Finding the right gap
There’s been a discussion of agnosticism in comments at Pharyngula, with Stephen Novella offering some attempted clarifications. I think agnostics or “agnostics” of the Mark Vernon type have muddied the waters. Not knowing doesn’t have to be some mushy compromise between theism and atheism; not knowing really does matter.
That’s central to all these “what would it take to convince you of god/the supernatural” questions – often the examples offered are of things it would be very hard or impossible for people to actually know. If a 900 foot Jesus appeared – well, appeared where? And how would anyone know it was Jesus? And what about all the people who didn’t see it, because they were ill in bed, or in prison, or stuck in a collapsed mine? For them it would be hearsay. But there would be videos. Yes but videos aren’t the same thing. And so on. It’s really hard to think of something that everybody could know about first-hand. Magic tricks with a particular word in every book and magazine in the world, for instance, wouldn’t work, because how would anyone know that?
What we can and can’t know really does matter.
The question should therefore be more limited. “What would it take to convince you that there are good reasons to believe in god/the supernatural?” That would be a lower standard, because the reasons wouldn’t have to convince you, but you could agree that they could reasonably convince other people. That question is more like asking, “What would be a better gap than the ones people point to now?”
All you would have to come up with would be something hard or impossible to explain given our current knowledge, without having to agree that you yourself would be forced to agree that it convinced you that god/the supernatural exists.
This is helpful because it’s hard to think of anything that really forces that conclusion. It’s always possible to think “but I could just think I might be hallucinating, so I would never be really convinced.”
Unless you simply make that part of the thought experiment, in which case it becomes true by definition. Let’s stipulate that, then. Yes: if there were something that forced me to believe despite thoughts of hallucination, then yes, I would believe.
We could say that the experience would be such that it made the hallucination possibility unreal – that I could mouth the words, but not actually believe them. But saying that is itself mouthing words. We can’t know that there is such a thing, or that there could be. Maybe there could, but we don’t know.
Tricky, isn’t it.
As Richard Dawkins says, “think of the bandwidth.” It doesn’t have to be a 900-foot Jesus; it could very well be your own personal 900-foot Jesus, one for every human, dog, cat, flower, and bacterium on Earth. Everyone is saved, hallelujah!
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I recall that a few years back when a pope (John 23?) was visiting Ireland, a man dashed out in front of him yelling and claiming to be Jesus Christ returned to Earth.
Mr Christ was bundled away by the police and papal security, and disappeared.
So how would anyone know it was Jesus? Dunno. But if he was not dived on immediately by the cops, he would probably be a fake.
But it is trivial for omnipotent, omniscient God to convince me to believe. He need merely desire that I believe, and it will be so.
Since he hasn’t, and I don’t, I can only conclude that either he isn’t, or he won’t (i.e. he doesn’t want me to believe, in which case Christians proselytizing to me are going against God’s express will!).
This may just about convince me: ‘make me God’
If others need convincing how about: ‘make everyone God’
Although as I think the baddie said in The Incredibles ‘once everyone’s super, then no one will be’
I think this makes you a Calvinist… :-)
I think we, as atheists, miss a good opportunity for outreach with the stance that we would never accept the divinity of an entity willing to prove his omnipotence. Trivially, the stance virtually proves our close-mindedness to the faithful. But more importantly, we would squander a wonderful avenue for ridicule.
We should say that we would accept a True God with open arms and welcome hearts, but a True God would have to prove His/Her worthiness for our worship to a much higher standard than the Abrahamic religious have settled for all these years. A God worth worshiping, we should say, must be a God who is:
* Not hidden and always available
* Earns our devotion not through fear but by the constant miraculous improvement of our lives and our world
* Answers our prayers directly, immediately, and beyond our expectations
* Eliminates world hunger, suffering, environmental degradation
*Etc
The point being that anything less is a tin-horn god we would be foolish to accept. This could be an on-going campaign of ridicule – whenever current events demonstrate the absence of a Providential deity, atheists should remind the public that we, at least, are still waiting for a Real God to make His appearance.
Omnipotence means infinite power. I don’t know how one can prove infinite power in finite time/space.
I realize there’s a risk of seeming dogmatic and closed-minded to theists, with all this skepticism – but I can’t help it: when I think about it, so far I always see a place where I would (if I have the kind of mind I have now) find room for doubt. I can’t agree that I would be convinced if I’m not sure I would be. I can agree that I would be amazed and baffled and wildly curious – and that I would think belief was one option – and similar, but I can’t agree that I would definitely be convinced.
To me, an equally interesting question would be to our theist interlocutors: What would convince you that there is NO god?
I have never received a coherent response to this question. I know, you are shocked!
Suppose someone invents a time viewer that allows you to see the past. This device is vetted by whoever tries it because it shows them moments of their past. If then say you find that the events occur exactly as described in the Bible wouldnt it convince you of some sort of existence of something that people term as supernatural/God? It need not convince you that there is an omniscient/omnipotent being , all it need convince you is that the statement “There is no evidence for God (=1/3Jesus)” is now no longer as valid as it used to be.
