Quote of the Day, by Mike D
God is nothing more than the biggest argument from ignorance ever devised – an attempt to hastily dismiss mysteries by appealing to a bigger, by-definition-unsolvable mystery.
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God is nothing more than the biggest argument from ignorance ever devised – an attempt to hastily dismiss mysteries by appealing to a bigger, by-definition-unsolvable mystery.
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38 comments:
Mike's blog is one of the better ones out there. That's a hard-hitting quote.
"God is nothing more than the biggest argument from ignorance ever devised"
It seems to me as if this quote exemplifies a lazy way of thinking about god and the arguments for god's existence.
For example, it simply, and rather obviously, *cannot* be the case that "God is nothing more then the biggest argument from ignorance ever devised" for 'god' is patently not an argument. So, the question becomes, *precisely what argument or arguments* for god's existence can be properly judged to be among "the biggest argument[s] from ignorance ever devised"? This question will require a bit more work to answer, since as far as I know *none* of the major arguments for god's existence take the form of an argument from ignorance!
" – an attempt to hastily dismiss mysteries by appealing to a bigger, by-definition-unsolvable mystery."
Now this is a separate issue from the one I addressed above.
Here, the issue essentially is, are we ever justified in positing as an explanation E for some phenomenon P an E that is "more mysterious" than the P it's purportedly explaining?
Now I think we can all agree that "hasty dismissals" of P by any E are worthless, so again if the claim is that arguments for god's existence are instances of such dismissals, then you'll have to point out what specific arguments you have in mind; hence, I'm going to address the more charitable reading of what you said that I provided above. Here, I think it's obvious that it's not the case that we're never justified in explaining mysteries by appealing to mysteries. (A lot of this is going to turn, of course, on just what we mean by the term "mystery," so let me say I'm using the term to mean, roughly, something we currently don't have the conceptual resources to explain.)
For example, I think most of us would agree that it's a mystery as to why anything at all exists. Now let's suppose we someday discover that existence is a brute fact, and that's as far as any explanation can go. Now that's a mystery -- we can't explain *it*, it boggles the mind, it goes far beyond our conceptual resources, but it does explain the mystery of existence.
I love Mike D's blog.
Eric, I read Mike as saying that when one talks about a personal god as causal she is invoking an entity beyond comprehension and therefore is saying nothing about the cause they are referencing.
"God is nothing more than the biggest argument from ignorance ever devised – an attempt to hastily dismiss mysteries by appealing to a bigger, by-definition-unsolvable mystery."
I agree, no one knows how we/all this was created or how it all began, since humans are mostly earth bound and cannot travel very far to explore the universe to look for answers, all man's holy books can only be written as speculation and conjecture.
"I read Mike as saying that when one talks about a personal god as causal she is invoking an entity beyond comprehension and therefore is saying nothing about the cause they are referencing."
Chuck, that may indeed be what he meant; I was only critiquing what he it seemed to me he said.
If you're right about what he meant, however, then it seems to me that it's still problematic. For example, in what sense is god "beyond comprehension"? Not in the sense that we can know literally nothing about him: most Christians would say (and have said) that we can know through reason alone both that god exists and that he has a particular set of properties, and that we come to know more about god's nature, and even about his intentions, through revelation.
Now it's certainly true that no Christian would say that we can know come to know god completely, but that's not necessarily a problem apropos of invoking god as a cause, for I daresay we never possess complete understanding of any cause, whether it's a mechanism or an agent. So I suppose the question is, in what sense is god incomprehensible, and how does this sort of incomprehensibility adversely affect the explanatory power of appealing to god as a cause?
So I suppose the question is, in what sense is god incomprehensible, and how does this sort of incomprehensibility adversely affect the explanatory power of appealing to god as a cause?
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In the sense that it is said that he exists. God existing is what is incomprehensible, in the light of what we know now about the universe.
And this affects the explanatory power of god by completely and totally negating it.
No problem if you can't believe that Eric... with enough time, all people will believe it and understand it including your descendents, so in the long run, it doesn't matter.
