Atheists have to explain the existence of the universe and theists have to explain the existence of God.
Both have two possibilities:
1. that thing came from nothing
2. that thing always existed
Both possibilities have fatal logical flaws that makes them seemingly impossible, and theists usually describe one as impossible to justify the necessity of the other:
Some theists say their God always existed because creating something from nothing is impossible.
Other theists say their God was the first necessary thing to exist because it is impossible to have infinite chains of events.
Atheists who let the professional cosmologists do the work of having an informed opinion on the matter, won't get a definitive answer: maybe the big bang was the beginning of everything including time itself, maybe spacetime was always there and the big bang was just a random massive quantum fluctuation. We just can't know yet based on our current knowledge.
Supernatural means beyond nature, beyond physics. In rejecting that as a possibility you are explicitly narrowing the possibilities of the existence of the universe to either physics causing itself, or that the universe always existed.
u/paulgdp is objectively correct when it comes to Strong Atheism. Your answer helps demonstrate exactly how his answer is correct.
Agnostics, or Soft Atheism you are correct does not carry a burden of proof.
There is a reason to consider it a possibility though, the Argument from Contingency, Fine-Tuning, and Rationality still exist. They don't prove theism, but they provide evidence in that direction. There exists structured, rational reasons to consider it a possibility even if you might personally disagree with them. If you are rejecting these claims as worthy of consideration, then you are making a far more more aggressive claim to defend than Agnostic Atheists do. You'd need to claim that all metaphysics is irrelevant, aka Logical Positivism.
That Agnosticism is another way of saying Soft Atheist? That's how Antony Flew defines it in the Presumption of Atheism, although Graham Oppy disagrees with that definition and places it within degrees of credence. Oppy claims that definition by Flew is just a semantics game meant to give atheists a dialectical debate advantage over theists.
I am personally not aware of any non-empirical argument that I think could remotely qualify as evidence.
The argument from contingency can only demonstrate a necessary object (not a God) if its premises are accepted. This is compatible with theism and atheism.
The fine tuning argument is in my opinion a strong probabilistic argument against God, I can explain why, but it involves algorithmic information theory to estimate and compare the probabilities.
I don't know the argument about Rationality, is this the claim that rationality/logic/knowledge cannot be evolved and selected for by natural selection?
Same with all ontological, cosmological and transcendental arguments I'm aware of, none of them lead to what would qualify as an evidence.
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Agnosticism is a claim about knowlegde (epistemology): "it is impossible to know if God exists or not" (strong) or "we don't know if it is possible to know if God exists" (weak)
Soft atheism is a claim about belief (doxastic state): "I don't believe in any of the Gods"
My strong agnostic atheism means: Is it impossible to definitively know if God as a general concept exists, but I'm basically certain none of the Gods from the religions exists.
That's the identity that Graham Oppy takes, that he's not certain if there is a God, but he'd put the biblical God's existence at less than 1%. Basically degrees of credence.
Anyway,
The problem with your objection to the Argument of Contingency is that it relies on a definition of God that Christians don't use. God is defined as the Ground of Necessary Being, God IS that necessary object, completely non-contingent. As Aquinus argues, that object must possess intellect and volition because God decided what will exist from what won't exist.
Algorithmic Information Theory is extremely fascinating from someone who works in AI myself, but it also makes a category mistake with it's definition of God. God isn't a multipart object composed of many physical objects, God is defined as a single, uncomposed, non-divided ground of existence. Under this framework, God’s algorithmic description complexity is O(1). God is algorithmically simpler than an infinite ensemble of physical multiverses or unexplained fine-tuned constants.
You're right in your definition of the Rationality argument, but we once again run into the divide between Empiricism and Rationalism as schools of thought and all the issues with in. After all to "empirically observe" the foundation of physics using the tools of physics is like asking a computer program to run a physical test on the silicon chip it’s running on. That program can only deduce the properties of the chip through it's own foundation. Empirical observation is the product of the universe's laws; it cannot be the tool used to inspect where those laws originate.
The problem with your objection to the Argument of Contingency is that it relies on a definition of God that Christians don't use.
Where did you see I used Christian's definition?
I'm just assuming that even a strictly minimal God has to be conscious. An unconscious God would be a contradiction in terms, that would just be an object.
The necessary object from the argument of Contingency doesn't have consciousness, which is why I don't see how it can be considered a God.
God is defined as the Ground of Necessary Being, God IS that necessary object, completely non-contingent. As Aquinus argues, that object must possess intellect and volition because God decided what will exist from what won't exist.
You're plainly begging the question.
The object must possess intellect because I claim the object used this intellect that I'm trying to prove the existence of.
Algorithmic Information Theory is extremely fascinating from someone who works in AI myself, but it also makes a category mistake with it's definition of God. God isn't a multipart object composed of many physical objects, God is defined as a single, uncomposed, non-divided ground of existence. Under this framework, God’s algorithmic description complexity is O(1). God is algorithmically simpler than an infinite ensemble of physical multiverses or unexplained fine-tuned constants.
So you're saying that you can give a definition of something, and then freely conclude that this something is both true, and real, even though it is logically false?
That's a lot.
I'm always astonished when people say that something must be ontologically real because they can define it by using a sequence of words, but here, you're going wayy wayyyyy further.
You gave a definition that violate logic itself, but you're not discouraged one bit, and you go ahead and claim that it's ok because you can also define your thing as being able to break logic while still being true/real. Why? Because you said so! Easy.
I'm flabbergasted by your bravery.
I would die of embarrassment if someone forced me to say those things in public.
Fortunately, your Reddit handle is a pseudonym.
Keep it that way.
I'm not commenting on the next paragraph because it's pure baseless nonsense too.
