By Daniel A. Kaufman
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By now, most readers know that I’m an atheist, as I don’t consider within the existence of God or something supernatural. Readers additionally doubtless know that I’m Jewish by lineage and culturally and that I believe God is ineffective each as an evidence and as an ethical exemplar.†
As a result of I can see neither causes nor makes use of for God, I’m all for the truth that so many individuals do. And because the issues I’ve written about this are scattered far and wide, I assumed I’d collect collectively my present ideas on the topic in a single piece. Initially, I thought-about writing an extended essay, even maybe a brief e book on the topic, however the rationales for God are poor and admit of little by means of rigorous philosophical remedy, the big amount of fabric purporting to supply it however.
As Christians within the West are by far essentially the most actively and aggressively engaged in non secular apologetics and proselytization, quite a lot of my remarks are particular to Christianity, however the issues I’ve to say apply to any faith that invokes supernatural gods or different such entities [kami; djinni; souls; spirits; etc.].
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[1] Each thought and motion that we ascribe to God is metaphorical. Considering and performing require embodiment, and God is just not embodied. Certainly, quite a lot of his alleged attributes, like transcendence and omnipresence, suggest that he can’t be embodied. So, till somebody explains what it means for a disembodied being to command issues, make it rain for forty days, ship individuals locations, assume issues to himself, and so forth., such attributions and the narratives into which they determine are devoid of any factual content material.
A number of Christian interlocutors on social media [where I threw out this question] have tried to reject my “presumption” that considering and performing require embodiment, however I presume no such factor. Mine is an empirical view, and so far as we all know – as all the sciences engaged with these topics have noticed and as all of us see in our on a regular basis lives – considering requires a nervous system and performing, within the sense of strolling, working, swimming, flying, orally or manually speaking, and so forth., requires a physiology. God has neither; can have neither, given his alleged attributes. That’s all there may be, and it’s all I would like.
[2] Given [1], appeals to God can not clarify something concerning the pure world. I’ll usually hear Christian apologists declare that with out God, we can not clarify the place the universe got here from. Whether or not as a result of there have to be a “first trigger” or the universe is “fine-tuned” or what have you ever, an enchantment to God allegedly is critical if any scientific clarification is to get off the bottom.
The difficulty after all is that with the intention to trigger or fine-tune one thing, one needs to be – you guessed it – embodied. We all know what it means to say that “A brought on B,” when A and B are bodily occasions, and we all know what it means to say, “So-and-so tuned the guitar,” the place so-and-so is an precise particular person and the guitar an precise instrument. We don’t know what these imply when both A or B is a non-physical occasion or factor or when each are. Certainly, I’d keep that we don’t even know what it could imply for one thing to be an occasion and additionally be non-physical, however this isn’t important to the purpose.
[3] Due to [1]-[2], each occasion of “pure theology” is at greatest fallacious and at worst, incoherent. Something noticed in nature is both a bodily factor or occasion and can’t be defined by enchantment to non-physical issues or occasions. Certainly all inferences to the perfect clarification provided by theists must be rejected on the grounds that not solely are they not the perfect clarification, they’re no clarification in any respect.
[4] In case you perceive Cartesian Dualism and the issues with it, it is best to perceive [1]-[3]. The identical difficulties additionally apply to Platonism. Discuss of bodily issues “partaking,” “copying,” “sharing in,” and so forth., Platonic Varieties is nothing greater than empty, metaphorical speak and explains nothing concerning the traits of these issues, till the metaphors are cashed out.
[5] Something that may be proof that Yahweh or Allah or Jesus or whoever “made X” can be proof that tremendous highly effective aliens made it.
[6] Most non secular individuals adhere to the faith of their household and place. Geography predicts non secular affiliation extra strongly than anything, which signifies that essentially the most dedicated, evangelical Christian, if born in India, would most definitely be a Hindu and maybe, even, as dedicated a Hindu as he presently is a Christian. One would count on this, if religions are collections of tribal/nationwide myths and legends. One wouldn’t count on it, if religions had been types of life and thought that interact with the basic realities in and of the world. Physics and chemistry are the identical in Punjab as within the American South or Hokkaido. Religions are usually not.