For example, it simply, and rather obviously, *cannot* be the case that "God is nothing more then the biggest argument from ignorance ever devised" for 'god' is patently not an argument.
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Arguing for God's existence as you do all the time, is. And that is indeed, the largest argument from ignorance ever.
You knew how it was meant, you hair-splitter for jesus you...
:-)
God is only 'not an argument' to those who accept his existence blindly.
"God existing is what is incomprehensible, in the light of what we know now about the universe.
And this affects the explanatory power of god by completely and totally negating it.
No problem if you can't believe that Eric."
It's not a matter of what I can or can't believe; if you provide me with a cogent argument, I can, I think, come to believe almost anything. I can certainly come to believe that god is incomprehensible, or even worse, incoherent (I once believed just that). So what specifically do we know about the universe that renders the existence of god incomprehensible?
I think it's meant as how people who argue for god are always basically arguing a 'god of the gaps' argument. God is the explanation for everything... until the moment that we prove scientifically that it wasn't god. Then religion backs up and moves the goalposts. For instance now they're backed up all the way to the very moment of creation, where they used to be arguing that god created everything by one single act of will...
They look silly while they do this, but the followers don't seem to notice or care, since they're not interested in facts, only feelings, emotions, beliefs... And those aren't threatened by mere facts and logic.
Sure god is comprehensible... if one can ignore all logic which points away from his existence. And you can. So I cannot sway you, nor you me.
So, see ya later. No more to say. Lol....
The guys miss you, btw. Come home, prodigal son.......
"Arguing for God's existence as you do all the time, is. And that is indeed, the largest argument from ignorance ever."
I have never defended any argument for god's existence that could be categorized as an argument from ignorance.
Sweet!
Think about the way Stephen Hawking's book is rustling the feathers of religious folks. Throughout history, gods were invoked to explain all sorts of mysteries – disasters, famine, disease, the behavior of volcanoes, the complexity and diversity of life, yadda yadda... but now we science to tell us those things.
So what do believers do? They push God back. Evolution explains how we got here? Okay, well you needed God to create life! Except, we're on the cusp of a robust theory of abiogenesis. So what about the universe itself? Don't you need God to explain why the universe exists, or why it is the way it is? Well, modern cosmology says no, you don't.
A pattern should be apparent here: that claiming "God did that!" whenever we don't know the answer to something is just a lazy way to avoid seeking real answers to life's great mysteries.
And, thanks guys for the props on the blog. I never really know if anyone's reading all my ramblings. :D
@ Eric:
I didn't tell Brian to say that...
Really.
"God is nothing more than the biggest argument from ignorance ever devised.."
"Argument from ignorance, also known as argumentum ad ignorantiam or appeal to ignorance, is an informal logical fallacy; it asserts that a proposition is necessarily true because it has not been proven false (or vice versa)."
Seems to me that 'most Christians' would argue that non-believers cannot prove the non-existence OF GOD.
Saying, "God is not an argument.", is debatable.
Are you saying that God is neither a deductive nor an inductive argument?
If so, is this enough to glibly sweep aside the notion that God is an argument at all?
If so, Eric, how would you word the possible meanings that the author may be trying to convey?
(something without 'most Christians' speculations, or your suspicions of what other people, barring the actual author might imagine he's meaning)
Eric,
I guess if a person invokes the mechanism of action for a cause then they understand what that mechanism is.
To understand a mechanism is to isolate its nature.
To isolate a mechanism's nature implies mastery over it (or at least a means to isolate it as a mechanism of action in a form that can be mastered or manipulated).
It seems for one to invoke god as a cause then she must have the ability to isolate and have mastery over god as a mechanism of action.
This type of isolation or mastery seems to contradict an omnipotent god.
How can god be omni-max and at the same time comprehensible to be asserted with certainty as a mechanism of action for anything?
"Throughout history, gods were invoked to explain all sorts of mysteries...but now we science to tell us those things."
