Is there a way to “disprove” the existence of God? I’m not asking what the best arguments are; I’m asking whether an argument is possible.
Just now I’m on a tour of some of the Greek Islands (Andros, Naxos. Amorgas, Santorini, and Crete) giving lectures for a group of unusually interesting people from a striking range of backgrounds – doctors, psychologists, scientists, financial advisers, business owners of various kinds, and so on, most of them one-time religious, some still committed to a religious tradition, some for whom religion never has made sense.
Most of the conversations we’ve been having so far are Q&A: someone asks me me about some historical/literary issue connected with the NT or early Christianity and I tell them what I know (or at least think). But some discussion topics don’t have historical answers.
Science cannot rule out the existence of God. Virtually every scientist will agree with this.
My wife, a molecular biologist, would smugly disagree with you on that point. She would say that many scientists would not rule out the existence of God but that her particular discipline has certain evidence which only they are privy to, which can rule out the existence of a designer god for certain. She scoffs at those scientists who say that God does exist, and at me, a social scientist, for believing that there is a possibility which, I protest, cannot be proved either way.
But more to the point, it seems to me that the question is whether we can rule out the possibility of a god with certain attributes, right? I think we can rule out the possibility that Apollo does not ride across the sky in a glowing chariot spreading daylight wherever he goes, can’t we? Or that his Oracle at Delphi is prophesying in his name? When it comes to the question of whether we can prove that there is or is not a God as described in the Christian or the Hebrew Bible or the Qur’an, then it comes down to whether the attributes that they are supposed to have are consistent with our experience.
So much here:
1. The falsifiability/verifiability criteria for science got proposed about 100 years ago and fell by the wayside as incoherent about 50 years ago.
2. Anyway, this part of the debate ignores perfect-being theology and a priori proofs/disproofs for the existence of God – a debate that is on-going. (See the work of Alexander Pruss and of various philosophers developing Godel’s a priori proof of God’s existence. Not for the unwashed – this is very technical stuff.)
3. If God is a necessary being by nature, then He either exists necessarily, or necessarily fails to exist. If you can show (as Hume essayed to do) that all existence-propositions about particulars are contingent, then you can prove that, necessarily, if God is a particular being, He doesn’t exist.
4. If God is not a spatial/temporal being, there are good scientific reasons to think that He would be powerless to create or influence the material world (though there’s wiggle-room here). Might still exist, but nothing to worry about. If God is spatial/temporal, science will be relevant to discovery.
There’s plenty more… PS My son’s molecular biologist. No secrets – just a foreign language.
Well said, and thank you for not getting too technical, that stuff makes my unwashed brain hurt. My more simplistic response is this: what if the “real” God is not a noun but a verb?
The demise of my life as a fervent Catholic Christian came largely from the realization that we are trying to use words to describe and define “that” which cannot be. That eventually brought me to agnostic-atheism and the belief that you and I and everything are the universe which, as far as we know, operates according to the law of the conservation of mass.
Thank you for your comment, Dr. Doolittle. Aquinas, famously, argued for the position that God’s substance – His individuality – is *identical* to each and every one of His intrinsic properties (His essence). So He, His existence, His goodness, power, etc. are all literally one thing. Aquinas’ motivation is to preserve the doctrine of God’s absolute simplicity (i.e., no composition). Most philosophers (including me) find this incoherent, but then…
There is an extensive (and fascinating) literature on what miracles are, or would be if they existed, and whether a God can perform them. This involves considering what a law of nature is, what it is to “violate” such a law, and whether an omnipotent being could do such a thing. You are right that a central question is whether an immaterial being could violate the laws of conservation of energy, momentum, and angular momentum.
This is all very helpful! On your second paragraph, could you give us all some of the bibliography that you find most interesting on the point?
