Atheism: A Null Hypothesis on God

[Sal316]

In my graduate studies, I learned that every time you formed a hypothesis (God is), you were also required to develop a null hypothesis that says the opposite of your hypothesis (God isn't). Keep in mind that there are no "facts" in science, but rather hypotheses (educated guesses) and theories (hypotheses that have been supported by science, but that may ultimately be disproved). Now, I'm not a scientist, but it makes perfect sense within this model to have the "null hypothesis" that God doesn't exist.

However, to leap from that to certitude of God's non-existence is to violate the principles of the scientific method, isn't it? Even Aristotle conceded that the boundaries of science prohibited it from testing certain metaphysical phenomena such as the existence of God.

Atheism: A Null Hypothesis on God

Interesting article.

[dmallind]

1. Rather startling ignorance on what a null hypothesis is

Especially as they are relevant only to hypotheses that are capable of being proven true or false through empirical observation.

Unless any gods put themselves up for an updated Elijah test, the concept is irrelevant to atheism.

[rrneck]

2. As I recall

even Richard Dawkins is only a "6" on his one to seven scale of faith thingie.

If you don't believe in God, he doesn't exist.

[dmallind]

4. Yep - just another sad ploy to pretend all atheists must be explicit atheists

a position which requires faith in unknowable assertions. Here it's wrapped up in quasi-scientific framing to lure idiots into thinking that atheism, as a null hypothesis, can never be confirmed, as null hypotheses are only rejected or not rejected. This ironically actually supports the majority implicit atheist view - the 6 position on your referred scale.

I for one - of many - do not claim it is impossible for all gods to exist. I do assert it is incredibly unlikely, that there is not a single shred of evidence that they do, and that we should given these arguments live our lives as if they don't unril shown otherwise. I certainly can and do assert specific logically incoherent god claims are false - just like I can assert there are no married bachelors in the modern sense of the latter word. There are certainly no all-knowing all-powerful all-loving gods for one. But limited gods? Spiteful gods? Disinterested gods? I have no way to reject these - so I don't. Similarly I have no reason to accept them - so I don't. Lacking belief in these gods, I am without theism and therefore atheist - an implicit atheist.

[Thats my opinion]

6. Again we seem to have limited the conversation to the concept of a personal God--

or God as an omnipotent, omniscient person. It is easy to attack that concept of God, but if you take a look at where theology is and is surely headed you may get a very different definition.

Two generations ago Paul Tillich was one of those who framed a notion of God far different from the big person concept. His first volume of Systematic Theology spells this out. Since then, it has been the standard in theological reflection.


[link:http://www.PaulTillichsystematictheology.Amazon.com|

[Jim__]

7. Your link doesn't work for me.

I'm going to try to create a link with this URL: http://www.amazon.com/Systematic-Theology-vol-Paul-Tillich/dp/0226803376/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327344877&sr=8-1

Testing: my link.

The my link works; it's a different URL than the one you used so I'm not sure if it's going where you want to go. I couldn't get your URL to work.

[Thats my opinion]

14. Thanks,

I know the Tillich book, but took the link I provided off the internet. Yours seem to be the better one.
If you get into the book, let us know what you see.

[dmallind]

11. The only way I limited that was in my assertion as false

The whole point of implicit (majority) atheism is that we can only be sure about inherently contradictory claims. I can, and do, no more reject the very minute possibility of disinterested, inconsistent, malevolent, or sure you're right just flat out ineffable God-Above-Gods than I reject the idea of there being 18' tall tripedal bright blue aliens in the Crab nebula who communicate only in falsetto iambic pentameter.

I accept none of these claims, as none have the slightest evidence in their favor, but I reject none also, as I have no way to prove their falsity. I simply withold belief until presented with convincing arguments. I still lack belief in even non-theological theism if you want to stick with Tillich, and for very much the same reasons. Tillich presents a different argument from Anselm's - but he provides no more reason for me to believe it.

Serious question by the way as you doubrless know this stuff far better than I - how exactly does Tillich justify the Bible as a valid source of systematic theology rather than other holy texts? From my long ago and hardly favorable reading, he seems to just take that as axiomatic.

