The Deconversion of Anthony (Part 3)-Of Arguments And Theoretical BS

Fair warning-this is a rather dry piece with a few arguments broken down and distilled. It's to be read in context of the series as I build a description of the "deconversion of anthony" series. May require readiness to slap yourself so you don't doze off now and then. Or maybe you will find some interestign tid bits. also if you read all through, a magic stalk will deliver a beautiful case of money at your door step!!I swear, I swear, I swear

There are times in a man's life when all he believes is shaken. When what  once was sacrosanct is stripped bare and examined again. In the examination, the mind is pulled about and the body aches almost as if in a wrestling match. And of course there is not bigger opponent, no more worthy a foe than the faith you've had from days of yore(My apologies, I'm feeling quite old timey)

In any event, it's months down the road and now I'm knee deep in the arguments for and against the existence of a deity. An argument which , as of September 11,  has begun to take more and more of center stage with the parties of God claiming that the so-called new atheists are defacing religion by equating the very worst acts committed in the name of their beloved with the moderate and loving brethren who follow the one true way. The new atheists in turn have argued that religion is no longer under any special protection from criticism and have used science , reason and evidence to hack away at the ancient branches of belief.

It's in this battle that I begun to wade and eventually got submerged and just now appear to be making my way out of the fray.

Basically,as I struggled to hold on to my faith, I found and examined the strongest arguments for the existence of God which are too extensive to be talked about with any considerable exhaustiveness here but can be found on Wikipedia and the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy to name two places.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arguments_for_the_existence_of_God)

There are many arguments for God, and so far I've found they are all apologetic and most rest a derivation of the major arguments I will try and lay out here as well as why i don't believe them. Basically though  the major arguments are ontological, cosmological and teleological.  I will throw in a few moral arguments and personal experience arguments  that I have found are used a lot-

The (Kalam) Cosmological argument.

This is basically a first cause argument  Positing that there is no infinite regress of events, it's postulated that there must be an initial cause that started everything. anyone familiar with aologist superstar William Lane Craig will know this is his favorite argument. 

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause of it's existence.
2. The universe begun to exist
3. Therefore , the universe has a cause for it's existence. 
   
   
   Now the first assumption Craig claims as a metaphysical intuition since we all know from our experience of the world that "things don't just spring into existence un-caused ".It is dangerous to ascribe the characteristics of our terrestrial experience to the universe because causality does not necessarily apply to the universe at large-take for instance the bizarre world of quantum mechanics in which particles appear out of 'nothing'!!
   
   
   Also, what is this first cause, why must it be a mind or a God?All the work is still ahead f you to prove that this is a being with thoughts and one that is concerned about what you will do in your bedroom tonight .

The Ontological Argument.

This is one of the oldest lines of argument . It is outrageous, mystifying and  a great example of the limitations of language can allow for what seems to be sense to be uttered when in fact it is gibberish  To his credit, Aquinas, that great champion of Catholic reason and philosophy, rejected it . It's more like an illusion than a persuading argument. I doubt many have ever been convinced by it. As stated by Anselm it goes as

1. Assumptions: Our understanding of God is a being than which no greater can be conceived.
2. The idea of God exists in the mind.
3. A being which exists both in the mind and in reality is greater than a being that exists only in the mind.
4. If God only exists in the mind, then we can conceive of a greater being—that which exists in reality.
5. We cannot be imagining something that is greater than God.
6. Conclusion: Therefore, God exists.

Counter-Since this is a summary, all i can say is I agree with Hume's criticism of this because you cannot prove a being exists by a priori reasoning. The idea of God does not imply his existence and besides the conceptions of our minds are not real, they are abstract concepts and they do not necessitate existence even though we may conceive them. This is just bad logic because ascribing necessary existence to a being using the same logic  as saying  a triangle must have 3 sides is ridiculous. You assume what you are trying to prove. FAIL

Teleological (Design) Argument

Here we find the Anthropic principle which states that the conditions at the big bang were in such a way that had they been different, life as we know it would not have arisen. It implies an order in the universe, a design  and therefore a designer. If any of the forces of the universe like gravity, the strong force, weak force, and constants int eh universe like Planck constant, speed of light etc were different-we wouldn't be here. 

This fine tuning argument is flawed in that it makes an assumption that life could only come about in one way. We have no way of knowing what different constants would derive because we have a sample size of 1. Much int he same way that things are just how they are because if they were not. we would not be here to observe them. There is a semblance of design but that does not mean there is a designer because it's just an analogy and an extension of our experience(If I see a painting I assume a painter. But i make the mistake of not acknowledging that the only reason for this is the painting has different qualities to the rock, where I don't assume there is a rocker- a person that makes rocks. It's the comparison between designed work and naturally occurring phenomena that we can ascertain design but to say everything is designed, you have no basis for comparison to say as opposed that which is clearly not designed.). Complexity is not a sign of design. It is just an assertion with no strong back up. 

Arguments from sacred Texts and revelation

If we concentrate on the Christian faith,we can look at the Bible. It's  claimed that the bible is a collection of the inspired teachings of God and it contains the power of  God. The word of  God is what created life and all in it. It's the source of faith for billions. It's also argued that one cannot simply read the Bible but requires the Holy spirit to reveal the true deeper meanings of the now translated set of over 60 books. 