To Dr. Ehrman: The locus classicus for much of the debate has been David Hume’s “On Miracles” in his *Enquiry*. Over time, discussions have become increasingly more technical, involving work on the nature of causation, laws of nature, space and time. There are two central questions: what *is* it for an event to be a miracle, and what kind of evidence is required to show that one has occurred? (The former question is the more fundamental). Some more accessible discussions can be found in Geivett and Habermas *In Defense of Miracles* and Loftus, *The Case Against Miracles.* Article quality in these is very uneven. For a professional bibliography, see Timothy McGrew’s article “Miracles” in *Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.* (McGrew is a very conservative Christian, but fair – though the bibliography is far from comprehensive: for example, it omits (see next post)
Thanks. As a historian (rather than a philosopher) my interest lies more with the second question. I find it odd that so many people don’t differentite between them.
Paul Dietl’s “On Miracles,” *American Philosophical Quarterly,* 5 (1968) short/accessible, and Robert John Russell, “Divine Action and Quantum Mechanics: A Fresh Assessment” in *Philosophy, Science, and Divine Action,* ed. F. LeRon Schuls et. al (1999) and subsequent work by Russell and other physicists in, e.g. Robert J. Russell et. al., eds. *Chaos and Complexity….* and “Quantum Cosmology and ….*, Vatican Observatory Publications. For any curious about my own views on these issues, see Ch. 1 – 5 of my *Divine Action: Metaphysical and Epistemological Puzzles* (2010, Routledge) and the first half of Ch. 2 of *Reading Sacred Texts: Charity, Structure, Gospel* (2021, GCRR Press).
Thanks. Your book looks interesting!
Thank you for YOUR comments “efales”, your understanding of these matters is beyond my ken but interesting nonetheless. I learned recently from my wife that evolutionary biologists are NOW saying that 98% of the human genome is just the junk left over from Mother Nature’s (sometimes cruel) experiments using natural selection since the beginning of life on earth, which finally resulted in yours truly, or you, for example. None of that is particularly philosophical, just empirical evidence for lack of any intelligent design being carried out by a Designer God. – A.B. Doolittle
I think this essay is worth the price of admission.
Thanks, Bart. The Greek Isles must be n inspiration.
It appears other members of the blog don’t want to pay it! 🙂
Professor Ehrman, are you familiar with the Gelasian Decree and If so, do you think it is a pseudepigrapha?
It is attributed to various authors in various manuscripts; only one of these could be correct — or none! So in teh others it would necessarily be falsely attributed.
“Someone here argues that since any idea of God cannot be subject to empirical demonstration, it cannot be actual knowledge and is just a convenient idea held over from our supernatural past.”
The idea of God can’t be demonstrated … *but it should be if the Bible is correct.* It’s not possible for the following to both be true: (1) God can’t be demonstrated and (2) Christianity and the Bible assure us that God loves us and wants us to understand him.
It seems to me that the amount of evidence God give us for his existence is the same as if he didn’t exist.
I think all this is resolved by the idea from Karl Popper that scientific statements must be ‘falsifiable’, that is, if you can’t conceive of something that would disprove the statement, then science (and I would say history) has nothing to say about the question. I can disprove the idea of a God that every morning leaves golden eggs in my kitchen because there are never any golden eggs. But I cannot disprove the idea of a God who is hidden from us in every way or creates fossils to mislead us. We humans can imagine things that cannot be shown to exist. But there is no need to prove they do not exist, or any point in doing so. Where an idea or belief is beyond all possibility of proof, because it cannot be disproved by all means fee free to continue believing it – but don’t expect others to discuss it with you 🙂
My problem with this issue is that the word “god” is ill-defined, needless to say, the name “God” to designate the entity. Depending on how it is defined, the existence of such deity can be refutable or not. The concern is one of convenience: defining “God” in a way that it is irrefutable (in Popperian terms, unfalsifiable). In such a case, any claim about such an entity would be false knowledge, since it is not testable. Discussions trying to talk or refute such claims usually degenerate in semantics or on discussions that are undecidable in the end for one or the other claim.
In such case, I take the intellectual standard of asking for a definition of what the person means by the word, and then I ask them to provide scientifically or philosophically qualified evidence, using the tools of reason. Otherwise, I just don’t believe.
Thank you for stating exactly what I was preparing to write before I read your comment. Any questions regarding “God,” beginning with the simplest one, “Do you believe in God?,” and continuing through a more complex one such as the present question, are unanswerable mush unless they are accompanied by a precise definition of how the questioner defines “God” for the purpose of the question. I can easily answer the “Do you believe in God” question either “yes” or “no,” depending on the questioner’s own meaning of the word.