The quote John posted referred to arguments, but now you're talking about explanations. They are not the same sorts of things. But I'd also add that scientific explanations in terms of mechanism *do not* preclude theistic explanations in terms of agency, so it's not accurate to suggest that the fact that we have scientific explanations for X precludes theistic explanations for X (or that the scientific explanation contradicts the theistic explanation).
"A pattern should be apparent here: that claiming "God did that!" whenever we don't know the answer to something is just a lazy way to avoid seeking real answers to life's great mysteries."
I agree, we should all avoid such a lazy approach to real mysteries, but that's *not* the pattern the traditional arguments for god's existence follow. They don't move from "we don't know how to explain X" to "god explains X," but from things we do know about X to the conclusion that god's existence best explains X (and such a move is made deductively, inductively and abductively, depending on the specific argument).
"Seems to me that 'most Christians' would argue that non-believers cannot prove the non-existence OF GOD."
Sure, but it's only if the Christian then moves, on that basis, to the conclusion, "God exists" that we have anything like an argument from ignorance, and such a move is almost never made. But, the fact that god's existence cannot be disproved can play a part in an overall cumulative case for god's existence, and my making this claim cannot in any sense be judged to be an appeal to ignorance.
"Saying, "God is not an argument.", is debatable."
No, it's not.
"How can god be omni-max and at the same time comprehensible to be asserted with certainty as a mechanism of action for anything?"
Chuck, I disagree with a few of the moves you make in your argument. For example, you wrote "To isolate a mechanism's nature implies mastery over it (or at least a means to isolate it as a mechanism of action in a form that can be mastered or manipulated)." It seems to me as if I don't need mastery of a mechanism to grasp its nature, but knowledge of it (and only a limited knowledge at that, which is of course the only kind we in fact possess as far as any mechanism is concerned), and that mere knowledge doesn't contradict god's omnipotence. For example, we know a number of things about black holes, but I don't think we have "mastery" over them in the sense it seems to me that you're using the term (though just what you mean by "mastery" here is unclear to me; perhaps if you clarified it a bit I could provide a better response).
My understanding of cause and effect Eric is related to efficacy and therefore my use of "mastery" would be in predictive effects based on a mechanism's causative nature.
I am thinking of "mastery" in the same sense we would ascribe to a health-care clinician.
For example, a rheumatologist may diagnose a patient with rheumatoid arthritis but may not know the exact mechanism of disease. The doctor therefore chooses between an anti-TNF vs. a T-cell co-stimulation modulator. Both are different MOAs. Now, the doctor may not have an exact knowledge of why the drug would or would not work but if the drug proves to be efficacious he can say with certainty what pharmacology is at play when the patient injects the drug. If the drug has a durable response then the doctor can say with confidence the mechanism of disease has a certain pathological basis.
He knows this because he has been able to isolate the molecules and disease at play. They are comprehensible.
"My understanding of cause and effect Eric is related to efficacy and therefore my use of "mastery" would be in predictive effects based on a mechanism's causative nature."
Chuck, I'm not sure about the nature, and therefore about the necessity, of the "predictive effects" element of the account of causation you're defending. Are you limiting predictions to those that we can make about future events through repeatable experiments, or would you include accounts of how we should expect to find (predict) various discretely acquired chunks of data to fit together if such and such a claim were true? It seems to me as if the latter must be included in any robust account of causation, for if it were precluded we could never intelligibly speak about, say, the cause and effect relation that obtained between Lincoln's election to the presidency and the subsequent events of the Civil War. But if we include the latter account, then your "mastery" requirement is satisfied (or arguably satisfied), as far as I can see, by the traditional arguments for god's existence without contradicting god's omnipotence.
"The guys miss you, btw. Come home, prodigal son......."
Brian, (mimicking Brad Pitt in "Fight Club"), "Just [say it], man...Is it a problem for you to [say it]?" Just say it -- *you* miss me too! ;)
@ Chuck:
"It seems for one to invoke god as a cause then she must have the ability to isolate and have mastery over god as a mechanism of action.