[Thats my opinion]

15. Tillich is just one link in a long chain

of Biblical scholars who take the Biblical witness seriously without seeing it as final or ineffable.
If you want a list of more contemporary theologians just let me know and I'll supply it. Or you can find my book "Building a Biblical Faith". Used copes are available at Amazon.com

[dmallind]

26. All to the good, but why is the Bible and not, say, Buddhist texts

a basis for a God above Gods who is the ground of being? The latter makes more similar sounding statements to that kind of god than the former. I

[tama]

30. How was Bible compiled

and by whom, and for what purpose? And why where most other Christian texts not only excluded but consistently destroyed?

And how are these events related to Christianity turned from anarcho-socialist esoteric movement into state religion of Roman Empire?

[dmallind]

33. Well apart from the anarcho-syndicalist crap, fair questions - just irrelevant to mine.

Christianity in its nascence was about as "archo" as it's possible to get. What the heck were the Petrine/Pauline disputes about?

[tama]

34. Trotsky and Stalin?

Mostly joking, but was not thinking about syndicalism but rather anti-state anarcho-communism, Kropotkin and Tolstoi.

[ZombieHorde]

25. Were you raised with the God you currently worship?

I was raised with the version of God that is a bearded man in heaven who is all knowing, all powerful, and all good.

I wonder if people who are raised to believe in bearded God are more likely to reject him than people who are raised to believe in a more subtle God, such as the one you often describe.

[dmallind]

27. Apart from a few theologians kids, who is? nt

[Thats my opinion]

41. The notion of God as a super human, in a cloud with beard, is very hard to gets rid of.

But contemporary theology is hard at work offering an alternative. Many who grew up with the old view are finding the refreshing change helpful.

[immoderate]

3. So what is the penalty?

OTOH, in a discipline that prohibits absolute certainty, God has no greater advantage than any other mythical creature.

This is playing the game of equivocation by confusing science-speak with colloquial language.

--imm

[MarkCharles]

5. I sort of like this response, as a way of thinking about the topic.

If there was such an entity, one might think it´s so fundamenta­l to this universe that science couldn´t possibly miss signs of it, and yet nothing. But still strictly we can´t know.

There is more than enough evidence to prove for a rational person and for the purposes of common sense rather than philosophi­cal enquiry that religions and Gods of human beings are in fact manmade (geographi­cal patterns of totally contradict­ing religious doctrines, absolute lack of magic and unicorns and signs from gods in real life, vanished gods of times past etc. etc .)

So I guess when I say I´m atheist I mean I´m an atheist concerning the fairy tales right here on home planet

[tama]

8. "manmade"

leads to what Socrates said: Know thyself, gnothi seauton.

That philosophical premiss or guideline is not limited to epistemical or scientific knowledge, what can be SAID about self. gnothi seauton could as well be translated 'feel thyself' or 'sense thyself' or 'be mindful of/as self'. Etc.

As for "real life", or consensus reality, is there a priori reasons to assume that's all there is and can be experienced? What about altered states of mind and reality of those experiences? Is there a priori reason to discard them just as hallucinations, in what sense they are unreal, if that is how they are considered - from this or that "consensus reality" point of view - as there is no reason to suppose that even consensus reality is exactly same for everyone.

[MarkCharles]

9. I guess you missed the point.

All the names and imaginings of any god entity for all the recorded history of humankind have been provided by human beings.

In most cultures in the world, the gods of sun, moon, thunder, snow, whatever, have generally been abandoned by now, and the scientific evidence of the actual physical existence and/or causes of those phenomena has replaced what used to be considered a "god" or various "gods", all of which were "[hu]man-made", That is, invented as a way of explaining what various phenomena were, at the time, otherwise inexplicable.

That is how I use the term "man made"...by human beings, man or woman.

[tama]

18. I don't disagree with the point

I usually try to add some other winkle to previous post to nuance it, and to question its premises. I agree that naming and classifying forces of nature, especially the most elusive ones, is not so simple and can become rigid belief systems.

It is also true that most cultures of the world have been wiped out or assimilated by the imperialist cultures and their religions. But does not mean that the local "pagan" or native nature relationships and traditions of negotiating with forces of nature would have been abandoned, even during the most oppressive times they've been preserved beneath the surface and hidden from the public eye or merged into syncretic systems, and as a matter of fact there there is great revival going on, also and especially in America's native peoples are strongly refinding and reviving their old-new spiritual traditions.

If considered from the evolutionary and ecological point of view, local traditions rising from the local ecosystem are stronger than the imported imperialistic traditions and belief systems, which in terms of sustainable balance with local ecosystem, in other words evolutionary adaptation, are at best superficial and alienated and often nothing but destructive pillage.