Right! I mean my meaning. 🙂
The existence (or non-existence) of God or gods is what is often called a “non-falsifiable question” – meaning that it cannot be contradicted by an empirical test. Example from philosophyterms.com: If I tell you that there is a dragon that breathes invisible heatless fire, there is no way you can prove or disprove that, since by its very description it cannot be measured – you can’t see it, you can’t feel the heat.
In the same way, claiming that there is an invisible supernatural being(s) who controls the universe is impossible to measure, and thus impossible to prove or disprove. It is strictly a matter of faith.
However, it is possible to demonstrate (if not necessarily prove) whether or not the evidence for the existence of a particular god (ie, the God of the Bible) is reasonable, unreasonable, internally or externally contradicted by other evidence.
I think Sean Carroll’s approach makes sense. You cannot disprove the existence of God, but you give credences to various arguments for and against. He gives very little credence to God based on analysis for and against. Beysian (sp?) reasoning is applied. Same can be applied to all kinds of supernatural entities and events. I think that is the best we can do as naturalists.
“…on the theoretical level you cannot disprove something that cannot be proved.” I agree. The basis of science relies on evidence. We are left essentially determining which side has more/better evidence, if any. In the history of the human race we have no evidence of any kind supporting the existence of any supernatural beings or activity (stories and legends are not evidence) and the strength of faith (an emotion) is equally irrelevant.
In response to those who say “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence…” the reply is twofold: First, in scientific experimentation, null results can be interpreted as evidence of absence. Second, the absence of evidence that SHOULD BE THERE given a particular claim is powerful evidence of absence. Bart, your leaving the faith based on suffering in the world is the perfect example. This alone proves the non-existence of God as described by Christianity since the beginning.
First quick comment without having read the entire post: why don’t you pop over to Skiathos where I currently am? It’s probably the most beautiful Greek island (a lot of green everywhere and amazing beaches!) and I could get to meet the undisputed GOAT of New Testament scholars.
Wish I could! Have had a great time on the trip, and am now on Crete for another day before flying’ outta here.
I was at Herakleion a couple of months ago – my first time ever to Crete! I had a great time! Hope you too!
Is it immoral to believe something for which there is no proof?
Definitely not.
Yes
I don’t think I agree. My daughter wasn’t being immoral when she believed in Santa.
If she continued to believe as an adult she would be. Reason is a choice and a virtue.
It would be wrong and crazy, but I don’t see that there’s an ethical issue involved. If being right about everything is necessary for virtue, we’re all screwed.
The only way to disprove the notion is if the concept of God contradicts already known knowledge.
I think, probably based on my own subjective experience, that most people believe in God for emotional (i.e. neurological) reasons. Highly intelligent God believers are motivated to articulate those emotions in language that sounds satisfying to themselves and other highly intelligent God believers. Highly intelligent nonbelievers may not be satisfied but may also be unable to articulate a counter that will change the minds of most God believers. The arguments for God that resonated with me once upon a time mostly make my eyes roll now. God was just as much a mystery to me then as now, but now I am no longer emotionally motivated to find God’s existence plausible.
I’m inclined to agree with you that conclusions about God’s existence lie in the realm of probability, but then I’d say the same about most existence-claims—God’s existence just strikes me as far less probable than, say, the existence of, say, Bart Ehrman. Absolute certainty is overrated—very high and low probability estimates can guide our behavior without the inevitable dogmatism of certainty.
It’s worth mentioning a couple possible exceptions other points in your post. One thing fundamentalist empiricism can’t prove is the validity of fundamentalist empiricism. That would be arguing in a circle. It’s also difficult to see how the empiricist can do this without committing the is/ought fallacy. No system of thought can say “this is what we ought to be paying attention to in the world” without presupposing certain values, but insofar as value-directives are not empirical facts, we cannot ground our worldview exclusively in empirical facts.
Can you disprove something that cannot be proved? Sometimes. “There are no black swans.” This can never be proved because it’s always possible we didn’t look in the right place, but it can be disproved by finding just one black swan (which of course we have).
