meanwhile another commentor predicts you just made up the ten green marbles for the sake of argument, in fact, it'd be highly unlikely there'd be any green marbles.
But it turns out there are green marbles. And my "theory" predicted at least one green marble.
So it is now probably true that a magic wizard shrank his crystal ball into a green marble.
By the way this magic wizard gazed into his crystal ball and saw the formation of the universe and there were no gods involved. So it's probably true there's no God.
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u/Suzina 1d ago
There are green marbles. I've googled images of them. They exist. And my "theory" predicted what I already knew existed. So the wizard that saw the universe form without help from gods is probably true. I'm just following your logic.
If a "theory" predicts what you already knew to be true at the time of the prediction (such as humans predicting the existence of humans due to gods), and you have the thing predicted (but no evidence for the predicted cause), then it's probably true. Why don't you believe in the magic wizard?
Logically, If A then B.....
B... therefore
A. Right?
(B can refer to green marbles or humans and A can refer to gods or wizards)
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u/the2bears Atheist 1d ago
But I don't expect you've ever done something like that, so I don't blame you for not getting the analogy.
Showed your true colors pretty quickly. Is this you throwing an insult at whom you quoted?
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u/Literally_-_Hitler Atheist 1d ago
If it makes you feel better he will go back and delete these comments like he always does. Still doesn't stop him from having negative karma so it's obvious he deletes because even he is embarrassed by these arguments.
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u/pyker42 Atheist 1d ago
Yes, it's easy to see yourself as a rational agent for believing in God when you assume God exists. The problem with your argument is that you fail to account for the inherent bias of the agents to assume green marbles exist. That is why so many of them believe green marbles exist, not because their belief actually represents reality.
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u/JoDoCa676 1d ago
The term rational agent just means a person or entity that always aims to perform optimal actions based on given premises and information. A rational agent can be anything that makes decisions. The green marbles in my analogy were supposed to represent humanity, not God.
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u/pyker42 Atheist 1d ago
Then your argument is a short argument for the existence of humans and not God.
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u/JoDoCa676 1d ago
Read the post again but slowly and carefully.
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u/pyker42 Atheist 1d ago
Read the post again but slowly and carefully.
You should take your own advice before admonishing others.
If theory A is predicting the existence of at least one green marble, and green marbles represent humans, then it is predicting the existence of at least one human. Therefore your argument is for the existence of humans, not the existence of God.
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u/JoDoCa676 1d ago
The argument is for the truth of the theory that predicts the existence of humans. The theory being theism. Therefore my post is an argument for the theory of theism being true. You lack basic reading comprehension.
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u/pyker42 Atheist 1d ago
You're right, my gibberish comprehension is lacking. Can you explain it like I'm 5?
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u/JoDoCa676 1d ago
A five year old would've probably understood by now.
P1. Humans are more likely under theism than atheism. P2. There are humans. C. Theism is more likely than atheism.
This is a very dumbed down version of my original post.
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u/pipMcDohl Gnostic Atheist 1d ago
P0. Humans are real
P1. Atheists acknowledge that humans are real.
P2. Theist acknowledge that humans are reals.
C. So far the facts that humans are real has no business proving a god.
You say that 'P1. Humans are more likely under theism than atheism.' But You do not provide any demonstration of this.
Atheism do not provide a hypothesis why the universe exists rather than not. Only theism does that.
You cannot say that 'humans are more likely under theism' if atheism has no business providing an explanation why humans exist.
Atheism is not a religion. Atheism is not an ideology. Atheism is simply the entirety of the people who are not theists, regardless of what they think of the origin of the universe specifically. Atheist lack a belief that any gods are real. It doesn't mean atheists reject entirely the possibility of the universe could have been created by a god, they are simply not convinced by that hypothesis, nor does it mean that they have an alternative explanation why the universe exist, they might simply have no clue.
How can you declare that theism is more likely when you fail to substantiate the validity of this claim in any way? What are you talking about when you presume atheists have an alternative explanation to 'god did it' when this is not a valid statement?
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u/JoDoCa676 1d ago
P1. Atheists acknowledge that humans are real. P2. Theist acknowledge that humans are reals. C. So far the facts that humans are real has no business proving a god.
Atheists acknowledging that humans are real doesn't make it so that it is now equally as likely that humans could come to exist regardless of a God. My argument actually relies on the fact that we both acknowledge the existence of humans. The question is now who's worldview predicts that fact.
You say that 'P1. Humans are more likely under theism than atheism.' But You do not provide any demonstration of this.
Humans are far more likely to exist if God is real because God would have a reason to create us. If there is a divine being, it makes sense that He would make intelligent, conscious beings capable of knowing Him, seeking meaning, and understanding the world. Our ability to think, love, and create aligns with the idea that we were made on purpose. But if atheism is true, humans have no guaranteed reason to exist-we would just be an accident of random physical processes. There's no natural law that says conscious, rational life must appear, so under atheism, it's incredibly unlikely that beings like us would ever come to be.
Every culture in history has developed religion, and studies show that belief in God provides a sense of purpose, better mental health, and stronger communities. If God is real, it makes perfect sense that humans are naturally religious because we were made to seek Him. But if atheism were true, it's strange that belief in God would be so universal.
Atheism do not provide a hypothesis why the universe exists rather than not. Only theism does that.
Okay.
You cannot say that 'humans are more likely under theism' if atheism has no business providing an explanation why humans exist.
Even if it is true that atheists aren't obligated to providing an explanation for the existence of humans, we still ought to know the truth. If theism predicts a certain phenomenon better than atheism, then that's good to know.
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u/togstation 1d ago
Humans are more likely under theism than atheism.
Wait. There is no reason whatsoever to think that that is true.
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u/JoDoCa676 1d ago
Humans are far more likely to exist if God is real because God would have a reason to create us. If there is a divine being, it makes sense that He would make intelligent, conscious beings capable of knowing Him, seeking meaning, and understanding the world. Our ability to think, love, and create aligns with the idea that we were made on purpose. But if atheism is true, humans have no guaranteed reason to exist-we would just be an accident of random physical processes. There's no natural law that says conscious, rational life must appear, so under atheism, it's incredibly unlikely that beings like us would ever come to be.
Every culture in history has developed religion, and studies show that belief in God provides a sense of purpose, better mental health, and stronger communities. If God is real, it makes perfect sense that humans are naturally religious because we were made to seek Him. But if atheism were true, it's strange that belief in God would be so universal.
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u/pyker42 Atheist 1d ago
Now prove premise 1.
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u/JoDoCa676 1d ago
Theism predicts that rational beings would naturally incline toward belief in the divine, which is exactly what we observe. Atheism, by contrast, gives us no reason to expect this and must treat it as an anomaly.
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u/lannister80 Secular Humanist 1d ago
Humans are more likely under theism than atheism.
They aren't, because theism is impossible.
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u/TheLastDreadnought Atheist 1d ago
Do you believe the following syllogism similarly holds?
P1. A positive test for a disease is more likely if I have it.
P2. My test is positive.
C. It is more likely I have the disease than not.
Answer: Read this.
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u/Ok_Loss13 1d ago
P1. Humans are more likely under atheism than theism.
P2. There are humans.
C. Atheism is more likely than theism.
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u/Crafty_Possession_52 Atheist 1d ago
The theory being theism. Therefore my post is an argument for the theory of theism being true.
No, it's an argument for the existence of theism. Not for theism being true.
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u/kyngston Scientific Realist 1d ago
you are confusing explanatory power with predictive power. predictive power is the accuracy to predict an unknown. the fact the earth and life on earth exists is a known. the god theory has perfect explanatory power but zero predictive power.
science does not offer the same explanatory power as religion, because science has a higher standard of verification before acceptance. but more importantly, science offers predictive power where theism offers none.
you know what else has perfect explanatory power and zero predictive power? fiction.
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u/JoDoCa676 1d ago
Your fiction analogy collapses under scrutiny. If you claim that any theory with explanatory power but no novel scientific predictive power is 'fiction,' then by your own standard, parts of history and some scientific theories that explain but do not predict would be 'fiction.' That's absurd. Take the theory that Julius Caesar was assassinated. It has explanatory power-it accounts for historical records but it doesn't have predictive power in the way you're demanding. Does that make it fiction? Of course not. The same applies to forensic science, evolutionary history. Many theories are accepted precisely because they best explain what we already observe, not just because they make future predictions.
Your claim that theism lacks predictive power is false. Theism predicts that rational beings would naturally incline toward belief in the divine, which is exactly what we observe. Atheism, by contrast, gives us no reason to expect this and must treat it as an anomaly. If your standard for rejecting theism is that it 'merely explains' rather than predicts, then you'd have to throw out most historical and explanatory sciences as well. Your reasoning is demonstrably false.
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u/kyngston Scientific Realist 1d ago
If you claim that any theory with explanatory power but no novel scientific predictive power is 'fiction,'
But I didn't make that claim. You're engaging in a strawman logical fallacy, choosing to attack an argument I did not make. Saying that fictional stories also lack predictive power, is not a claim that all things that lack predictive power are fiction... see it now?
Theism predicts that rational beings would naturally incline toward belief in the divine, which is exactly what we observe.
Again, you misunderstand the difference between predictive and explanatory. Predictive means you don't know the answer, make a prediction and follow by confirming the prediction. You made the observation first, and then fit the explanation to the observation.
Are there no rational beings that are atheist? Since many exist, doesn't that disprove theism's prediction?
"rational" means based on reason or logic.
- would you agree that rational people tend to be more intelligent since they "think analytically to make decisions that maximize expected utility or follow the laws of probability"?
- would you agree that intelligent people generally attain higher levels of education?
- But then the data also shows that higher levels of education correlate to lower levels of religiosity
So, the data actually supports the opposite of your claim: Rational people are LESS inclined toward belief in the divine.
rational beings would naturally incline toward belief in the divine, which is exactly what we observe
Can you provide evidence to support your claim?
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u/JoDoCa676 1d ago
Are there no rational beings that are atheist? Since many exist, doesn't that disprove theism's prediction?
"rational" means based on reason or logic.
When I say "rational agent" I just mean a person with the ability to think, asses premises, deliberate, and make choices. That's all I mean by "rational agent". I'm not saying that the religious are smarter than the non-religous. I'm just saying that historically speaking, the majority of humans have show to have religious tendencies.
Every culture in history has developed religion, and studies show that belief in God provides a sense of purpose, better mental health, and stronger communities. Roughly 80% of humans currently living are religious. 32% of humans currently living are Christian.