[7] Given the variety of religions on the earth, it’s unlikely that yours occurs to be the proper one, and everyone seems to be as satisfied of the reality of theirs as you’re of yours. Once I first moved to the Bible Belt, I used to be stunned by the extent of confidence individuals had of their explicit model of evangelical or Pentecostal Christianity [some of them brands I’d never even heard of until that point] and used to assume that the perfect factor for them can be to reside in a Lubavitch or Satmar group for a number of weeks, the place it could change into rapidly evident that there have been individuals way more religiously dedicated and extra rigorous of their non secular life than they’re. [Indeed, for all their professions and proclamations of extraordinary and intense religious faith, your typical evangelical or Pentecostal seems to behave pretty much like everyone else, whether for good or for bad.]
[8] As soon as you progress previous the primary Abrahamic faith, Judaism, I don’t see how you choose amongst its appropriators. What makes the “New Testomony” scripture however not The Koran? Or the E-book of Mormon? Or regardless of the hell the Jehovah’s Witnesses use? There’s an previous Jewish joke, “Mormons exist in order that Christians will understand how Jews really feel,” and it’s actually apt.
[9] {That a} bunch of Iron Age texts that occurred to outlive and had been preserved and canonized reveal the last word reality of actuality is unlikely to say the least. And in the event you assume such texts may do such a factor, why may it not be those we’re lacking — or which had been ignored of the varied non secular canons — moderately than those which were preserved and canonized [especially given that the former is a much larger group than the latter]?
[10] Believing in supernatural beings and occasions on the idea of millennia-old writings and the traditions that grew out of them requires a stage of credulity that if made normal can be harmful. Non secular perception is a mannequin of the dangerous type of compartmentalization.
[11] As individuals from non secular traditions all around the world declare private experiences of deities, angels, demons, and so forth., having such experiences oneself supplies no rationale for considering one’s faith true versus theirs.
[12] What [5]-[11] counsel is that any explicit theism suffers from indeterminacy and has a severe arbitrariness downside.
[13] A standard declare that apologists make is that with out God, there might be no morality; that God supplies the epistemic and metaphysical “grounds” for our judgments of worth and obligation. Now, other than the query of whether or not such grounds are required [I have argued on any number of occasions that they are not], the gods which might be invoked may by no means present them. The habits of those deities, whether or not Yahweh, Allah, Jesus, and so forth., as recounted of their respective religions’ sacred texts, is miles away from what anybody usually would consider as even minimally first rate, not to mention exemplary. Genocide, mass rape, enslavement, everlasting damnation for minor offences [according to some of these religions, a mere lack of belief is sufficient for the latter], don’t represent the habits of a morally good being, not to mention one who is meant to function morality’s “floor.”
The standard technique when confronted with the barbarous attitudes and behaviors of Iron Age deities is to allegorize the entire narratives containing them, the concept being that to mere mortals like us with such a restricted imaginative and prescient and perspective, God’s intentions and behaviors are inscrutable. [Susan Sontag claims that this allegorizing impulse represents the beginning of interpretation, generally, in “Against Interpretation.”] However whereas this may occasionally handle the query of God’s obvious barbarism, it creates a brand new downside, which is that the attitudes and behaviors of an inscrutable being are ineffective in offering steering concerning human life.
[14] When one examines the nice non secular traditions, all of which stem from antiquity, one is confronted with what are demonstrably archaic, primitive conceptions of the universe, values, notions of obligation, the respective roles of the sexes, economics, politics, and the like. One encounters shamanistic rituals, “lock-and-key” sort metaphysical formulation of the “chant these phrases over there on the primary Tuesday of each third month, and X will occur” selection, and hierarchies of deities and angels that look remarkably like historical monarchic and Imperial hierarchies. All of which makes good sense if we’re speaking about myths and legends in an Iron Age context. Nevertheless it takes a certain quantity of self-deception – or at the least, a measure of psychic indolence – to take a look at all of this immediately and say, “Nope, these aren’t fascinating and sometimes lurid components from the eclectic, messy, usually ugly historical past of human growth, however moderately, everlasting truths concerning the nature and operation of the universe and every little thing and everybody in it. [And just my religion, not those other people’s.]”‡
Notes
† https://theelectricagora.com/2021/01/26/religion-without-spirituality/
‡ Due to Robert Gressis who checked out a draft of this piece and helped me with among the particulars, in addition to sketching some potential strains of pushback.