But it could be theoretically proved because black swans would be physical substances and if you had in the future cameras that could reveal every detail of earth including every living creature even if in hiding, that would prove it. With God there’s no theoretical way to prove it.
Aren’t you applying sort of a Maxwell’s Demon ( I think that is the right demon?) to the cameras?
I guess kinda, though of course the second law continues to be debated. In another sense, though, I’m talking about real possibilities instead of hypoltehticals. Satellites can read license plates, and we’re getting better all the time, so it’s not a weird unnatural force that’s required.
If a person wanted to hold on to the belief in black swans despite the existence of an Orwellian surveillance system that didn’t register any, they could simply say the cameras don’t work as advertised. Much as God is now relegated to “another dimension” or something along those lines now that we can explore the heavens and note his conspicuous absence.
Even scientific proof is probabalistic, and peopel will believe what they want to. IMO that doesn’t mean the proof doesn’t exist!
I think it’s more correct to say that science does not provide proof, it provides evidence (including probabilistic evidence). Mathematics and Logic deal in proofs because they are closed systems of propositions, whereas science is empirical and deals with nature as it exists.
The evidence for scientific explanations can be overwhelming, but it is a category confusion to call such evidence a “proof”. Especially when appeals are made to precise language with statements like, “you can’t prove or disprove God.”
“Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” — Mark Twain
“The Ethics of Belief” — famous essay by W. K. Clifford (Lectures & Essays 1879)
“The Will to Believe” — reply by William James (1896)
An experiment I always did in my Philosophy of Religion classes: I took a $50 bill out of my wallet. I said: “I want you to try to form the positive belief that the lights are on right now in the classroom directly above ours.” Raise your hand if you form such a belief; you are on your honor. The first believer gets the 50.” I only lost that $50 once. Afterwards, a classmate friend of the winner told me the guy who raised his hand had lied to get the bill.
Belief is a complicated business – really complicated.
What is “fundamentalist empiricism”? As opposed to non-fundamentalist empiricism?
If something is, by definition, not observable, what good grounds do I have for any description of it? If I have no good grounds for any description, how can I validly say whether or not it belongs to any class, say of deities (assuming I can define that class in some meaningful way) other than the class of unobservable entities ?
Fundamentalist empiricism is empiricism employed by fundamentalists to promote their fundamentalist views.
In my view a person can be a fundamentalist about nearly any ideology. So a fundamentalist empiricist is someone who believes in the fundamental truth of empiricism, and by implication, that anything irreconcilable with empiricism must necessarily be false. We could contrast this with a more liberal empiricism which takes empirical data as crucially important, but doesn’t necessarily need to reduce everything (e.g. math, logic, epistemic principles) to empirical data.
It’s a great question what good grounds we could have for a description of something we can’t observe, and the answer will depend on the example in question. Like, the only case of conscious awareness I can directly observe is my own, but I infer that you also have consciousness because we come from a similar biological heritage, from your behavior, etc. And I think I can say things about your consciousness, such as that it involves short-term memory, that it it disappears in deep sleep, and so on.
In the case of a deity though, it’s much harder to see how anybody has any grounds to describe its supposed attributes.
Some Christians, particularly in Protestant denominations, appeal to personal revelation as evidence for God. It’s hard to argue against someone’s personal revelation! Dr Ehrman, when you were a Christian, did you have an experience of personal revelation? If so, do you recall it as convincing? And how would you account for that experience now?
Yes, I absolutely felt God revealed himself to me, on many occasions. I now think there are psychological explanations for that explanatoin.
Thank you, Bart, for this reply. I find it very valuable.
I’ve always been an agnostic, and lately I’ve started calling myself an atheist because it now seems to me *extremely* unlikely that a conscious creator exists.
I’m a scientist who has devoted his life to trying to understand what’s true about the world. I like to figure out what’s true both because it’s intellectually satisfying, and because it helps me decide how I want to behave. I want to understand how a thermostat works because I don’t want to waste energy by mistakenly turning the heat up to 80 in hopes of getting the temperature up from 60 to 70 more quickly – by understanding the thermostat, I realize the only difference between setting the temperature at 70 and setting it at 80 is that I am much more likely to overshoot my target of 70, but it won’t get to 70 any faster.