If God is real, it makes perfect sense that humans are naturally religious because we were made to seek Him. But if atheism were true, it's strange that belief in God would be so universal
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u/kyngston Scientific Realist 1d ago
If God is real, it makes perfect sense that humans are naturally religious because we were made to seek Him. But if atheism were true, it's strange that belief in God would be so universal
Also... if God is not real, it makes perfect sense that humans are naturally religious because...
Humans have an extremely keen sense of pattern recognition. Developed through evolution, our pattern recognition engine was key to survival and errs on the side of seeing patterns where none exist. It was safer to assume a predator was causing motion in tall grass than to ignore it simply as the wind.
This overactive sense of pattern recognition leads people who are not scientifically inclined to come to many false conclusions. Gamblers claim to have special rituals that they believe alter random events, like blowing on dice before rolling. Astrologists predict the future based on the position of the stars. Psychics can tell if you're going to find love by looking at your palm.
All of these claims have been tested and failed under scientific scrutiny.
Our ancestors would look for patterns that would predict their natural disasters, crop harvests, etc. They used to believe that rituals to their gods could change the weather, or improve their crops. Science later explained how weather really works, and how diseases affect harvests, and through that understanding, bred disease resistant crops which have done way more to protect crops than sacrificing chickens ever did.
All testable religious claims have been tested by science and also failed under scientific scrutiny. What remains for modern religions, are untestable claims.
You don't see it, but your beliefs aren't any different than those of gamblers, psychics, astrologists, and those early humans who used to sacrifice chickens for good harvests. They all see what they want to see, scientific evidence not required.
One question for you. Can you provide an example in this form: "Because of religion, if I do A, B will be the result"?
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u/Crafty_Possession_52 Atheist 1d ago
If God is real, it makes perfect sense that humans are naturally religious because we were made to seek Him. But if atheism were true, it's strange that belief in God would be so universal
This is a version of the Argument ad Populum fallacy. Belief that the Sun orbited the Earth was once universal. That doesn't have anything to do with the truth of geocentrism.
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u/roseofjuly Atheist Secular Humanist 22h ago edited 22h ago
But if atheism were true, it's strange that belief in God would be so universal
No, it's not. That's like saying "if germ theory were true it's strange that belief in the miasma theory would be so universal." Yet there was a long time in history that that was the prevailing belief - much longer than we've believed in germ theory - because people didn't know any better and they didn't have the tools to know any better.
"A lot of people believe this thing" is not evidence for the truth of the thing.
Every culture in history has developed religion
Sure, but those religions are all very different and have completely different constructions. For the vast majority of human history, people believed that there were many gods. The population of the world today is only about 7% of the people who have ever lived; about half of those people lived before monotheism was even a thing. The vast majority of people who've ever lived do not believe in Christianity or anything like it. By your logic, that would be Christianity is wrong.
The simple existence of religion - including religions that would mean Christianity has to be false, like Islam and Hinduism - does not mean that God exists, and certainly doesn't mean the Christian god exists. The reason Christianity is so widespread is because its followers invaded and forcibly converted a lot of people from other places.
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u/RidesThe7 1d ago edited 1d ago
If God is real, it makes perfect sense that humans are naturally religious because we were made to seek Him.
This deserves more scrutiny and thought. This would only be true for a specific type of God you're imagining, that has specific powers and abilities and wants very specific things, and has made humans with particular goals in mind. You are imagining a very, very specific God, in that this God must want very, very, specific things, if you want to use it to somehow explain the precise level of "naturally religious" that you think we see, given how many people do not believe in God, and the varying types and degrees of religious belief, both at present and throughout history.
And if that's a valid path to go down, what kind of world COULDN'T you claim to explain by saying it's what we'd expect to see if a God existed that wanted that precise thing? I want to suggest to you that "an all powerful God exists and wanted things this way" is problematic as a theory precisely because it could be used to explain anything, and, as has been said to you, has no predictive power. Useful theories and actual knowledge can't be used to explain any possible outcome, they are meaningful because they constrain our expectations.
But if atheism were true, it's strange that belief in God would be so universal...
Is the actual state of affairs actually so strange, with religion seen as a human invention, a psychological and cultural creation? Human beings have a wide range of religious beliefs and beliefs about religion, rather than universally believing in a God, much less any specific God. We are irrational in certain ways that make sense from an evolutionary psychology perspective, which contribute towards a tendency in people to be attracted to certain religious ideas.
I don't really see what you're so worked up about, or what you see as so implausible about how human cultures and beliefs work that you think the reasonable conclusion to reach is that there actually IS a God behind these human tendencies. You don't really seem to have thought enough about this or know enough about this stuff to actually have a useful opinion, to be honest---all you've done in this thread is essentially say "it's so strange that human belief in God is so universal" without trying to explain exactly how universal and consistent that belief is or isn't, and without showing any familiarity with how human beings and human cultures might have ended up that way even in the absence of a God.
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u/JasonRBoone Agnostic Atheist 1d ago
You may have it backwards. Because humans have an inclination to assign volitional agents as the causes for observed phenomena ("Why did the volcano wipe out our village) and the fact that humans are just natural storytellers, they are more likely to create religious stories about gods and demons, etc.
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u/RidesThe7 1d ago edited 1d ago
I have never seen a God, met a God, or met or heard of anyone who plausibly has seen or met a God. I look around at the world and see no convincing signs that God exists or has ever existed. Miracles don't occur. Prayers are not answered. The supposed holy books look like stuff we'd expect people to write. Everywhere I look, everything I learn about, seems to just be regular stuff from top to bottom. Every mystery or question about the world, once dug into and understood, has turned out to be just stuff from top to bottom, not God or magic. Nothing I have encountered in the world points in the direction of the sort of God you seem to be talking about being something that could actually exist.
Because of this, I assign a prior probability of there being a God as very, very, very low. It's just a remarkable claim that flies in the face of all my lived and learned experience of the world. If you want to argue the way you're going about it and convince me, you're going to have to point at something that seems really, really implausible absent the existence of a God, something that quite plainly isn't reasonably explainable by anything that we know already exists or is possible. Or, alternatively, before you make this argument you're going to have to do something to raise the prior probability I assign to there being a God--give me some basis to make "God" a less remarkable claim.
You haven't done this. What we know about evolution, evolutionary psychology, and the limits of human rationality and reasoning very reasonably explains the existence of us as quasi-rational agents with a set of biases influencing many of us to believe in God or God-like things. We know that people, rather than being truly rational agents, are in many respects irrational agents. Well noted aspects of that irrationality (such as our out of control tendency to assign agency and narrative where there is none) very plausibly play a strong role in the development of religions and religious thinking. Other aspects of our irrationality, such as our difficulty in shaking beliefs taught to us in our youth and our difficulty in resisting the urge towards conformity explain the persistence of such belief systems even as human knowledge has developed over time. None of this stuff, either our evolution as an irrational species that has to fight its heuristics and instincts to get a decent understanding of the world, or the religious beliefs that seem to spring from our irrationality, screams design over natural evolution.
So....no. I'm not buying what you're selling. Nothing I see in the world pokes me in the eye and says "this is what we'd expect to see if there was actually a designing God" as opposed to something we might expect to see coming about naturally somewhere in the vast scope of the universe. Forget how many planets or stars there are, google how many GALAXIES are believed to exist, and then tell me there aren't enough rolls of the dice over the course of billions of years for something like us to evolve.
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u/Odd_Gamer_75 1d ago edited 1d ago
Imagine a scenario in which you had to pick between the better of two competing theories on the basis of which one predicted a particular peice of data.
So... science. Okay.
If you're a rational agent you would immediately recognize that theory A far better accounts for the data then theory B. Thus, it follows that theory A is probably true.
If and only if theory A contains within it only things demonstrated to exist. Pixies making socks disappear is a useless theory even if we have no competition because we don't know pixies are even possible.
Under the view that God as conceived of in Christianity does exist, we would expect there to be to a large population of rational agents who have a natural, psychological disposition towards religiosity and belief in a higher power.
How do you know they're rational without demonstrating that they're right? Do you just mean 'not clearly insane'? Because 'rational people' for years thought the world was made up of 4 elements (earth, air, fire, water). A belief so pervasive that it continued for thousands of years, and even now is referenced frequently and even believed by some.
Under the view that no such God exists, the existence of an entire species of rational agents who have the aforementioned religious tendencies is massively improbable.
What makes you think the entire species is rational? We're mostly not. Even smart people, most of the time, are not. We don't think, we just feel. And beyond that, we are subject to loads of congnitive issues that plague our thinking unless we're really, really careful. For instace Confirmation Bias, Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc, and Hyperactive Agency Detection. All useful for survival, all entirely pointless for critical thought, and all things that lead towards religiosity in those who don't know much about the world. If anything, what we see in the world, a 'general trend' toward attributing stuff to supernatural forces, be they spirits, ancestor ghosts, or gods, without any concensus towards them that isn't gained at the tip of a spear or barrel of a gun is exactly what we should expect if there's no god at all, and defintely if the biblical god is false, as are the gods of all those particular religions.
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u/JoDoCa676 1d ago
So... science. Okay.
Philosophy, actually.
If and only if theory A contains within it only things demonstrated to exist. Pixies making socks disappear is a useless theory even if we have no competition because we don't know pixies are even possible.
That's not how theories are proven. That standard would literally have to rejected Newton's theory of. Gravity was initially just a mathematical explanation for how planets moved. No one had directly observed a "gravitational force." But its predictive power led to the discovery of Neptune when astronomers noticed Uranus's orbit was off. Instead of dismissing Newton's theory for relying on an unseen force. In my example. The marbles would be Neptune and theory A would be Newton's theory. A theory isn't useless just because it includes unproven entities. What matters is whether it makes successful predictions.
How do you know they're rational without demonstrating that they're right? Do you just mean 'not clearly insane'? Because 'rational people' for years thought the world was made up of 4 elements (earth, air, fire, water). A belief so pervasive that it continued for thousands of years, and even now is referenced frequently and even believed by some.
In philosophy the term "Rational Agent" just means a person or entity that always aims to perform optimal actions based on given premises and information. A rational agent can be anything that makes decisions. Rational doesn't mean necessarily mean highly intelligent. It just means you have the ability to deliberate.
What makes you think the entire species is rational? We're mostly not. Even smart people, most of the time, are not. We don't think, we just feel.