This type of isolation or mastery seems to contradict an omnipotent god."
Didn't they tell you? That's what prayer is all about. Mastery over causes.
Eric said,
"...But, the fact that god's existence cannot be disproved can play a part in an overall cumulative case for god's existence..."
while I may have taken this out of context, it demands (at least to my dim comprehension!) a reply:
having said nothing more than "God exists!" is enough to logically stick your foot in the door and demand that atheists cannot prove that there ISN'T a God; it's a scurrilous tactic! and unworthy of a serious philosopher, but it is used repeatedly nonetheless.
Eric,
You said, "Are you limiting predictions to those that we can make about future events through repeatable experiments, or would you include accounts of how we should expect to find (predict) various discretely acquired chunks of data to fit together if such and such a claim were true?"
I'm not getting the distinction. Can you help explain. The Lincoln allusion didn't make any sense to me.
Ed,
You said, "Didn't they tell you? That's what prayer is all about. Mastery over causes."
I read your sarcasm and you make my point. Prayer does not have any probable efficacy.
Chuck, historians uncontroversially speak about the causes of certain events, but these causes are by definition unique: we can't subject historical events in which we attribute causes to agents to the "predictive effects" criterion you proposed *unless* we agree that predictions are not limited to those we can observe through repeatable future experiments that we control. Rather, in such cases we attribute causes by "predicting" what sort of data we'd expect to find as we examine the historical record if such and such a hypothesis were true. But in such cases, our analyses of various causes and our making of predictions doesn't imply the sort of mastery you referred to (and which was the key move in your argument), and thus isn't necessarily incompatible with an explanation that invokes god as a cause. And, since the arguments or explanations that do invoke god as a cause tend to attempt to make sense of preexisting data rather than make predictions about what will happen in the future, this latter understanding of causation is more applicable to such arguments or explanations. I think they key is this: when we attribute a cause to god, we're talking about an agent as a cause, and not about the actions of a mechanism as a cause, and the sort of "mastery" you referred to doesn't seem to me to apply to agent based accounts of causes (think about economics, sociology, history etc. in which we meaningfully discuss agent causation without implying any sort of mastery, as you seem to be using the term, over the agents).
Now I'm still not sure I understand just what you're getting at with the notion of "mastery" you're defending, and just how it's supposed to be in tension, when invoking god as a cause, with god's omnipotence, so if my response seems way off the mark to you let me know where I'm going wrong.
Eric,
Your response doesn't seem off the mark at all.
I think what needs to be further defined is how people invoke god as a cause before my argument could hold.
I assumed it would be as an explanation for a naturlistic observation.
It seems to me you could have a conversation around causation relative to agency that would not imply scientific phenomenology but, even if we were to identify agency causation within a historical context there is a standard methodology to interogate the agency cited to define a hypothesis based on a closed definition of the person relative to what we know to be true of the agency scrutinized.
For example, your Abraham Lincoln illustration relative to the Civil War can be examined through analyzing political documents that identify psychological tendencies where we can draw a character assessment based on what we know to be finite about human beings.
To attribute causation to a god in the same way seems to imply the ability the same for him/her/it but if he is the omni-max christian creator god and humans are his creation then any definitive statement to the effect god plays in anything seems to contradict his category and ours.
I don't see how a finite human being can define the motives of god without undermining god's omnipotence.
It seems to be a metaphysical defeater of itself.
"I think what needs to be further defined is how people invoke god as a cause before my argument could hold."
I agree. This is where things get really complicated, though. I suppose the best way to proceed would be for you to provide an example of an argument or explanation that invokes god as a cause in such a way that the problem you're talking about arises.
Eric
Here's a relevant one. A friend on facebook had a $24 K medical bill taken care of and his instinct was to assert that this was a miraculous event leading him to sing praises as glorificattion to God. I didn't respond because this guy has been through many disappointments and didn't want to piss on his good news but the intellectual response was a skeptical "how do you give god credit for a standard managed care process."