So, what are the consequences of believing versus not believing in God?
Ah, depends which God it is! That was the problem with Paschal’s wager: he assumed it was either God or not God. But if he chose “God” and it turns out Muslims have it right, he’d still be on the wrong side of the equation! (And so, for my purposes, I simply meant: a superior being outside of the natural order in the world. I’d say there are no practical consequences either way, necessarily; though there may be, specifically, if e.g., that being turns out to be one that is going to torture those who don’t think he exists)
Thanks! I’m not impressed with the idea of a deity who so needs me to worship Him that He’s going to be vengeful when I fail to give Him what He thinks he’s entitled to – that seems like a weak kind of deity to me. I hope that if God exists, humans have badly garbled what’s true about Him.
Another Christian friend of mine thinks that nonbelievers like me will cease to exist when we die, whereas believers’ souls will have eternal life. That’s OK with me, and seems just, if that’s the truth. I don’t feel any need for the immortality of my consciousness. I wonder how many believers believe primarily because they really fear the idea of their consciousness being extinguished.
Your sensible revision of Pascal’s Wager reminds me of the classic South Park bit where a lot of believers are surprised to find themselves in Hell:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbsCvoWK1bE
Ha! It’s a classic.
Thanks. It’s a classic!
I want to know the truth about God because I don’t want to miss out on some great joy that is available to me, nor do I want to be damned to an eternity of punishment because I failed to believe the right thing. But I have prayed to God on numerous occasions to ask Him to reveal Himself to me, and I’ve never detected any response. If I did experience a direct revelation, that would potentially make a difference to me (though I would want to be skeptical, as you have, and make sure I wasn’t experiencing something else). At this point, I have friends who are sure that I will be damned to an eternity of torment because of my obstinate refusal to believe what is absolutely crystal-clear to them. But I’ve decided that if God made me the way I am, and if He has refused to answer in a way that I can understand despite my sincere efforts to ask him for a revelation, then if He plans to punish me for eternity, He’s not the kind of deity I would find it satisfying to be with anyway.
When I die, perhaps I will find out the truth.
Folks in this thread have correctly noted that theories are only useful if they make testable predictions. Believers tend to rationalize many different events as being clear signs of the existence of God. For example, if I get what I pray for, that shows God exists, and if I don’t get what I pray for, that shows how God is too wise and loving to give me something that wouldn’t be good for me.
The one place that believers do still allow for a testable theory is in the question of what happens when we die. If I am still conscious after I die, then I will become much more likely to believe in God. But maybe by then I will be in chains and eternally tortured by flames. I sure hope not. That would be a pretty lousy universe.
The definition of supernatural entities, including deities e.g. God, includes the property of being unobservable, undetectable. Such entities might exist, but as they are not observable, there is nothing we can reliably say about them, including whether they exist. Therefore, while we cannot rule out the possibility of their existence, we can safely disregard this possibility for any practical purpose, inquiry, or consideration of any action.
Further, the logical test for existence of any deity would be the demonstration of at least one instance belonging to the collection of entities defined as deities. As the definition of the collection “deities” is not universally accepted, this is difficult. Assuming, for discussion, that it is, say, the collection of all beings omnipotent and omniscient, it would be impossible to say that any non-observable being is in that collection, or isn’t in that collection.
My inference is that the existence of deities is unknowable and irrelevant to practical existence. Deities, as concepts, are useful to us only as metaphor and expression of feeling as in poetry.
To talk about disproving the existence of something, you have first to define what it is that you’re trying to disprove. Some particular god of antiquity (Yahweh? Jesus? Vishnu? Zeus?) The god of pantheism – the whole of the universe? (hard to disprove that one!) Godel’s notion of a “Godlike object” that has every “positive property” and no “negative property”? It’s surprising to me that most discussions of existence on that most learned platform – YouTube – neglect to start with definitions. William Craig in particular jumps from some generic theist conception to a fully realized Christ without skipping a beat. But without precise definitions, one may as well argue about the existence or lack thereof of “X”.