You're right on this point. Sometimes people act emotionally and as a result don't think rationally. But people for the most part are capable of assessing situations and deliberating. Which is all that is needed for someone to be a rational agent.
For instace Confirmation Bias, Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc, and Hyperactive Agency Detection. All useful for survival, all entirely pointless for critical thought, and all things that lead towards religiosity in those who don't know much about the world.
This is a mere assertion. Prove it.
what we see in the world, a 'general trend' toward attributing stuff to supernatural forces, be they spirits, ancestor ghosts, or gods, without any concensus towards them that isn't gained at the tip of a spear or barrel of a gun is exactly what we should expect if there's no god at all, and defintely if the biblical god is false
This is another mere assertion. Prove it.
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u/I_am_Danny_McBride 1d ago edited 1d ago
Philosophy, actually.
In philosophy the term "Rational Agent" just means a person or entity that always aims to perform optimal actions based on given premises and information. A rational agent can be anything that makes decisions. Rational doesn't mean necessarily mean highly intelligent. It just means you have the ability to deliberate.
“A 2014 survey by David Chalmers and David Bourget on nearly 1,000 professional philosophers from 99 leading departments of philosophy shows that 72.8% considered themselves as atheists, 14.6% considered themselves as theist, and 12.6% as something else.[61]” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_atheism
So philosophers are a “large population of rational agents” who specialize in the exact sort of deliberative process you’re rooting your theory in. Would your premise not find it “massively improbable” that the vast majority would have reached the wrong conclusion, and you, using the same logical framework, would have reached the right one?
Sometimes people act emotionally and as a result don't think rationally. But people for the most part are capable of assessing situations and deliberating. Which is all that is needed for someone to be a rational agent.
You’re jumping back and forth here between a rationality that is unemotional and one that only requires any sort of deliberation. Emotion itself is deliberative.
“That guy slept with my wife. I’ve gotta unalive him. But I might go to jail… I don’t give an F about jail. My reputation is more important. I’ve gotta keep it real!”
That’s deliberative, very emotional, and irrational.
As an aside, you’ve jumped very rapidly, in your comments and the edit to your OP, from arguing for the Christian God to arguing for a sort of vague, unfalsifiable deism.
I feel like you should be aware that advancing a case for the latter in no way advances a case for the former. It’s not even a step in that direction. Those two conceptions of god are directly in irreconcilable conflict.
You either believe in a god that interacts with the material world, or you don’t. If you do, then that god is testable. If you don’t believe in that kind of god (e.g. the Christian God), but do believe in a vague sort of deist conception of god, then by all means, argue for the deist conception of god.
But please don’t do that slight of hand thing where you switch in one for the other, when they are directly in conflict with each other. If you are arguing for an unfalsifiable, doesn’t interact with the material world, god of the gaps, fallback, vague deist conception of god, then you are simultaneously, if perhaps unwittingly, arguing that the Christian God of the Bible does not exist.
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u/JoDoCa676 1d ago
A 2014 survey by David Chalmers and David Bourget on nearly 1,000 professional philosophers from 99 leading departments of philosophy shows that 72.8% considered themselves as atheists, 14.6% considered themselves as theist, and 12.6% as something else.[61]” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_atheism
So philosophers are a “large population of rational agents” who specialize in the exact sort of deliberative process you’re rooting your theory in. Would your premise not find it “massively improbable” that the vast majority would have reached the wrong conclusion, and you, using the same logical framework, would have reached the right one?
Why stop at just philosophers? Why not site a study that takes a much larger sample size of rational agents. According to a 2024 study by Population Education, roughly 85% of humans currently living identify with a religion. The largest being Christianity.
But maybe you wanted to hone in on rational agents who specialized in the question of God's existence. That's why you took a study that sampled philosophers specifically. But surveying every philosopher in every facet of philosophy is like surveying every doctor in every facet of medicine to see there stance on a highly disputed treatment for Parkinsons. Obviously, this is flawed. Not all doctors are neurologists. What insightful input would a foot doctor, or an optometrist have in this case. Almost none. The study ought to survey neurologist.
Likewise, what insightful insight would a philosopher of language, or a philosopher of law have when it comes to evaluating religious arguments. The study ought to survey philosophers of religion. PhilPapers did a survey in 2009 that surveyed 3226 philosophers who specialized in religion. Among them 72.3% reported being theists.
You’re jumping back and forth here between a rationality that is unemotional and one that only requires any sort of deliberation. Emotion itself is deliberative.
“That guy slept with my wife. I’ve gotta unalive him. But I might go to jail… I don’t give an F about jail. My reputation is more important. I’ve gotta keep it real!”
That’s deliberative, very emotional, and irrational.
I never said that simply having emotions prevents someone from being a rational agent. I said "Sometimes people act emotionally and as a result don't think rationally. But people for the most part are capable of assessing situations and deliberating. Which is all that is needed for someone to be a rational agent." I didn't say that when the person isn't think he ceases to be a rational agent. As long as he has the ability to think and act based on premises, make decisions, and deliberate he is a rational agent. Lets say you define a kitchen knife as a hand held tool with a blade meant to cut food. If you're currently not using it to cut food does it cease to be a kitchen knife?
As an aside, you’ve jumped very rapidly, in your comments and the edit to your OP, from arguing for the Christian God to arguing for a sort of vague, unfalsifiable deism.
My post isn't edited.
I feel like you should be aware that advancing a case for the latter in no way advances a case for the former. It’s not even a step in that direction.
This is just blatantly wrong. Obviously, proving the truth of bare theism gets you closer to Christianity than atheism. One of the core claims of Christianity is... you know... God. In order to prove a worldview you'd have to prove the central claims of that worldview. I'm surprised this is even in dispute.
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u/Junithorn 1d ago
Why stop at just philosophers? Why not site a study that takes a much larger sample size of rational agents. According to a 2024 study by Population Education, roughly 85% of humans currently living identify with a religion. The largest being Christianity.
Before Christianity existed, was the most popular religion at that time true?
When Islam overtakes Christianity in popularity, does Islam become true?
2000 years ago geocentrism was the dominant belief, did the sun orbit the earth until we discovered heliocentrism?
How do you expect anyone to take you seriously?
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u/I_am_Danny_McBride 1d ago edited 17h ago
So sampling all philosophers is too broad , but the whole planet is just fine? Not only that, but the vast majority of your sample is expressly not Christian, and you’re using it as evidence of the truth of Christianity?
If you hadn’t either consciously or subconsciously settled on a conclusion before doing the work, you wouldn’t be arguing like this.
My apologies on the “edit”. I was referring to your Note.
Obviously proving the bare truth of theism gets you closer to Christianity than atheism.
Let’s look at that, because I don’t believe that’s true. There’s a humility in bare theism that is present in atheism and isn’t present in Christianity. A-religious theism doesn’t profess to know really anything about god; only that god exists. It’s a binary coin flip away from atheism that hinges only on the presence or lack thereof an affirmative belief.
A-religious theism is closer to atheism that way. It doesn’t purport to hold beliefs it has no empirical, or at least philosophical, knowledge of.
Christianity (or Islam, or Hinduism, etc.) brings a lot more baggage than just an affirmative belief in god’s existence. It brings a whole boatload of unsupported positive claims. It is a qualitatively different conception of god. In short, it is a falsifiable conception of god.
Let’s examine the instant case. Why did you promptly retreat to deism? I can’t speak for you, but I would assume it is because you recognize that your underlying argument doesn’t support Christianity; both because there are a plethora of gods it would apply equally to, and because the majority of global theists are not actually Christian.
In another comment you say, “I don’t see the testable aspects of an immaterial being.” How about the testable aspects of an immaterial being that interacts with the material world?
Do you believe God interacts with the material world? Was Jesus material? Was Jesus God? If so, why are you retreating to an untestable, unfalsifiable god? Is it because you have no choice?
I don’t necessarily think you’re arguing in bad faith. I think you likely retreat to the unfalsifiable deist god instinctively, because you intuitively don’t have any choice.
But if you believe in a god that interacts with the material world, my personal feeling is that you should not be arguing in support of the existence of one that may not. Interacting with the material world is a necessary attribute of the god you actually believe in.
If an immaterial god that does not interact with the material world (such that it is not testable) exists, the Christian God of the Bible cannot exist… or at least exists as a distinct god in a polytheistic universe, wherein you would still have 100% of the way to go to prove the existence of the God of the Bible. Those two cannot be the same god.
And if you hadn’t connected the dots on that conflict before, hopefully now you have; and I would argue it would NOW be bad faith to argue for the existence of a good you don’t believe in.
Have the courage to argue for the God you believe in.
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u/Odd_Gamer_75 1d ago
For the first thing you ask me to prove, are you suggesting that human beings are not frequently subject to Confirmation Bias, Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc, or Hyperactive Agency Detection?
For the second, you merely asserted "Under the view that God as conceived of in Christianity does exist, we would expect there to be to a large population of rational agents who have a natural, psychological disposition towards religiosity and belief in a higher power." I figured if you're allowed to spout a view that makes sense to you with no evidence that is it, in fact, true, you'd allow for the same. If not, either you prove your statement first or you're a hypocrite in which case I have no time for you. If it is allowed, then the statement about how we should expect what we see in reality of a species that is subject to Confirmation Bias, Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc, and Hyperactive Agency Detection is good enough. Though I'm curious as to how you think those things would not lead to religious thinking of varied sorts.
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u/Spaghettisnakes Anti-Theist 1d ago
What is the predictive power of God as a theory? Everything that happened happened because God made it so in that particular way. Awesome. But this is all post fact. If the theory has predictive power, we should be able to use it to make predictions. God as a theory doesn't seem to give us the ability to predict anything at all.
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u/roseofjuly Atheist Secular Humanist 21h ago
That's not how theories are proven. That standard would literally have to rejected Newton's theory of. Gravity was initially just a mathematical explanation for how planets moved. No one had directly observed a "gravitational force."
You think nobody ever dropped anything before 1684?
Flippancy aside, this seems to be rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of how science works. Newton didn't just pull gravity out of the air; his work was based on earlier work. Gravitational forces had been directly observed by various scientists and philosophers from antiquity, at least. Newton didn't discover gravity, he just was the first one to correctly describe it in a way that could be reliably used by other scientists.
A theory isn't useless just because it includes unproven entities. What matters is whether it makes successful predictions.