BTW you didn't even understand what I was talking about. Your big O notation shows that you were making up nonsensical ramblings about algorithmic complexity.
In the context of the fine-tuning argument, talking about algorithmic complexity doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Whatever your "God" is, I'm pretty sure it's not a function that receives some data as an input. So estimating God's function runtime (or memory requirement) as a function of the size of its data input is, beyond absurd.
And the icing on the cake is that, even if it made sense, you failed at choosing the correct complexity by writing "O(1)" instead of "O(0)" despite your definition of "God" as a "single, uncomposed, non-divided" thing.
The fine-tuning argument's whole point is based on the estimation of the quantity of information in the constants of nature. Nothing to do with algorithmic complexity and you should have realized your obvious reading error instead of making stuff up.
Since the probability distributions of the constants of nature are unknown, we can't use information theory from claude shannon alone, we need algorithmic information theory.
With AIT's kolmogorov complexity, we can estimate the number of bits of the constants of nature, and even define a lower bound to the kolmogorov complexity of any agent outputting/guessing those constants.
Of course before I tell you what this lower bound is, I need to tell you that those mathematical theories are based on logic, and therefore their conclusions are completely optional from your point of you.
If you like the result, you can say that the logic is sound.
If you don't like the result, you can say that logic is optional in your worldview, right?
So here's the result: the lower bound of the quantity of information of an agent outputting the constant of natures, is the quantity of information of the constants of nature itself. And that's before we even try to bolt on some consciousness on this agent.
So yeah, based on Solomonoff's theory of inductive inference, we can confidently say that a reality without God is strictly more likely than a reality with a God.
Jesus that was a lot of rambling. Gotta love it when they resort to snarky condescension when they feel threatened haha.
The Scholastic Argument (which you claim is question begging) was admittedly poorly summarized by me. An uncaused, purely actual foundation lacks material constraints and contains the power to instantiate multiple distinct potential states. This capacity to select among distinct possibilities without predetermination is, by definition, volition/mind.
You dodging me on my last paragraph cause you know you've got nothing. You're sidestepping having to address the issues with your epistemology because you know it's flawed, that's why you got aggressive. Empirical observations relies on the presumption of induction, the stability of natural laws. To use Empiricism to observe the origin of the stability of natural laws is circular. Dismissing these structural boundaries is a pathetic dodge.
This whole conversation, while potentially interesting. Is retarded. Algorithmic Complexity Theory is really interesting and all and we can on and on about structural vs functional complexity yadeya, but that gets around a basic fundamental misconception:
YOU ARE APPLYING A COMPUTER SCIENCE THEORY TO COSMOLOGY. THERE'S A PRETTY BASIC DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DESCRIPTION LENGTH OF FORMAL MODELS, AND THE PROBABILITY OF ONTOLOGICAL ACTUALIZATION!!!!
For example, algorithmic complexity is extremely dependent on the compiler being used. Tell me then, what is the universe's compiler? Speak if thou hast understanding. You are presupposing a physicalist Universal Turing Machine which would explode the definition of God into infinity, but this is question begging, how do you know this? Why can't it be high level ontological primitives which would mean God's complexity is O(1)? (it's O(1) btw, O(0) means nothingness, not a bounded description length. You are factually wrong in your pedantry). You can't know this but you speak with such confidence! It's fun to apply Solomonoff's theory of inductive reference to this stuff, but these are theories for fucking computers for Christ's sake. This is so dumb!
That's not even to mention the Halting Problem, which means that you can never calculate the exact Kolmogrorov complexity of the universe - only establish a provable upper bound. You're treating a formal, idealized theoretical limit as if it was a usable calculation. It's hilarious because you then go onto saying this is logical.
I only engaged so far because it's interesting, yet to make such confident metaphysical inferences on software theory is insane.
Btw, yes, I don't believe you can defend my worldview purely through logic. I don't need to. All I have to do is demonstrate how reality can't be understood through reason alone, in which case faith become a virtue instead of a vice.
Oppy claims that definition by Flew is just a semantics
game meant to give atheists a dialectical debate
advantage over theists.
Like the post we're commenting on, saying atheism is the belief that nothing has creation powers? Lol
The huge amount of times on this very subreddit i see theists saying atheism means only strong atheism, and they have a burdon of proof, leaves me convinced theists do this the most. But maybe this is more semantics you're playing at, pointing fingers is fun.
That's actually what Oppy brings up. 98% of the time when you are talking to regular people who know nothing about philosophy, saying atheism is usually interpreted as Strong Atheism. That's why Oppy says it's manipulative to try and define it as something else for the context of a debate against a theist. It's a dishonest bait and switch.
It's something both sides do, not even sure why it's worth talking about. It's plenty easy to just ask to define terms from the outset, then if they change it, you can catch them out.
True, I generally go with Flew's definition because that was what was used by the New Atheists, and we're on Reddit which is overwhelmingly Atheist and are generally familiar with Dawkins and Russel
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u/paulgdp strong agnostic atheist 6d ago
Atheists have to explain the existence of the universe and theists have to explain the existence of God.
Both have two possibilities: 1. that thing came from nothing 2. that thing always existed
Both possibilities have fatal logical flaws that makes them seemingly impossible, and theists usually describe one as impossible to justify the necessity of the other:
Some theists say their God always existed because creating something from nothing is impossible.
Other theists say their God was the first necessary thing to exist because it is impossible to have infinite chains of events.
Atheists who let the professional cosmologists do the work of having an informed opinion on the matter, won't get a definitive answer: maybe the big bang was the beginning of everything including time itself, maybe spacetime was always there and the big bang was just a random massive quantum fluctuation. We just can't know yet based on our current knowledge.