Chuck I agree that your friend almost certainly cannot justify his belief that god directly intervened and caused his good fortune (though I see nothing wrong with praising god in such a case). But let's take his explanation seriously for the sake of argument: How does positing god as a cause in this case come in tension with god's omnipotence?
Positing God as the cause for this presumes you know the mechanism of causation and therefore reduces god's omnipotence to nothing more than a phenomenon eaasily comprehended by human perception. This seems to undermine the vastness implied by onpmnipotence itself due to the certainty defined by a finite brain. If omnipotence exists it should manifest itself in such a way to be incomprehensible to a finite agency. I do agree with you that god praise during the kind of circumstances I cite to be a predictable stress reliever.
"Positing God as the cause for this presumes you know the mechanism of causation"
Well, not the mechanism, but the agent. When I was six or seven years old, word got out around Thanksgiving that we were really hurting for cash, so one day when we came home we found the hallway of our second floor apartment full of bags of traditional Thanksgiving day food. Now I certainly didn't understand anything about physiology (mechanism), but I had no problem attributing the cause of our good fortune to some caring person or some charitable group (agency).
"and therefore reduces god's omnipotence to nothing more than a phenomenon eaasily comprehended by human perception."
Not his omnipotence itself, but any one particular act of god (in your example, help with a bill). I would distinguish what god can do from what he does do; I may only be able to state the former in ways that leave open possibilities I could never imagine, but it doesn't follow from that that I can't understand any particular act. I may not understand the creative possibilities open to a Mozart, but that doesn't mean I can't attribute a particular piece of music to him.
"This seems to undermine the vastness implied by onpmnipotence itself due to the certainty defined by a finite brain."
I'd agree that a finite brain can't grasp the possibilities of omnipotence (except by way of some formulation such as, "the ability to do whatever isn't logically impossible"), but I don't think it follows that I can't come to attribute some particular event to an omnipotent agent.
"If omnipotence exists it should manifest itself in such a way to be incomprehensible to a finite agency."
I don't see why. I can move a fifty pound box from the floor to the counter; an omnipotent being can do so too (by definition). So it's not the case that anything an omnipotent being can do should be incomprehensible to us, for an omnipotent being can by definition do anything I can do, and what I can do is to some degree comprehensible to me.
I can't seem to get a handle on the problem you're raising, so again, if I'm misunderstanding you here let me know.
Eric
All of your illustrations to clarify seem to use human agency as a comparison to god agency. That's where I get confused. I can assess benevolence from human agency because I am human. I know the limits of human potency due to my ability. Not so with god. You are not god therefore your definition of god's omnipotence defined by your human agency seems to attribute potency using a comparitor illegitimate to the claim. To assert god's power within a given circumstance is to reduce god to human potency (relative to our comprehension) and is to reduce god's omnipotence within the context of human agency.
"I can assess benevolence from human agency because I am human. I know the limits of human potency due to my ability. Not so with god."
True, I did provide examples of human agency, but the key there is not the modifier human, but the noun agency. Now our knowledge of the limits of god's ability (or, more properly, the lack thereof) is derived through reasoning about more fundamental facts about god's nature, and not through reasoning by way of analogy from our own abilities.
"You are not god therefore your definition of god's omnipotence defined by your human agency seems to attribute potency using a comparitor illegitimate to the claim."
I once heard a priest say that one of the best prayers is, "Thank god I'm not god, and that god is god!" Yes, I'm not god (thankfully), but I do possess, as all normal human beings do, the ability to reason, and I can reason about all sorts of things that are not limited by the fact that I can reason about them (e.g. I can reason about infinity, or about spooky action at a distance, or about incompleteness theorems without limiting their application).
"To assert god's power within a given circumstance is to reduce god to human potency (relative to our comprehension) and is to reduce god's omnipotence within the context of human agency."