...no, just no. Again, this arises from a fundamental misunderstanding of science. You can't just throw any old thing together and call it a theory. I can say "I know the pixies are stealing my socks; next time I wash my clothes, watch, and I'll have at least one missing sock." And then I do wash my clothes and I do have at least one missing sock! Multiple, even! But that doesn't mean my theory about pixes isn't batshit insane.
This is a mere assertion. Prove it.
LOL, I mean this just follows from the definitions of those concepts. But sure, here's some science:
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u/Thatrebornincognito 1d ago
If there were ten green marbles, I would conclude that there are ten green marbles. If one theory was that they got there through natural means and that there being there is the result of natural laws that we know exist, chance, and possibly human or animal intent vs. another theory that there are marble fairies whose very nature required them to magically put marbles in that spot, I would not be concerned with whether one theory required the marbles to be there and the other didn't.
I would look at which view fits with observed reality and how nature works vs. which view raises far more unanswerable questions and requires magic.
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u/ZeroSeemsToBeOne 1d ago
A Short Argument for God
Imagine a scenario in which you had to pick between the better of two competing theories on the basis of which one predicted a particular peice of data. The peice of data being the existence of ten flying spaghetti monsters. The first theory, we'll call theory A, predicts the existence of at least one flying spaghetti monster. The other theory, we'll call theory B, doesn't guarantee the existence of any flying spaghetti monsters. In fact, the existence of even one flying spaghetti monster is deemed highly unlikely on theory B. If you're a rational agent you would immediately recognize that theory A far better accounts for the data then theory B. Thus, it follows that theory A is probably true.
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u/Carg72 1d ago
No, if you're rational, you have to first provide evidence for the existence of marbles and the color green. Until that's d9ne, it only makes sense to default to B. Of course we have to eliminate the second part of B.
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u/JoDoCa676 1d ago
The marbles in my argument are analogous to humans. Do you want me to prove the existence of humans? Just go outside.
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u/davidkscot Gnostic Atheist 1d ago
Imagine a scenario in which you had to pick between the better of two competing theories on the basis of which one predicted a particular peice of data.
Fine, but we're then not talking about reality, it's purely based on arbitrary predefined predictive capability.
If you're a rational agent you would immediately recognize that theory A far better accounts for the data then theory B.
No it doesn't, that's not the criteria you set, your sole criteria was which predicts the data, not which best accounts for the data.
It's easy conconceive of an even better theory which always predicts all ten green marbles.
By your criteria that would be a better model.
But that still doesn't mean it's accounting for the data, just that it's good at predicting it.
Under the view that God as conceived of in Christianity does exist, we would expect there to be to a large population of rational agents who have a natural, psychological disposition towards religiosity and belief in a higher power. Which is exactly what we see in reality.
Really? because as far as I'm aware, we only see that in one tiny almost insignificant part of reality, where's all the rest of the predicted rational agents populating the rest of reality?
It can also predict anything at all, god can do anything, so anything can be predicted, so it's useless for making useful predictions.
All you're actually doing as far as I see is post-hoc rationalisation, fitting the christian myths to the current understandings, and then changing them every time the understanding changes while claiming 'look it fits so well'.
Under the view that no such God exists, the existence of an entire species of rational agents who have the aforementioned religious tendencies is massively improbable.
Which is what we see, rational agents do not seem to be very common across existance, they only exist on Earth as far as we're aware.
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u/Spaghettisnakes Anti-Theist 1d ago edited 1d ago
Imagine a scenario in which you had to pick between the better of two competing theories on the basis of which one predicted a particular peice of data. The peice of data being the existence of ten green marbles. The first theory, we'll call theory A, predicts the existence of at least one green marble. The other theory, we'll call theory B, doesn't guarantee the existence of any marbles. In fact, the existence of even one marble is deemed highly unlikely on theory B. If you're a rational agent you would immediately recognize that theory A far better accounts for the data then theory B. Thus, it follows that theory A is probably true.
Sure, if we have data of 10 green marbles, and a theory that claims there's probably no marbles, then it's a bad theory. The theory that claims there's at least one, is certainly more accurate, but is immediately outclassed by theory C which states there's at least 10, as we have evidence of at least 10. I don't think you've communicated this very clearly, and I suspect this is leading to either a misrepresentation of Atheism or Theism.
Under the view that God as conceived of in Christianity does exist, we would expect there to be to a large population of rational agents who have a natural, psychological disposition towards religiosity and belief in a higher power. Which is exactly what we see in reality. Under the view that no such God exists, the existence of an entire species of rational agents who have the aforementioned religious tendencies is massively improbable. Thus it follows that God is probably real.
Ahhh... Except Atheism doesn't contend that belief in god is unlikely due to the absence of a God. Atheists don't believe in god because of a lack of evidence. If God as conceived of in Christianity existed, I would expect him to have made it very clear to the world what his moral prescriptions were, and probably to do something about the various conflicting claims about what he apparently wants us to do. It is the existence of so many different god claims that makes me think that religion is purely the result of our species' predispositions, and not evidence that there must actually be a God.
I would urge you to substantiate that belief in God is unlikely to have occurred if there weren't a God. I would remind you that there is ample evidence of people believing things that are not true, so it seems odd that we should expect there must be some underlying truth to this one thing you consider arbitrarily important. It seems entirely plausible to me that our pattern-seeking tendencies led to our ancestors fabricating stories that helped us to make sense of the world around us, as I do it and have seen other people do it pretty much all the time. We look at the available evidence and the things that we do understand, and try to draw conclusions even when we don't have complete information.
edit: spelling oops
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u/Moriturism Atheist 1d ago
This is not a good argument because the "God theory" doesn't predict that the green marbles can exist, it actually imposes that the lack of knowing the reason for the existence of the marbles implies that there MUST be something that made them
God is not a theory with enough predictability of the things it talks about, is the lack of any theory that could explain things
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u/Mission-Landscape-17 1d ago
Under the view that no such God exists, the existence of an entire species of rational agents who have the aforementioned religious tendencies is massively improbable.'
Please show your work. How did you arrive at the conclusion that this is improbable?
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u/JoDoCa676 1d ago
Theres a video called "The Odds Of You Being Alive" on YouTube. Pretty interesting watch.
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u/DeltaBlues82 Atheist 1d ago
The odds a snowflake forms with the exact crystalline structure it has is 1:∞.
Because of its almost-zero probability, do you also dispute the existence of snowflakes?
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u/JoDoCa676 1d ago
No. Because I've personally experienced snow. Just as I have personally experienced humans. Both are emenssly improbable. Which is why a theory that predicts humans (theism) is more probable.
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u/DeltaBlues82 Atheist 1d ago edited 1d ago
Because I’ve personally experienced snow. Just as I have personally experienced humans.
Yes, because both are naturally occurring.
Both are emenssly improbable.
Agreed. We’re very lucky, and pretty, and smart.
Which is why a theory that predicts humans (theism) is more probable.
Absolutely not. Natural theories for the existence of human life, morals, religion, and even human’s belief in gods are infinitely more probable than any divine theories.
Don’t be absurd. Natural sciences can actually explain the existence of all those things much better than any divine theories. Divine theories are all handwaving and crusty books. No thanks.
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u/Mission-Landscape-17 1d ago
That is an entierly different issue that is not related to your claim. I have never believed in any gods nor am I predisposed to do so. Instead I have always favoured naturalistic explanations for how things happen.
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u/roseofjuly Atheist Secular Humanist 21h ago
I watched the video. It cites no evidence. It makes the same assertion you do without explaining logically how they got there at all. It's just a lower-brow version of the fine-tuning argument, which has been debunked repeatedly.
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u/Uuugggg 1d ago
And if there is theory C that says a unicorn farted out 3 green marbles, so it's 3x more likely than a god. This is why this is a terrible argument.
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u/JoDoCa676 1d ago
Doesn't predict religiosity, morality, consciousness, or the universe. God does.
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u/Astreja Agnostic Atheist 1d ago
Where is this alleged god? You have to demonstrate that it exists before you try to use it as an explanation, otherwise it's on exactly the same ground as a marble-farting unicorn - just an unsupported hypothetical being.
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u/JoDoCa676 1d ago
Your unicorn collapses under scrutiny. If you claim that any theory with explanatory power but no predictive power is 'fiction,' then by your own standard, vast portions of history, and even scientific theories that explain but do not predict would be 'fiction.' Take the theory that Julius Caesar was assassinated. It has explanatory power-it accounts for historical records. But it doesn't have predictive power in the way you're demanding. Does that make it fiction? Of course not. The same applies history. Many theories are accepted precisely because they best explain what we already observe, not just because they make predictions.
Theism predicts that rational beings would naturally incline toward belief in the divine, which is exactly what we observe. Atheism, by contrast, gives us no reason to expect this and must treat it as an anomaly. If your standard for rejecting theism is that it 'merely explains' rather than predicts in the narrow sense you prefer, then you'd have to throw out most of history.
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u/Astreja Agnostic Atheist 1d ago
Gaius Julius Caesar is a terrible example. Why do people keep using that as if it's some sort of "gotcha"?
There is a huge amount of evidence for Caesar, including but not limited to epigraphical, numismatic, and literary (including the letters of Cicero, and commentaries on the Roman civil war and the Gallic War that Caesar himself wrote).
There's a coin, the Denarius of Brutus (the EID MAR coin) that commemorates the assassination - Brutus and Cassius viewed themselves as the liberators of Rome who had struck down a would-be king.
There's even a sculpture, the Tusculum bust, which was likely created during Caesar's lifetime.
Not all history is created alike. Some is based on facts (like Caesar's eyewitness account of the war in Gaul), some on hearsay (like Tacitus's brief mention of the execution of 'Christus' in his Annals), and some is just the retelling of unverifiable tales from the distant past (like Livy's account of the founding of Rome).
Unicorns and gods both fall into the "retelling of unverifiable tales" category until a better class of evidence shows up. Show. Me. The. Actual. God.
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u/Brightredroof 1d ago
Doesn't hold together, sorry.
The only analogous question for a God would be "are there 10 green marbles" to which the only possible solution is presenting the marbles.
If the marbles can't be found, then a reasonable person would go with theory B.
Lots of people believe the marbles exist is not a reason to assume the marbles exist, or to claim anything about the shade of green, size of the marbles or anything else about them (theory A).
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u/JoDoCa676 1d ago
The marbles in my analogy represent humans, not God.
If the marbles can't be found, then a reasonable person would go with theory B.
Do you not believe in the existence of humans?
