Monday, July 12, 2010

Theists misuse of logic

To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy.
David Brooks, The Necessity of Atheism

It has always been my contention that theists have it all wrong, in fact their method of using or rather misusing the principles of logic goes against the principles of logic itself. The first mistake that theologians make is that they start from the premise that the biblical God exists, although, they have no way of proving this premise from an objective and logical manner. All of their so called evidence for the existence of their deity is based on so called biblical revelation and faith on that revelation, they don't deal in terms of what ifs or maybes but rather in terms of absolutes. It is also my contention that faith itself is not and cannot be a valid method of discovery or investigation and therefore anything that is claimed as truth from the perspective of faith falls flat before it can even be discussed.

The first and most challenging obstacle that a theist faces is that of proving the existence of God. As most know that have been studying this field for some time this is a task which is utterly impossible. The study of god is beyond the reach of science and can only be done in a subjective manner, there are no known methods of discovery that can prove god in an objective manner. The appeal to prophecies is also not a valid method of discovery either, since most prophecies are vague and can be manipulated to suit pretty much any situation that has similar characteristics described by the so called prophecy. Proving God is the biggest and most difficult task before the theist and I am of the opinion that it just simply cannot be done. Luckily for us atheist basing ourselves on the principles of logic the onus for proving the existence of God is not our responsibility, but rather the onus for such a monumental task lies squarely on the shoulders of theists.

From a logical perspective my argument is that if you can't conclusively prove the existence of your biblical God then everything else collapses. The existence of God is the foundation of the entire belief system, without it there is no belief system. The best a theist can do is speculate from the scriptures everything and anything to do with their god, nothing is conclusive and is entirely subjective. Faith is often referred to as blind because it is basically putting your trust in a belief system without requiring  any proof of the veracity of the claims being made by the religion you choose to follow. There is no reason in faith; just hope and conjecture. A conjecture is a proposition that is not proven but appears correct and has not been unproven. My emphasis on this definition from wikipedia is on appears correct, in my view it only appears correct through the eyes of faith.

Contrasts the methodology of faith with the scientific method for example and you will see that the theists have it all ass backwards. Let me highlight portions of the scientific method from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_scientific_method  'Scientific researchers propose hypotheses  as explanations of phenomena, and design experimental  studies  to test these hypotheses. These steps must be repeatable in order to dependably predict any future results.Among other facets shared by the various fields of inquiry is the conviction that the process must be objective to reduce biased interpretations of the results. Another basic expectation is to document, archive and share all data and methodology so they are available for careful scrutiny by other scientists, thereby allowing other researchers the opportunity to verify results by attempting to reproduce them.'

Do you notice the difference yet? We atheist and those of a secular mindset start with an hypotheses of how we think this or that works or exist etc. then we design experiments to prove or disprove our hypotheses, and our work must be repeatable by our peers or anyone else who may be interested in trying to confirm or refute our findings. Religionists start with what they believe to be an absolute truth: that God exist, then they set out to prove it using biblical interpretation, exegesis etc. They claim absolute truths without first providing the evidence for it. That is the beauty of science we don't claim absolutes and are always open to theories that may prove our former beliefs wrong. There is nothing logical about christianity and their beliefs only speculation based on faith and ancient texts whose authors are for the most part unknown, whose text have been reworked so many times and are full of contradictions and possible interpolations.

2 comments:

  1. Chatpilot,

    Thank you for another wonderful distillation of ideas. You are able to condense your studies into readable (and understandable) short articles that are informative and educational without becoming overly technical.

    Sometimes it seems as if there is an unspoken but active competition among people to see who can appear to be the most "intellectual". I like the way that you purposefully(?) present your material in a manner that is down to earth.

    I don't believe that the issues that you take on necessarily require any deep, technical understanding. Of course it is some people's nature to dissect and analyze these "big questions", and that's great....BUT....not everyone needs or wants to read every written word on a subject before drawing their conclusion.

    For instance: I don't need to read every word of the Bible (i.e. Leviticus, Judges, Kings, etc, etc..) to be able to recognize that it is a book of mythological/historical fiction. My common sense allows me to call "a spade, a spade".

    People (especially dead ones) can't fly, snakes don't talk...and nobody needs a college degree to discern that all gods are a human invention.

    Some intellectuals, of course, would disagree.

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  2. Yes I definitely agree, these wonderful articles need to be presented where they would do the most good in a newspaper along beside Billy Graham, to show just what kind of broken down old fool he is.

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