The problem though is that revelation is by definition only valid to the person to whom the divine has touched. Once it is communicated to another it is now just hearsay. It has no original authority. Anymore than me telling you that I met the president and he told me I could take your land. You would  need proof beyond my claimed revelation. Same for this. It is not valid also especially because there are thousands of revelations going on, from Hitler claiming he was doing God's will to the man who walks up to a beautiful girl after service, loins obstructing his better judgment in professing that the Good Lord has sent him to make an honest woman out of her. 

The Bible makes claims about reality that are so conveniently written off as allegory and then metaphor and then sometimes literal. It's all very suspect given that there are thousands of interpretations and hence several sects of the Christian church. Some claim these divisions don't  matter, well that's just the view of their particular sect. How do they prove that they are right?for a God that doesn't author confusion, there seems to be a lot going on in his house

Higher criticism of Biblical works started by the likes of Spinoza and Hobbes who suggested that looking at the evidence, there's no way Moses could have written the entire Torah, persists to this day with experts not in agreement. Scientific findings over the last hundred years keep dealing heavy blows to the elect of God's interpretations of the Bible. It's shifting goal posts because the positions keep changing and the caveat of "Well, God is mysterious" used to just gloss over huge errors and misinterpretations

Go ahead and read the bible, but come without the predetermined view that it is good and holy but let it lead you on it's own to it's wisdom and holiness.I suggest you will find that it is man that reads these things into the myths and tales in it.  Otherwise we would be appalled by some of the things the creator of the universe does in there. Certainly nothing like the motivational, white washed lovey dovey God we are sold today that wouldn't send people to hell, well depends on where you go for service!!.

The God of the bible is also rather capricious and deplorable. Like in the movie God on trial, one Jewish scribe says, "God is not good. He was just on our side. " I for one am glad that there is little reason to believe that Jehovah is the one true God that we have to spend eternity worshiping. 

Arguments from testimony and personal experience  

These are highly subjective and come usually in the form of miracles experienced, or people saying they have spoken to God, or that the truth of the word just speaks to them. It's about finding meaning, morality and fellowship under the guidance and teaching of Holy scripture. 

My challenge: I do not disagree. Being a Christian gives one purpose and a joy if you really believe that this world was made especially for us, and that the creator of all is inside you and loves you and when you die, you won't die but live on in a perfect body. 

But purpose comes from so many things. Buddhist, secular humanists, Taoists and pagans all have purpose, and love and literature and music, so the purpose argument just shows that people create their own purpose in this life. I digress. 

Testimonies are hard to argue with because they are anecdotal and hold their own access to information about the facts and the narrative is of course colored by their own beliefs. A once sick and now better Muslim will thank Allah, and a Jew in the same situation will thank Jehovah. Besides, rarely are these testimonies of miracles really made after rigorous investigation to ensure it's a valid miracle and not just a misinterpretation of phenomena. I've oft wondered why for example, God won't heal amputees, or the blind. Why is it always things we can't really see, and how come the medical world is not a buzz with investigation into  this seeing how many people are healed at miracle crusades, allegedly?I'm sorry but the burden of proof is heavy on the side of those that claim miracles, experience and testimony as valid forms of argument. Evidence is required.

Moral Argument 

This is an argument based on moral order being evidence for existence of God. Usually stated in such a manner, it seeks to show that objective moral truths exist and as such require God as a basis to give these moral truths authority. It can be stated as follows:

1. Human beings are observed as experiencing morality
2. The best explanation for said morality is a moral law giver , namely God.
3. Therefore God must exist.

The argument is that God is the best explanation for morality. Conscience is also highlighted in other forms of the argument, though using conscience as a firm basis is tricky for moral objectivity given the variations in human conscience to different dilemmas. But let's first look at objective morals being grounded only in God 

First of all we know from evolutionary science and sociology that morality develops naturally over time with intuitions, cultures and behaviors developing to serve the individual and society at large. For the argument to make any ground, it must be demonstrated that morality is indeed objective and commanded by God as the only source. (Divine Command theory). The injection of supernatural causes muddies the waters because we are only learning the sources of our ethics and morality. Morals may well be both objective and subjective, but their objectivity does not necessitate a God, it could be various Gods, it could be evolutionary mechanisms that ensure survival, it could be a mix of both. We should be tentative in going down this route not to make statements and assertions we don't have the requisite evidence to make. If anything, i find that morality is always subjective, this does not mean it is loose enough to change from person to person but it depends upon the subject. The various scenarios that arise call for us to think about the best way to minimize unnecessary suffering or harm and promote well being-because at least we know for the most part, that is what we all want. 

Because it is difficult to digest and think on these issues, it's far simpler to throw the buck to heaven and say, well God will tell us what is right and wrong. Then you find that the God's we worship do evil and by any human understanding should not be obeyed-but then we define them as moral so then good and bad lose meaning and all we become are slaves to their will. We forfeit our humanity to a divinity we don't even know exists for sure. The argument loses me  because we have yet to ascertain any of it's tenants. 

Moving on

Now I have barely scratched the surface, but what is above is just a distillation of the reason why I abandoned my faith and decided to think for myself, to reject Dogma and false hopes unfounded and instead stare squarely at life, the truth of it that can be proved, the things I can see and knowledge I can have. I hope this encourages you to think on these things, and seek out these arguments and rebuttals and decide for yourself. I cannot ask anyone to think like me, only to think through carefully and make up their own mind honestly, like I did and continue to do.  Much more happiness , truth and beauty has come my way because of it.

. And in the last 2 editions, I will tackle the major issue of life as a former believer and also the reason for joy and hope even without a celestial daddy..to be continued 

Read other pieces on the Deconversion of Anthony : Part 1|Part 2|Part 4|Part 5