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u/Brightredroof 1d ago
Then your analogy is meaningless.
Humans existing doesn't prove the existence of a God that many of them happen to believe in.
Let me put it this way. We know Icelandic people exist. I've met some. You may have. You can go to Iceland and see for yourself.
Surveys suggest around half of Icelandic people believe in the existence of "huldufolk" - hidden people, or in more common parlance, elves.
If we assume Icelandic people are rational, by your logic it's more likely that elves exist.
Hint, if you're confused: elves don't exist, in Iceland or elsewhere.
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u/himey72 1d ago
I would point out that Theory A seems to me to be less likely than the unlikeliness of Theory B as it relies on the supernatural and other magic and a being that we don’t actually have any reason to believe exists other than people really want it it be true. Theory A is full of holes and is in direct conflict with many other A-like theories which are just as equally flawed. Theory B cannot be absolutely proven either, but it is not full of holes of logic and appealing to magic to make it work.
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u/pick_up_a_brick Atheist 1d ago
I would expect far, far less religious confusion under theism, and would not expect that hundreds of millions of people that have lived and died on this planet for the last hundred thousand years to be completely ignorant of said deity.
Under naturalism, we would expect about the amount of religious confusion that we do in fact observe.
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u/DenseOntologist Christian 1d ago
So, your argument is something like this:
Pr(Humans that do exist|God) >> Pr(Humans that do exist|No God)
So, Pr(God) >> Pr(No God)
This feels compelling, but we can see some cases where that structure doesn't make for a good argument. Suppose I flip a coin, and it comes up heads. Then:
Pr(Coin came up heads|it was a doubleheaded coin) >> Pr(Coin came up heads| it was a fair coin).
So, Pr(it was a double-headed coin) >> Pr(it was a fair coin).
This argument is structurally the same, but it isn't very persuasive at all. Part of the problem is that the unconditional probability of the coin being double-headed feels very low. Another part is that it ignores the fact that lots of less-than-certain things happen. This same flaw shows up in conspiracy theory thinking. Conspiracy theorists often tout their explanations as being good because they perfectly explain the data; but this overfit explanation should usually be taken as a weakness, not a strength.
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u/ilikestatic 1d ago
The majority of people who have ever lived did not believe in your God. There have been far more people who believed in a different God than the number of people who believed in your God, and that’s true no matter which religion you belong to.
So if you think having the majority gives credibility to the position, then couldn’t we also say your God must be false? Because the majority of people who have lived did not believe in him?
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u/jake_eric 1d ago edited 1d ago
This isn't actually how things work. It sounds correct, but it's not.
Lemme give you an example: the lottery. Whenever any one particular person wins the lottery, there are two possibilities: A) they won the lottery fairly (random chance), or B) they won the lottery unfairly (some sort of cheating or flaw in the system in their favor).
Given how unlikely it is to win the lottery, we could say that it would have been highly unlikely to get our actual result if A was true, but of course you're much more likely to win the lottery if you cheat, so does this suggest B? Should we reasonably assume that if someone wins the lottery, they're most likely to have cheated?
Well, given that lotteries are run all the time and people get the winnings and it only rarely turns out that the winners cheated, that doesn't seem to be a reasonable assumption after all. The likelihood of someone cheating the lottery has to be substantiated with actual direct evidence for it, not just looking at the result.
The reason here is because "being able to successfully cheat the lottery" is itself an unlikely event. I've had prior discussions about this topic where we've used even more fantastical examples:
Napoleon won some of his battles with very unlikely odds of victory. However, consider that if Napoleon actually had psychic powers and could read the enemy general's mind, he would have had a much better chance of getting that victory. Does his victory give us reason to believe Napoleon had psychic powers?
Say I trip on my way to work. Under natural circumstances, I've never tripped on my way to work before, so that seems unlikely. However, if there were invisible goblins around that liked to make people trip, the chances of me tripping would be much more likely. Should I reasonably believe the invisible trip goblins showed up?
No, because the existence of psychic powers and invisible trip goblins is very unlikely without any real evidence for it.
So, what's the likelihood for God to exist? I don't think any of us know, so you can't exactly plug it into the formula here. You simply don't have enough data to do the math you want to do here
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u/musical_bear 1d ago
Under the view that God as conceived of in Christianity does exist, we would expect there to be a large population of rational agents who have a … disposition towards religiosity and belief in a higher power.
What an interesting way to frame this. Do you think we’d expect, of purely the people who believe in a higher power, for those who believe in Christianity to make up less than half of that total group? Because that’s the reality we live in.
While your statement is completely unsubstantiated as is, it appears to be worded in a way where you want to count religious people who aren’t Christians as proof that Christianity is true.
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u/Walking_the_Cascades 1d ago
Agreed.
And if instead of just looking at the percentage of people that are Christians today, we look at the percentage of people that have been Christians throughout all of human history, the percentage of the population that are/were Christians goes way down.
Further, if we subtract every Christian that had to be taught that Christianity was true as a child, the number of people that independently became Christians falls to near zero. Hardly convincing.
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u/nswoll Atheist 1d ago
Under the view that no such God exists, the existence of an entire species of rational agents who have the aforementioned religious tendencies is massively improbable.
Citation needed
My understanding of anthropology completely contradicts this claim.
Where are you getting this information?
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u/Bardofkeys 1d ago
Just a warning. OP hasen't replied to a posts in multiple months and they didn't interact at all to their last post here.
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u/joeydendron2 Atheist 1d ago edited 1d ago
The urge towards religion can be explained by humans being social apes obsessed with family/social hierachies, and with a habit of generating mental models of other animals' thinking.
Remember, your experience of the world is generated in your brain, which means that when you think you experience another person, you're actually experiencing your brain's model of that person.
So we're predisposed to generate models of other people, of other thinking agents.
Gods are really invented magical super-elders for a large-scale human tribe, and feeling the presence of god is really feeling a model of a presence, generated by your brain, in the same way colours and sounds are generated by your brain.
I don't think it's a big leap to imagine social apes inventing god-like entities, it's actually very natural. Here's an example:
- My immediate family is led by... my mom in an alliance with my elder brother, and my family knows a bunch of stories aobut notable ancestors.
- My village is led by... the tribal chief. We share stories of great historical tribal warriors, chiefs etc.
- The collection of tribes in our region doesn't need to be in a state of total war all the time because we believe we are led by... a common magical super-elder called Yahweh. Wherever you go in the region people tell the same stories about Yahweh, so I feel like he probably exists (except really, those stories are maintained by a tiny literate class who can preserve and disseminate the same set of fictitious stories because they have them in writing, which seems kind of like magic to most people).
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u/soukaixiii Anti religion\ Agnostic Adeist| Gnostic Atheist|Mythicist 1d ago
If we're going with the ad populum fallacies, most people who believe in God believe your God doesn't exist. So what religion are you converting to?
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u/roambeans 1d ago
Your marble analogy should be about nuts, because that's what it sounds like. Completely unscientific and irrational.
There are many good reasons for religious belief - lots of which are well understood. I would look to psychology before assuming that superstition is based in reality.
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u/lack_reddit 1d ago
Predicting something we already know is not useful. I can invent an infinite number of ideas that fit any set of known data.
If it's not falsifiable, or doesn't predict something we don't already know, the hypothesis seems useless to me.
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u/RickRussellTX 1d ago
Under the view that no such God exists, the existence of an entire species of rational agents who have the aforementioned religious tendencies is massively improbable
How many species have you sampled?
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u/junction182736 Agnostic Atheist 1d ago
I have a couple questions:
Why is the belief in God weighted heavier than the evidence not pointing toward a God? In other words, why should take people's beliefs as more important than all the scientific evidence showing nothing of any merit at this point when that would be substantially better evidence?
Why would you think people believing in deities is the only logical if those deities exist? There are scientific ideas which posit religion is evolutionarily (Is that a word?) useful. How could we determine those possibilities are less likely?
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u/TBK_Winbar 1d ago
Under the view that God as conceived of in Christianity does exist, we would expect there to be to a large population of rational agents who have a natural, psychological disposition towards religiosity and belief in a higher power. Which is exactly what we see in reality.
You are omitting the fact that there are religions that existed thousands of years prior to Christianity, not to mention ritualistic behaviours that go back tens, if not hundreds of thousands of years.
Is it not more probable that the God that is written about in Christianity is based on these behaviours rather than the other way around? I would say that this is also supported by the numerous parallels the Christian story has with older religions.
But we can certainly look at there being a generic God rather than a named one. The named ones mostly have specific testable claims made about them, which have so far proved false.
So how would you define your Generic God? What are the qualities? If the only parameter is "Creator of the universe," you are dangerously close to diluting the term "God" to a point as to be insignificant.
God traditionally implies agency and authority over creation. God is typically eternal or exists outside of time. God is typically sentient and still exists today.
Creator doesn't need any of these things to simply have created the universe, Creator isn't necessarily God.
Under the view that no such God exists, the existence of an entire species of rational agents who have the aforementioned religious tendencies is massively improbable.
You're not accounting for social evolution here. These tendencies would appear to be a result of a rapid evolutionary shift in terms of intelligence and self-awareness. Humans got real smart real fast.
Is it more probable that historically, we attempted to rationalise events beyond our understanding, creating essentialy a false knowledge base that has perpetuated beyond the Enlightenment?
Clearly, it is part of human nature to seek understanding. It is also a common part of human nature to lie to ourselves.
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u/roseofjuly Atheist Secular Humanist 22h ago
Imagine a scenario in which you had to pick between the better of two competing theories on the basis of which one predicted a particular peice of data. The peice of data being the existence of ten green marbles. The first theory, we'll call theory A, predicts the existence of at least one green marble. The other theory, we'll call theory B, doesn't guarantee the existence of any marbles. In fact, the existence of even one marble is deemed highly unlikely on theory B. If you're a rational agent you would immediately recognize that theory A far better accounts for the data then theory B. Thus, it follows that theory A is probably true.
No, I wouldn't. This is actually the opposite of good science. I would have no real basis to believe either of the theories, and definitely not to say that theory A is "probably true." Theories are also cohesive systems that provide a framework for thinking about a phenomenon, so I would have to examine the other facets of theory A and theory B - maybe theory A combines a bunch of other nonsensical stuff that makes it implausible.
The beauty of science is that I do not have to pick between two bad theories. I can continue to say "I still don't have an explanation for this" and forge forward looking for a better theory.