You are stressing the act and art of explaining, which is understandable, but explaining is of secondary importance in local traditions, which are primarily about doing what it takes to keep on adapting and living as organic parts of the local ecosystems. With local spirits and forces of nature and what not to be taken into consideration in order to keep up with evolution.

And if continuous cultural evolutionary adaptation is measured with time spans, local traditions like San and !Kung peoples of Kalahari have lived in their ecological niche succesfully and relatively unchanging - today's people still know the meanings of their ancient rock painting going back millenia or even couple hundred thousand years. On the other hand the scientists of this globalized imperialistic culture are constantly warning that this just can't continue as it is without collapsing - perhaps even sooner than later, and very big and deep changes are needed for the scientific/universal global culture not to falsify it by failing in evolutionary adaptation.

[MarkCharles]

20. I admire your attempt to compare earlier religious beliefs to ...

today's "god-fearing" people. At least that is how I read it.

One hundred years ago, we did not have a theory of relativity, something that few genuinely well-informed Jewish, Muslim, or Christian religious leaders would deny today. Nor did we have black holes, dark matter, nor a precise calculation of the speed of light, nor of the enormity of the universe, nor anyone who posited a big bang theory. Although, one hundred years ago, we did not have DNA, we did have Darwin's theory of evolution, and now we have evidence in all of these areas to dispute the teachings of all of those religions' mythologies about the origin of mankind, the origins and eventual end of our planet, none of which any serious scientist, nor any seriously intellectual follower of one religion or another will dispute.

As for the veracity or reasonable explanations of Jewish, Christian, or Muslim myths in their teachings, we have more evidence than ever that points to the illogical and mythical nature of all three religious beliefs.

And we have no evidence, even after so many tens of thousands of years of recorded history of humankind, no evidence whatsoever to indicate any god at all, only the mythologies of past and present people on this planet, all of them human, none of them inspired by anything but ignorance of what evidence is already out there.

Be it the bush people of central Africa today, or the most liberal Christian faiths of the civilized world, not one scintilla of evidence whatsoever to support their theories and mythologies.

[tama]

22. Only if you deny succesfull evolutionary adaptation

as empirical evidence.

A crude and simplistic thought experiment to deliver the point: send two groups of both sexes, a group of rocket scientists and with a gallon of oil and theoretical physicists with computers and batteries containing all current theories, and group of shamans with a bottle of ayahuasca and a drum to an ecosystem where they have never been and have no previous experience of. Which group has better chances of surviving and reproducing and continuing human evolution?

[Jim__]

10. Consider one concept of God that Piatt gives us.

Put another way, God is the impetus, the spark, the divine breath, the "inspiration," if you will from which all the rest of creation finds meaning. But God is not to be found "elsewhere." It's more like light in that way, conspiring with the physical world to create something that makes sense. Yet to borrow a scientific concept, when you're seeing an object, what you're actually seeing is the light, or more specifically, the result of the interaction between the light and the observed object.

Ronald Dworkin describes a similar concept and labels it religious values and says God is irrelevant to the concept ( excerpted from the abstract):

A religious attitude involves moral and cosmic convictions beyond simply a belief in god: that people have an innate, inescapable responsibility to make something valuable of their lives and that the natural universe is gloriously, mysteriously wonderful. Religious people accept such convictions as matters of faith rather than evidence and as personality-defining creeds that play a pervasive role in their lives.

In these lectures I argue that a belief in god is not only not essential to the religious attitude but is actually irrelevant to that attitude. The existence or non-existence of a god does not even bear on the question of people’s intrinsic ethical responsibility or their glorification of the universe. I do not argue either for or against the existence of a god, but only that a god’s existence can make no difference to the truth of religious values. If a god exists, perhaps he can send people to Heaven or Hell. But he cannot create right answers to moral questions or instill the universe with a glory it would not otherwise have.

Do you accept Dworkin's label of these things as religious values? Are we just arguing about how to label a belief that there is meaning to life? Is it this belief that there is a meaning to life that is the critical point?

[Thats my opinion]

16. Very interesting.

Both references seem to lead to positive avenues for thought and action. I think the time spent on both sides trying to prove or disprove the existence of God is futile. I am more committed to examining that spark,"inspiration" that provides meaning. If we can posit meaning, that may be more important than proving or disproving the existence of God. Maybe existence itself is the wrong term. Does the universe provide any meaning, or is it as WShakespeare put it, life is "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
Whether life has any meaning is unproved, but I choose to live as if there was such a reality, and we had access to it. For me that's far more important than figuring out if God exists.