I'm not saying anything about imposing limitations on *how* god accomplishes something in a given circumstance, except to exclude logically impossible means (e.g. I'm not saying he must move a fifty pound box from the floor to the counter just as we do it); rather, I'm saying that we can say, and perhaps know, *that* he caused it without limiting his omnipotence.
Eric,
You said, "I'm not saying anything about imposing limitations on *how* god accomplishes something in a given circumstance, except to exclude logically impossible means (e.g. I'm not saying he must move a fifty pound box from the floor to the counter just as we do it); rather, I'm saying that we can say, and perhaps know, *that* he caused it without limiting his omnipotence."
Respetfully this seems to be an argument from ignorance. You know god can do it but you just can't tell me how or why.
The notion that invoking god as causation is an argument from ignorance is the post's original consideration and your quote seems to validate that.
I don't see anything in your reasoning that would sustain the god assertion with any credibiliyt.
I have however enjoyed the conversation.
We probably should now agree to disagree.
"Respetfully this seems to be an argument from ignorance. You know god can do it but you just can't tell me how or why."
I think we can take this further.
We know *that* spooky action at a distance works, but no one knows *how* it works. Now you may say, "Yes, but we can predict it, we have confirmed it," and so on, but they point is that it's not necessary to know *how* something works to know *that* it works. Yet it is precisely this claim, as I see it, that your 'argument from ignorance' charge you've made above rests on. ("You know god *can do* it but you just can't tell me *how or why*.")
"The notion that invoking god as causation is an argument from ignorance is the post's original consideration and your quote seems to validate that."
I disagree. We were fleshing out some conceptual issues as far as the notion of invoking god as a cause goes; we haven't yet looked at any arguments that invoke god as a cause, so I can't see how, if I haven't yet presented an argument that god caused x, I can be guilty of arguing from ignorance that god caused x. To make an argument from ignorance that god caused x, I would have to first have made an argument that god caused x! As I said, we've just been working on some conceptual details so far. But if you think I'm wrong, and that I have in fact provided an argument that god caused some x, let me know what you think that argument is, and let me know where you think I made it.
I think we can still make progress here, but if you think we've reached an impasse I understand, and thank you for the conversation.
Eric,
Let's keep going then.
What do you want me to consider?
I'll do my best.
Thanks.
I like this.
Chuck, I think that we need to consider an argument that invokes god as a cause to see whether (1) it by doing so conflicts with god's omnipotence, and (2) it argues from ignorance. As usual, my favorite simple example is the KCA. As I've said before, it's not one of my favorite arguments, but I think it's a much better argument than most atheists judge it to be; and, I think it invokes (in its conceptual analysis) god as a cause, so it seems to me as if it satisfies our requirements.
If you agree with me, then I'd ask, (a) How does the KCA's invoking god as a cause impinge on god's omnipotence, and (b) In what sense is the KCA an argument from ignorance?
(If you don't like this example of an argument that concludes that god is a causal agent, suggest another.)
Before I go on, I should add that I agree that many people do argue for god's existence from ignorance, and I repudiate all such arguments. I should also add that none of the traditional arguments for god's existence, in any of the formulations I'm aware of, do so. Finally, the omnipotence/cause problem you've brought up still puzzles me. If you can make the nature of the problem clear with the KCA, perhaps we can make some progress on it. If not, we can focus on the argument from ignorance charge.
Eric,
I'm going to ask to postpone this until I really familiarize myself with the KCA. I haven't. I need to better understand it before I can dialogue about it.
I don't know if my problem with asserting god as a cause relative to his omnipotence is a true dillema now. My instinct says it is but I'm not sure I can argue why I feel the way I do.
My feelings are based on this line of thinking, it seems something lesser (humans) defining the mechanism of what it asserts as beyond them (god and his omnipotence) as cause for something observable to be incoherent because how could a lesser thing even comprehend as a cause that which he or she asserts is far beyond their intellectual or experiential capacity to fully comprehend. By definition it seems to demand at best that god might be a cause but to say he is the cause is to defeat claims to his omni-max definition.
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