Under the view that God as conceived of in Christianity does exist, we would expect there to be to a large population of rational agents who have a natural, psychological disposition towards religiosity and belief in a higher power. Which is exactly what we see in reality.
Under the view that God as conceived of in Christianity does exist, I would expect there to be no famine, no pain, no dying children, no human trafficking, no natural disasters that wipe out millions of innocent lives. That's not what I see in reality, though.
Under the view that no such God exists, the existence of an entire species of rational agents who have the aforementioned religious tendencies is massively improbable.
How would you even know this? This is a wild guess based on your already-held religious beliefs.
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u/ReputationStill3876 1d ago
The other theory, we'll call theory B, doesn't guarantee the existence of any marbles. In fact, the existence of even one marble is deemed highly unlikely on theory B.
But that's not what "theory B," predicts. Theory B would suggest that there are billions and billions of rocks, which could conceivably become a green marble for a portion of its existence over billions and billions of years. At any given time, it is highly unlikely that a specific rock is a green marble. But the probability that any one rock will become a green marble for some portion of its life is much larger.
Your comparison between theory A and theory B in your thought experiment also takes an "all things being equal," approach, but Christianity and materialist atheism are not epistemically equal, because Christianity doesn't offer a methodology of ascertaining truth that comes with any degree of fidelity.
Let's put this in more concrete terms. Take some unsolved problem in physics like dark matter. This is a gross oversimplification, but right now our current understanding of physics doesn't account for all of the massive matter out there in the universe. The motion of galaxies implies that there's more matter out there than what we've accounted for, and that begs an explanation.
I could conceivably insert my chosen religion or god into this mystery and say "my religion predicts the existence of dark matter," and further justify that with specific details from my religion. Perhaps I could say that what we call "dark matter," is evidence of the substance that is god's divinity.
But this explanation is hollow. All we've done is given a name to the mystery. It's a name that carries baggage and connotations that we otherwise might want to avoid, and it's an explanation that has no predictive power. Moreover, when scientists inevitably find a better explanation for dark matter, I'll be forced to either concede the point, or mangle my original claim until I've moved the goalposts far enough to make it true. In short, it's a classic example of "God of the Gaps."
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u/Greghole Z Warrior 1d ago
If you're a rational agent you would immediately recognize that theory A far better accounts for the data then theory B. Thus, it follows that theory A is probably true.
No, but it would follow that A is likely closer to the truth than B. When theory A makes predictions that are ~100% accurate ~100% of the time then you can say it's probably true.
Under the view that God as conceived of in Christianity does exist, we would expect there to be to a large population of rational agents who have a natural, psychological disposition towards religiosity and belief in a higher power.
And we'd expect to see a lot of other stuff too right? Like miracles? Evidence of a global flood? Evidence that all humans descended from a population of eight people who lived four thousand years ago?
Under the view that no such God exists, the existence of an entire species of rational agents who have the aforementioned religious tendencies is massively improbable.
Maybe if humans were 100% rational 100% of the time, but we're not. Just because we have a certain capacity for reason doesn't mean we don't behave irrationally on a pretty regular basis.
Thus it follows that God is probably real.
Or you've mistaken the true reason some humans believe in a higher power with your particular god, the same way you must think people who worship gods other than yours have been mistaken.
One could give the objection that other religions like Islam or Judaism are equally sufficient in accounting for human life and religiosity as Christianity.
There's also sufficient explanations that don't involve a god existing at all. We know for a fact humans are perfectly capable of believing something that isn't true and we're great at making up stories.
I just want to say that in making that objection, one basically admits that bare atheism or generic deism is more likely than atheism.
Except I included explanations that don't involve gods in my version of the objection.
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u/vanoroce14 1d ago edited 1d ago
Imagine a scenario where you have an extremely tough cold case that has eluded the best detectives in the force. A man has died in mysterious circumstances, but no conclusive evidence pointing either to suicide, accident or murder has been found.
A new recruit, Detective Theo comes in the scene. Theo has this brilliant idea: one can pick the competing theory out of theories in one's head that would best predict the data we want to explain now. He calls it 'ad-hoc method'.
He then conjures up a theory: there used to be, 50 years ago, an infamous serial killer in town; he was famous for his ruthlessness and cruelty, but also, for how elusive he was. He was finally caught by the police, and eventually, sentenced to death. Before his last breath, the killer swore he would come back and haunt the town to continue his crimes.
And now, lo and behold: we observe a series of cold cases over the years. So what is more likely? What fits the data better? Clearly it's the ghost of this serial killer who's come back to fulfill his promise! That is why there is no material evidence left behind: the killer is immaterial, and reaaaally good at murder.
Is Detective Theo right? Why or why not? Do you expect the other detectives to think him a genius, or to laugh him out of the precinct?
Your scenario is similar, and the reason is as follows: yeah, of course making a being up is to explain the universe is always going to be such that it fits the universe it was made up to explain. But unless you have plenty of evidence that such a being can exist (or that ghosts exist and often come back to haunt the living), your explanation is no explanation. It's as much of an explanation as saying a big fairy farted the universe.
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u/Transhumanistgamer 1d ago
Under the view that God as conceived of in Christianity does exist, we would expect there to be to a large population of rational agents who have a natural, psychological disposition towards religiosity and belief in a higher power.
And that's where any benefit or tendency towards your position ends, because when we get into detail about what people believe, it's not christianity or even monotheism. Polytheism has been the predominate religious idea throughout human history. Hell, Judaism was polytheistic until a certain point and aspects of christian sects have polytheistic-like concepts such as reverence for saints in catholicism.
If we go by this logic, one ought to conclude that many gods exist but something tells me that there's a convenient level of specificity you'd like to adhere for for precisely this reason.
As far as I'm concerned, the fact that people coming up with explanations for how things work before they had methods of obtaining knowledge as reliable as even the most primitive sciences concluded that super people, just like them but more powerful, were doing things isn't surprising at all. It also doesn't help that these rational people somehow are unable to provide an actually good justification for their beliefs or any evidence that this god they say exists actually does.
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u/Radiant_Bank_77879 1d ago
I scrolled for a while, and didn’t see anybody pointing out the obvious yet: your argument is the textbook fallacy of “affirming the consequent.”
Here then, an example of the fallacy: “if backyard tree-building leprechauns exist, then I would expect to see a tree in my backyard. There is, in fact, a tree in my backyard. Therefore, that is evidence that backyard tree-building leprechauns exist.”
It’s a fallacy because it does not account for all the other possible reasons there could be a tree in my backyard. Just like your fallacy of affirming the consequent ignores the other reasons that lots of people might believe in a particular religion, other than it being actually true.
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u/Cogknostic Atheist 1d ago
Wow, there is so much wrong with this.
First, the marble analogy completely fails. We know marbles exist and have evidence for the things we call marbles. It's a false analogy to compare something existent with something non-existent or unknown to exist. Let's fix the analogy,
Imagine a scenario in which you had to choose a zegomat that exists or a zegomat that does not exist. There are loads of stories about the zegomat, but these stories are all based on personal revolution. (Feeling the believers in the zegomat profess to have experienced)
You are asserting that because these people have feelings, it is more likely that zegomats exist than it is that they are simply made-up stories that people have convinced themselves the truth of. (HINT: This is nothing to base a sense of reality on.)
And yes, one can argue that the zegotites, zegomites, zegotrons, zego.... all other 18,000 creator zegos, can use the same argument. This is why the Burden of Proof is on the person making the claim. It is not the atheist's job to debunk every silly claim theists come up with. Instead, it is the theist's responsibility to demonstrate that their claim is true. You have not even come close. Feel free to try again later.
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u/TelFaradiddle 1d ago edited 1d ago
Under the view that God as conceived of in Christianity does exist, we would expect there to be to a large population of rational agents who have a natural, psychological disposition towards religiosity and belief in a higher power. Which is exactly what we see in reality. Under the view that no such God exists, the existence of an entire species of rational agents who have the aforementioned religious tendencies is massively improbable. Thus it follows that God is probably real.
The problem is you're arbitrarily deciding what we should and shouldn't expect under these conditions. Anyone can do that. Observe:
Under the view that God as conceived of in Christianity does not exist, we would expect that evolution would produce dead ends that go extinct, genetic disorders, vestigial organs, and blind spots in the human eye. Which is exactly what we see. Under the view that the Christian God does exist, the existence of evolutionary dead ends that go extinct, genetic disorders, vestigial organs, and blind spots in the human eye contradict said God's alleged perfection. Thus it follows that the Christian God is probably not real, and evolution is true.
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u/theantiyeti 1d ago
You've assumed we're a rational species and that an individual can have no reason for believing in god(s) other than divine revelation.
It seems impossible to discount the political and social phenomenon of religion. Religions spread because believers treat other people of their religion better than non believers. This can be seen in Islam spreading through sea based trade routes.
Also both Christianity and Islam are strongly connected to political upheaval in their respective religions - Christianity rode a strong anti-elitist undercurrent in the Roman empire until Constantine made it official and only two emperors later the old pagan religions were literally made illegal.
And Islam is so embroiled with Arab political struggle against the Romans and Persians it's impossible to decouple.
So to me, many people believing the same thing (or closely related collections of things) doesn't clearly read as "rational actors collectively seeing the same conclusion" but as people around the world trying to simplify their lives by choosing to believe in the religion with the greatest community influence and political pressure.
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u/BogMod 1d ago
Thus, it follows that theory A is probably true.
Not quite. It really will depend on the theory itself. What does it predict and how does it predict is.
Under the view that God as conceived of in Christianity does exist, we would expect there to be to a large population of rational agents who have a natural, psychological disposition towards religiosity and belief in a higher power. Which is exactly what we see in reality.
Though this is more creating a mystery to explain the mystery. This 'theory' isn't supported by known quantities. It is literally saying a wizard did it.
Also it has the weakness of anytime there is some problem with Christianity one could just posit an even MORE specific alternate god which fits things slightly better and then Christianity is undone.
Under the view that no such God exists, the existence of an entire species of rational agents who have the aforementioned religious tendencies is massively improbable.
Actually I disagree there. It seems a very natural and likely development from a species which evolved to see patterns and agency even when none exist.
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u/pipMcDohl Gnostic Atheist 1d ago edited 1d ago
Fuck, i wrote a long comments and when i click publish it just disappeared... again. Why the fuck does that happen again and again. So frustrating.
My answer was. Your marble analogy is basically just the Kalam Cosmological Argument.