[FarCenter]

12. Keep in mind that there are no "facts" in science

Complete nonsense.

I invite him to jump from the Golden Gate Bridge on the basis that gravity is not a fact and just a good hypothesis.

[dmallind]

13. Well yes, but he's right in context here I believe

while data are facts, the reasons why they occurred are never assumed to be immutable facts. That people without parachutes or other devices fall a long way at a high rate of speed, without any known exceptions, is not in dispute, but the precise details of why are still theories in the scientific sense. They are no longer hypotheses sure, but not facts either.

[FarCenter]

17. "Why" is irrelevant

F = G * M1 *M2 / r^2 is all you need to know for almost all practical purposes.

Admittedly, you do need general relativistic equations for things like the Global Positioning System.

Scientific "revolutions" typically modify previous theories to extend their scope or to refine their predictions. It is rare that the scientific community decides that an established body of theories are incorrect.

[tama]

21. "Why" is irrelevant

from the point of view of engineer or a "rocket scientist", to whom it makes no big difference if the equation is F = G * M1 *M2 / r^2 or F = G * M1 *M2 / r^2,1, as nothing Newton's theory or empirical evidence with the required accuracy requires it to be exactly 2 - and nothing else!

For a theoretical physicist the situation is different, Einstein's 14 equations are beautiful because there are no arbitrary choices like in Newton's and you can't change a part in any way without changing the whole. And Einstein's theory was first accepted - tentatively - by the scientific community because it was beautiful like that, not because there was enough good empirical evidence to support.

[FarCenter]

24. For a 3 dimensional Euclidean geometry, the exponent must be 2 exactly

Otherwise gravity is not a conservative field. If it is not conservative, planets do not maintain orbits, etc.

"For an irrotational vector field in three-dimensional space the inverse-square law corresponds to the property that the divergence is zero outside the source."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law#Field_theory_interpretation

What arbitrariness is there in Newton's laws that are not in Einstein's equations? G certainly appears.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_field_equations

Einstein's equations are no better at explaining why there is gravity. They are simply better at explaining how it works.

[tama]

29. What I said

I had just read from Steven Weinberg's 'Towards final theory'. Just parroting.

[dmallind]

28. Why do objects have M to 2?

[FarCenter]

31. The force between two masses is proportional to each of the masses

M1 is the first mass, and M2 is the second mass.

[dmallind]

32. I know - but why is mass there?

[FarCenter]

35. "Why" does not apply to mass

The laws of gravitation and inertia and/or Einstein's equations allow us to pedict how physical events involving mass will occur. But "why mass" is unanswerable and meaningless.

You could ask (and it was asked) why mass in F = M * a was equal to the mass in F = G * M1 * M2 / r^2 ?

Einsteins equations answer how that can be true.

The are further theories on how particle "acquire" mass involving Higgs bosons and the Higgs field. But that is also a better description of "how".

[dmallind]

36. Not true

why here is not a question of intent but a question of existence - why mass is there as opposed to not being there. You can try to say it's a "how" question instead, but the answer is..... theoretical, no?

[FarCenter]

37. If it is a question of existence, then the answer is --- Mass exists.

[skepticscott]

19. So does being certain of the non-existence

of Santa Claus violate the principles of the scientific method? Or is it entirely rational to do so? And if it is, why?

[lindysalsagal]

23. and unicorns are real.

Or not.

Have I convinced you that you're wrong, yet?

[AlbertCat]

38. Is there a china tea pot orbiting the sun or not?

The correct answer is, it is so unlikely, who cares?

Now I see we move on to the redefining of the word "god" to fit within "scientific" sounding standards.

God is love! Then just say "love".

God is what connects us all! Science has clearly and concretely shown what connects us all. From genetics to neural synapses to star dust. And none of it involves what most people would call a god.

God is all we don't know! Then just say "I don't know".

God is an ancient concept that has become obsolete. It is anthropomorphizing nature and the cosmos.

[LAGC]

39. The china tea pot really does exist, its just located directly opposite of us in orbit of the sun.

So we can never see it until we send a probe in a counter-orbit flight path behind the sun to detect it.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

40. so is not believing in unicorns a null hypothesis on unicorns?

a hypothesis has to be provable. how does one prove the existence of god?