Tulse,
Actually, I don’t think it does, outside of goofy theology/apologetics based on certain dopey medieval obsessions.
An almighty God isn’t generally one with infinite power, just one with plenty of power and “all the power” in any relationship, in practical terms. Whether that power is literally infinite, or includes absolutely all abilities, is not generally the point of what makes an “omnipotent” god seem particularly awesome or worship-worthy. What mostly matters is that he’s way bigger than you, the biggest and baddest god around, and able to do pretty much what he wants because he’s the 800-pound gorilla of gods.
I don’t think infinite power is really part of anybody‘s real definition of God, even if they describe Him/It that way. That criterion would just fall by the wayside if God popped up and turned out to just be plenty powerful. (E.g., powerful enough to create and control the universe, and way more powerful than everything else put together.) If the Rapture happened, but God turned out not to be quite infinitely powerful, I really doubt that many Christians—even fundies or obsessive theologians—would say God he didn’t meet the definition of “God,” so he wasn’t really God. They’d say “oops, my mistake.”
That may be what matters practically for a worshipper, but surely that isn’t sufficient, as it means that superpowerful aliens would qualify as gods. Heck, Donald Trump is far more powerful than me — does that mean I should worship him?
That may be what matters practically for a worshipper, but surely that isn’t sufficient, as it means that superpowerful aliens would qualify as gods.
No, because infinitude isn’t what distinguishes a mere powerful alien from a comparably powerful god.
(I guess you missed my previous examples, e.g., how Aphrodite doesn’t need a powerful brain scanning and rewiring machine to make you fall in love.)
Gods have supernatural essences that allow them to manipulate or embody high-level things fairly directly. (Where “supernatural” basically means not reducible to nonmental and nonteleological stuff.) Mere aliens don’t.
Doh, the first sentence there was from Tulse, the rest is my response.
Jiffy W:
I don’t know if you meant that at all seriously, but I think it’s more wrong than right.
Most people do believe they have a supernatural aspect (a soul) and even supernatural powers, in a funny way. They think they have immaterial souls that can influence matter. (At least in the sense of souls that can influence their brains/bodies and make them act with free will, and usually a bit more than that, e.g., able to perceive the Divine Presence with supernatural ESP under some circumstances, et.)
If I believed that sort of thing, I could also believe that given more of the supernatural stuff, and at least one major supernatural ability, I could literally be “a god.”
If I found out I had amnesia about my godliness, and rediscovered my supernatural ability to, say, will people to fall in love, or bless or curse people with Good or Bad Luck, I might be convinced that there really gods and that I was one of them, except for lingering doubts about my sanity and whether I was being punked by alien or Matrix supertechnology.
Of course, if everybody found out that they too were gods, after a while we might stop using the unqualified term when describing each other—not because we weren’t gods, but because it just wouldn’t be remarkable. (As it’s not remarkable for traditional dualists that they are souls stuck in bodies. It goes without saying.)
I wouldn’t be surprised if we did casually call each other gods in certain contexts where it’s relevant, e.g., when describing each others’ supernatural superpowers. E.g., at a cocktail party, “Jim here’s a War god; Jane there’s a goddess of Wisdom. I’m a god of Lolcat captioning—all the best lolcats were done under my influence. What are you a god of?”
I think part of the problem here is that the Bible god is clearly neither omnipotent nor omniscient nor omnipresent and frankly is a total arse; he’s roughly what you’d get if GW Bush had magic powers.
Then centuries of academic theology have dressed up various god-concepts involving omnimax. I don’t think these concepts are even coherent.
Which is why I’ve decided my atheism is mythotheism: I think gods are fictional characters. The only place they ever turn up is in people’s imagination. Asking for convincing evidence of their existence is the wrong question because it’s like asking for evidence of the real existence of Eliza Bennett from Pride and Prejudice- we’re talking about an entity which we know somebody made up.
Deepak,
The vetting would be unreliable because people’s memories are unreliable. There would be false negatives and false positives, and no one would know how to sort them.
And then what would seeing the past mean anyway? Would you see through your own eyes at the time? Or would you look on as an extra observer (which would mean you wouldn’t be able to confirm your own memory even supposing your memory to be accurate)?
It’s an interesting idea but incredibly tricky. The idea of viewing the past is itself tricky – would you be seeing what one person can see, or would you be seeing some vast panorama as if from a great height?
@Ophelia
Well I didnt want to say Time Machine because people would throw Hawkings at me.
The details of the device arent important because isnt the topic what would convince you (and is a time machine that much less credible than a 90 ft jesus!) – Id guess evidence of the past is one thing that would go towards convincing me.
I still dont know why one would *worship* God though even if he existed.