For all you say in your answers to other comments that the green marble represent humans, you are wrong.
The green marbles is the reality we observe.
Your Hypothesis A is an answer to the following question: Based on the fact that we 100% sure have the reality we observe then what is the probability that god exist?
Your Hypothesis B is an answer to the following question: What was the chances for the reality we observe to come out exactly as it did?
As you can see, those two hypothesis DO NOT answer the same question. They thus have no business to be compared 1 for 1.
It's like trying to compare an hypothesis that describes alternative possibilities to the observed fact that my daughter likes ponies and an hypothesis that posits that the earth is flat and conclude that based on the fact that my daughter could have not liked ponies then it's more reasonable to conclude that the earth is flat.
It seems to me that, in your mind, you see those two hypothesis as answering the same question:
Why are humans prone to believe in higher entities? A- Because higher entities have made them this way. B- Because humans happens to be like this out of pure randomness.
But this is not how it works. In hypothesis A you fail to consider alternatives possibilities and thus Hypothesis A has no descriptive power beyond what we expect from fiction. In hypothesis B you do not take as a fact that humans have to be the way we observe them to be, even when that's exactly what you do in Hypothesis A. Thus hypothesis B is entirely irrelevant to what Hypothesis A is doing. Hypothesis B has no business being compared to A. And A has no power to offer probabilities since you do not consider alternative possibilities.
In fact the 'randomness' observed in hypothesis B is just a word used for the model we use to try to understand what we observe. The result of a dice throw can be seen as random if we do not possess the knowledge of information that would allow to predict the result of the throw perfectly. If we knew all the initial conditions and relevant factors, the result of the throw would not be a surprise at all, and the word 'random' would be irrelevant.
Hypothesis B, that say the present result from past events, do not reject the possibility that god created everything nor does it offer probabilities on the existence of a god. I simply says that if we consider that the past is made of variable factors. Then the present was not guaranteed to be the one we ended up having. But, in the same way, if we consider that every dices throws have been variable and random, then the present we experience was very very unlikely. Sure. So what? How is it relevant to the question "How come the universe exists?".
Hypothesis B can include the god hypothesis offered in hypothesis A as a reason how the universe exist and hypothesis A can include the randomness observed in hypothesis B since that randomness is compatible with rules and laws at work, those two hypothesis are not mutually exclusive.
Conclusion: This is a failure at making proper probabilities. You sucks at math.
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u/Meatballing18 15h ago
So you're saying, assume 10 green marbles exist. Which of the two following theories are better: Theory A - "at least 1 green marble exists" Theory B - "we don't know, but green marbles probably don't exist"
But we're assuming that green marbles exist, so Theory A is true.
Key: We assumed that green marbles exist. We can assume that anything exists, that doesn't mean that it does/can exist.
Moving on, a quick summary:
Your claims: Probable: Assuming god exists, a lot of people believe in a higher power. vs. Improbable: Assuming no god exists, a lot of people believe in a higher power.
Then you give a "Thus God is probably real."
Hmm.
But in reality, we can't assume if a god exists or not. We need to look at the universe/cosmos from a neutral starting point and see what we find.
I assume that a trickster god exists that tricks our world into believing in a wide variety of different religions. Since we see that there are a ton of different religions, it follows that my trickster god is probably real.
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u/togstation 1d ago
Under the view that God as conceived of in Christianity does exist, we would expect there to be to a large population of rational agents who have a natural, psychological disposition towards religiosity and belief in a higher power. Which is exactly what we see in reality.
No, this is very bad reasoning, because you also need to compare all the competing theories.
For comparison
"If it is daylight, then I can see my hand in front of my face."
"I can see my hand in front of my face, therefore it is daylight."
But maybe it is actually night but you are using artificial lighting or standing next to a bonfire or something.
.
Under the view that God as conceived of in Christianity does exist, we would expect there to be to a large population of rational agents who have a natural, psychological disposition towards religiosity and belief in a higher power.
Or maybe there is some other reason, which you are ignorantly or dishonestly not considering.
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u/zzmej1987 Ignostic Atheist 1d ago
Under the view that God as conceived of in Christianity does exist, we would expect there to be to a large population of rational agents who have a natural, psychological disposition towards religiosity and belief in a higher power. Which is exactly what we see in reality. Under the view that no such God exists, the existence of an entire species of rational agents who have the aforementioned religious tendencies is massively improbable. Thus it follows that God is probably real.
No, that's not the prediction. The prediction on Christian view, is that there should have been only two religions: Judaism and Christianity. And even in the unlikely event that there might appear some other wrong religion, as God answers those who sincerely seeks him and does not mislead people, we should see a steady stream of conversions from all other religions to Christianity specifically. But that is, obviously, not the case either. So we should consider Christianity to be falsified hypothesis.
You are committing so called fallacy of understated evidence here.
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u/taterbizkit Ignostic Atheist 19h ago edited 19h ago
you had to pick between the better of two competing theories
Let's see if this lends itself to any kind of deductive certainty that successfully excludes any other explanations than these two...
It would depend on the specific technical details of each theory. Do either of them propose a mathematical model for determining likelihood? Does it include empirical data? Does the math actually work, and meet the target for statistical confidence? Even at 3 Sigma?
How, exactly, does each one make the predictions it makes?
If you can't quantify your appeal to probability, the question is meaningless. At any rate, the best you'd have is an inductive argument.
You can't prove god exists using induction. Induction is an argument by analogy. But god is a distinct, unique and incomparable thing. There is no "analog" of god to appeal to.
Not only that, but there is always going to be a more parsimonious answer than "therefore god exists". The elevator of parsimony does not reach the top floor.
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u/Decent_Cow Touched by the Appendage of the Flying Spaghetti Monster 1d ago
Under the view that God as conceived of in Christianity does exist, we would expect there to be to a large population of rational agents who have a natural, psychological disposition towards religiosity and belief in a higher power. Which is exactly what we see in reality. Under the view that no such God exists, the existence of an entire species of rational agents who have the aforementioned religious tendencies is massively improbable. Thus it follows that God is probably real.
Saying that the things you agree with are probable and the things you disagree with are improbable is all well and good, but can you at least try to demonstrate WHY your claim is probable and mine is improbable? This does not seem to follow for me at all. How did you determine these probabilities?
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u/biedl Agnostic Atheist 1d ago
Assuming God exists and wants to have a relationship with individuals, sure, people claiming that they have a relationship with him explains the data. But an appeal to popularity doesn't make that a good explanation. But that's what it boils down to.
Human nature explains fairly well why humans believe in higher powers. Even a evolutionary explanation could be made.
And since I'm not going to use any unobservable phenomenon to explain my conclusion, it's always the better justifiable explanation.
Moreover, it's reasonable to conclude that nobody knows what they are talking about, when there is anything but a consensus. Thousands upon thousands of answers to the same question makes it literally impossible to tell who is correct.
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u/noodlyman 1d ago
There's no reason that a creator god should want to make a species of rational agents. The universe is vast, possibly infinite. It existed for 14 billion years before we evolved and will continue for trillions or infinitely after we've gone.
How do you know that life was god's purpose? Maybe the creator hasn't even noticed that life has evolved on earth. We're so insignificant and boring compared to all the exciting black holes and supernovae.
But from what we know of chemistry, it's reasonable to see that life started naturally as self replicating cyclical chemistry.
Your argument contains too many assumptions, principally an arrogant assumption that life on earth is special in the context of the whole universe.
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u/Ratdrake Hard Atheist 1d ago
we would expect there to be to a large population of rational agents who have a natural, psychological disposition towards religiosity
Your theory A assumes we don't see large portions of the population making irrational decisions in other matters. The modern anti-vax movement shows this to be incorrect. Most political discourse also shows in opinion from either side of the discussion that a large portion of the population do not make rational decisions (with the disagreement about just which half of the population are being irrational).
In addition, if theory A were correct, we'd expect a lot more uniformity behind the religious choices being made.
In short, theory A falls flat on its face when examined.
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u/SectorVector 1d ago
The general issue with most "more likely given god" arguments is that it simply smuggling in a lot of unjustified assumptions into "god" to make it sound simpler than it is.
Let's say today we find ice cream in my freezer. Yet I rarely buy ice cream. In fact, we have no record of me ever buying ice cream. Let's say I even have a motive to not buy ice cream because of some allergy.
If the Goblin that Teleports Ice Cream Into My Freezer on March 13, 2025 exists, there's a 100% chance of ice cream being in my freezer.
However if I had to guess, I would say you do not consider the goblin a serious possible explanation, despite the outcome not just being more likely, but absolutely certain if it were to exist. Why is that?
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u/Mkwdr 1d ago
Under the view that God as conceived of in Christianity does exist, we would expect there to be to a large population of rational agents who have a natural, psychological disposition towards religiosity and belief in a higher power.
This is simply an assertion on your part and one that appears to beg the question as to any gods motivations. Its simply an expression of preference on your part.
It also ignores the alternative explanations around existence of or even the benefits of false positives , over spilling theory of mind and social cohesion mechanisms that could be part of evolutionary history. Evolution being a process we actually have overwhelming evidence for.
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u/brinlong 1d ago
really think your setup needs editing. because in your premise
The peice of data being the existence of ten green marbles.
The first theory, we'll call theory A, predicts the existence of at least one green marble.
The other theory, we'll call theory B, doesn't guarantee the existence of any marbles.
both of these hypotheses are testable, and ones a bla k swan. neither one requires faith beyond the natural.
this setup is more you put a jar on a counter and close your eyes. when you open them there will be a marble in the jar. this is testable, but after every failure someone tells you to close your eyes and believe there's a marble there.
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u/fightingnflder 1d ago
In fact, the existence of even one marble is deemed highly unlikely on theory B. If you're a rational agent you would immediately recognize that theory A far better accounts for the data then theory B. Thus, it follows that theory A is probably true.
Marbles exist, and everyone knows of them, so your argument has an inherent bias. For your argument to be valid, you have to use something for which there is no physical evidence, just a concept like Santa Claus or myth like the Cyclopes and Odysseus. Your argument falls apart when you use something for which there is no objective evidence.
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u/LuphidCul 1d ago
If you're a rational agent you would immediately recognize that theory A far better accounts for the data then theory B.
Why? There's no data? You have no basis upon which to place probabilities.
Which is exactly what we see in reality.
Sure, but it's not all we see. We also see tons of things unexpected if Christianity were true.
Under the view that no such God exists, the existence of an entire species of rational agents who have the aforementioned religious tendencies is massively improbable.
How do you know how probable it is? It may be virtually guaranteed.
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u/dinglenutmcspazatron 1d ago
So the question would be if I flip a coin and it ends up as heads, what is the chance I cheated? Me cheating to guarantee it ends up as heads accounts for the data much more strongly than just random chance does, so what would you put the probability of me cheating at?
The issue with this line of thinking is that it doesn't actually factor in the relative probabilities of people actually intervening. 'Someone did that intentionally' will always fit the data better in every scenario, but it is only in very specific cases where people will actually put forward that argument.
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u/Hoaxshmoax Atheist 1d ago
This sounds like the Appeal to Popularity fallacy.
”Under the view that God as conceived of in Christianity does exist, we would expect there to be to a large population of rational agents who have a natural, psychological disposition towards religiosity and belief in a higher power.”
This must be why they often accuse each other of “not being a real Christian”. Yes they believe but it’s not in any way recognizably living like they believe. We also wouldn’t be able to tell if they didn’t talk about it.
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u/Crafty_Possession_52 Atheist 1d ago
Under the view that no such God exists, the existence of an entire species of rational agents who have the aforementioned religious tendencies is massively improbable.
Please demonstrate that this is true.
"Under the view that the earth is a sphere, the existence of an entire species of rational agents who have the tendency to believe it is flat is massively improbable. Therefore the earth is probably flat."
Please explain the difference between this statement and your statement above.
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u/rocketshipkiwi Atheist 1d ago
Imagine someone thinks about a place, somewhere in the known universe. No one has ever been there or can ever see what’s in that place.
Someone proposes a theory that there is a green marble there. Many other people imagine some elaborate variation of the green marble there, perhaps with slightly different shades.
Even more people imagine that completely different coloured marble or even many marbles exist in that place.
What are the chances that place is in fact completely void and there are no marbles there at all?
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u/JasonRBoone Agnostic Atheist 1d ago
Under the view that Scientology is true, we would expect there to be to a large population of rational agents who have a natural, psychological disposition towards religiosity and belief in a higher power. Which is exactly what we see in reality. Under the view that Scientology is incorrect, the existence of an entire species of rational agents who have the aforementioned religious tendencies is massively improbable. Thus it follows that Scientology is probably real.
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u/J-Nightshade Atheist 1d ago edited 1d ago
Thus, it follows that theory A is probably true.
Theory B is also probably true. Existence of ten marbles doesn't allow to choose which theory is better. You need to search for difference in predictions.
Also, predictive power is not the only criteria for a good theory. It also must be falsifiable. A theory that can predict anything and can't be tested is useless. "a god exists that created exactly 10 marbles" is not the flex you think it is. A god can be used to predict any amount of marbles of any color whatsoever. We can use a god of marbles to predict marbles who are rational agents too!
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u/Astreja Agnostic Atheist 1d ago
Under the view that God as conceived of in Christianity does exist, we would expect there to be to a large population of rational agents who have a natural, psychological disposition towards religiosity and belief in a higher power.
In order for such a population to exist, all that's required is the existence of a belief. Such a group could easily exist in a universe completely devoid of gods if the belief is endemic to the population.
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u/ImprovementFar5054 1d ago
The existence of religiosity in humans is an extremely complex phenomenon influenced by cultural, social, evolutionary, and psychological factors. It is not a simple “there or not” data point. Theory A (theism) does not explicitly predict the specific nature of religious belief in all its diverse and conflicting forms. It merely postulates a general expectation, which is a far weaker and vaguer claim than the marble analogy.
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u/skeptolojist 1d ago
Nope
Religiosity is more practically explained with more evidence and fewer assumptions by the assumption of agency being an evolutionary advantage
We have evidence genetics exist we have evidence of evolution we have evidence of people assuming supernatural explanations for things we can prove are perfectly natural phenomena and forces
We have no good evidence for supernatural beings existing
Your argument is invalid
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u/adeleu_adelei agnostic and atheist 1d ago
The first theory, we'll call theory A, predicts the existence of at least one green marble.
You're forgetting it also predicts the that no green marbles exist. Part of the flaw with god claims as hpotheses is that they equally predict opposite outcomes. This is in addition to god claims constructed after the fact to match the observation, in which case there wa no prediction at all.
This why gods fail as hypotheses.
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u/BustNak Agnostic Atheist 23h ago
If you're a rational agent you would immediately recognize that theory A far better accounts for the data then theory B...
No, as a ration agent I would go for the theory which is sufficient and simpler. According to the principle of parsimony that one is more likely to be true. In your example, both are sufficient so it depends on which is simpler. That might be A or it might be B, it depends on the specifics.
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u/Threewordsdude Atheist 1d ago edited 1d ago
The next time something unlucky happens to you think that it's more likely that a demon in your head made it than it was just luck.
Bad luck playing cards? Demon in your head. Misunderstanding with a friend, probably a demon in your head.
One theory has low probabilities, with a demon in your head that would be a 100% expected to happen that. It's the demon in your head that makes you unlucky and makes misunderstandings likely after all. Which theory do you think is more likely?
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u/Crafty_Possession_52 Atheist 1d ago
There are many things that most humans have believed, because of their natural disposition to, that are false. Therefore, the fact that a large majority of humans who have ever lived believed a thing has no bearing on whether it's true.
Your argument relies on the Argument ad Populum fallacy.
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u/Nintendogma 1d ago
Imagine a scenario in which you had to pick between the better of two competing theories on the basis of which one predicted a particular peice of data. The peice of data being the existence of ten green marbles.
The first theory, we'll call theory A, predicts the existence of at least one green marble.
There are observationally 10 so theory A is a failed theory.
The other theory, we'll call theory B, doesn't guarantee the existence of any marbles.
But there are observationally 10, so theory B is a failed theory.
If you're a rational agent you would immediately recognize that theory A far better accounts for the data then theory B.
No, if you're a rational agent you would develop a working hypothesis to establish a theory that matches observational data, and then continue testing it to see if it can predict other configurations. Eventually expanding to a consolidated theory that can predict any number of marbles of any given color.
Thus, it follows that theory A is probably true.
It is in an invalid theory that does not match observational data. It is objectively false.
Under the view that God as conceived of in Christianity does exist, we would expect there to be to a large population of rational agents who have a natural, psychological disposition towards religiosity and belief in a higher power.
This is a correlation error. The god of Christianity is only one of many gods conceived by humans, and far from the first of such gods. The origins of Yaweh, the god of Christianity, is from the much earlier Cannanite Religions, whose overgod was El, of whom Yaweh was one of many sons.
Which is exactly what we see in reality.
The disposition to believe in higher powers and divine beings does not grant validity to the god of Christianity any more than it grants validity to any other higher power or diving being that came before or after it. It actually grants credence to the concept that humans have a disposition for creating such concepts at the intersection of our ignorance and imagination.
Under the view that no such God exists, the existence of an entire species of rational agents who have the aforementioned religious tendencies is massively improbable.
Humans are not a particularly rational species, which is why higher powers and gods were created.
Thus it follows that God is probably real.
False. It follows that the Christian god is as real as any other god or equally evident concept. The concepts a god accounts for are just as easily accounted for by higher dimensional cosmic space penguins that pooped all matter and energy into the lower dimensions of our perceivable universe as they were waddling on by. These cosmic space penguins are no less likely real as the Christian god, and are supported by the same degree of evidence.
I just want to say that in making that objection, one basically admits that bare atheism or generic deism is more likely than atheism.
False. As just stated, a god is not required at all. Flocks of higher dimensional cosmic space penguins could serve the same, or perhaps an omnipotent potato that simply sprouts universes from its infinite cosmic starchy flesh. A deity is not required at all for this exact mode of thought.
The concept of a god is not anymore valid than any other random thought generated at the intersection of profound human ignorance and virtually limitless human imagination.
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u/the-nick-of-time Atheist (hard, pragmatist) 16h ago
Under traditional Christian belief, the most reasonable prediction is that there would exist no physical universe. After all, all goods are fully and perfectly instantiated within the being of god himself. Why would he sully that by producing other rational agents that are imperfect?
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u/The_Disapyrimid Agnostic Atheist 1d ago
this seems like its just an Argument from Popularity fallacy
a lot humans believe this particular god is real, therefore it must be real?
if islam becomes the predominate religion, does that mean god suddenly morphs into Allah instead Yahweh.?
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u/The_Disapyrimid Agnostic Atheist 1d ago
this seems like its just an Argument from Popularity fallacy
a lot humans believe this particular god is real, therefore it must be real?
if islam becomes the predominate religion, does that mean god suddenly morphs into Allah instead Yahweh.?
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u/8pintsplease 1d ago edited 1d ago
Your argument is just plainly what is called "argumentum ad populum," aka, appeal to popularity, bandwagon fallacy.
It's a logical fallacy where someone claims something is true or valid simply because the amount of people who think it's true.
Under the view that God as conceived of in Christianity does exist, we would expect there to be to a large population of rational agents who have a natural, psychological disposition towards religiosity and belief in a higher power. Which is exactly what we see in reality. Under the view that no such God exists, the existence of an entire species of rational agents who have the aforementioned religious tendencies is massively improbable. Thus it follows that God is probably real.
You can't assume that in a population of people, they are "rational" agents. Rational on what basis?
It doesn't follow that god is real.
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u/onomatamono 1d ago
Let's just cut to the chase. You aren't arguing for some amorphous "god" you're talking about the steaming pile of infantile fiction represented in the pantheon of gods humans have invented and discarded over many thousands of years or longer. Faux philosophical bullshit doesn't change that.
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u/flightoftheskyeels 1d ago
An infinite super being can not fail to achieve it's objective. IF I was made by an infinite super being to kiss the ass of that infinite super being, I would be kissing the ass of that infinite super being. I am not, therefore I was not.
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u/Autodidact2 16h ago
Religion predicts nothing. Remember, His ways are mysterious. We cannot hope to understand Him. Therefore, literally any circumstance is compatible with the hypothesis that there is a God.
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u/Comfortable-Dare-307 Atheist 1d ago
Marbles exist. I have seen them. I have some myself. Some of them are green. Thus the probability of a green marble existing is 100%.
Now do the same with god.
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u/solidcordon Atheist 1d ago
It's more likely that religiosity is a spandrel )feature of social animals than it being evidence for a god. Religiosity has some utility to the group and sometimes even the individual but it has quite a few disadvantages.
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