I’m a fundamentalist pantheist. I believe that God is literally everywhere. I could be a happy atheist but I would always feel like Consciousness/God was experiencing a lifetime as a happy atheist.
Hello!
I think someone can argue that there is no Christian God or some other God that we know of – through historical, literal, moral arguments – you see the man-making , but no one can argue that *a God* doesn’t exist – a devine being that we know nothing about and that doesn’t intervine in our lives. Same can be said about anything: from other inhabited worlds to reincarnation – there is no way to find out, so it remains at the level of supposition, belief, tradition. The question arrises: are these suppositions relevant to our living? I say no. The questions may be interesting, but irrelevant until arriving to a clear proof.
I know you read ancient philosophers recently. Have you read Seneca? He’s a great character – in my opinion – like a wise friend.
Yes indeed, I have.
Thanks for your answer!
What do you think of my arguments about the issue raised?
I’m afraid I don’t remember were. But I was trying to respond!
I think that it’s desirable to define what one means by “God” before trying to prove or disprove its existence.
Clearly, the God of the Abrahamic religions doesn’t exist, because it’s supposed to have done many things in the past that we know with certainty didn’t happen.
But is there supposed to be some other God that does/did other things? Details would be needed to address the question.
Close to God
1. Why is there anything at all?
2. Why is mathematics just “out there,” something uncreated, and something discovered by mathematicians rather than invented?
3. Why is mathematics so unreasonably effective in the natural sciences? (see Eugene Wigner) “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.” – Einstein
4. How did the cosmos produce mathematicians?
Notes
1. Questions 1, 2, and 3, in my view, are not incompatible with the existence of God since he could have produced a specific cosmos: First, it is describable by mathematics; and second, it would eventually produce mathematicians who could understand it. “The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming.” – Freeman Dyson.
2. I have no philosophical or teleological arguments for either the existence or nonexistence of God. After all is said, in my case, my humble position is a combination of: 1) Saying God is probably close to an answer to question 1. 2) And saying or admitting that Fideism, a standpoint which maintains that faith is independent of reason, is how I tend to lean.
My answers to 1-4: I don’t know. I no longer care. The historical resurrection of Jesus in a place and time and the written witnesses to it was the only evidence for God that I used to find convincing. Once I realized how weak that so-called evidence actually is, I let go of my desire to believe in a God, especially a personal one.
I can’t imagine a way with which we could disprove the existence of a deity in general, but I can easily think of a scientific way-finding that could definitely disprove the God of the Bible. If, through cosmology, we could establish that the universe is eternal, that would disprove the existence of the Christian God, since the latter, according to the Bible, created the world. (By the way, based on what I’ve read, I strongly believe the universe is indeed eternal, and I would bet good money that most cosmologists would concur with me).
If by “eternal” you mean that it has always existed (eternal going backward as well as forward) good luck proving that one!
Paul Steinhardt and his team actually presented their cyclic cosmological model just a few months ago at the World’s Science Festival hosted by Brian Greene. I didn’t get all the details, but they claimed that their theory can be tested. Steinhardt was one of the pioneers of inflationary cosmology, but he rejected it exactly because he thought it doesn’t yield specific predictions with regard to our world, because it inescapably leads to a multiverse. Speaking of which, if you take the inflationary multiverse, or, in fact, even the simplest kind of multiverse, the one where space is infinite, I think you’d still disprove the Christian God, because in either case, you get an ensemble of universes where pretty much every configuration of matter happens, and I don’t think that jibes with Christian theology. Furthermore, in the Many Worlds scenario of quantum mechanics, anything that’s allowed by the laws of physics happens in some world – I can’t see how you can reconcile this with the Christian notion of free will, for example. So, to sum it up, I think various multiverse scenarios disprove the God of the Bible.
There are countless claims that can’t be proven or disproven. I propose that we are surrounded by Schmatter, composed of Schmotons and Schmelectrons, particles whose distinctive property is that they in no way interact with ordinary matter. I propose that far beyond the bounds of our observable universe are myriad other universes. I propose we live in a simulation whose programmers have craftily designed it to never feed our brains (or whatever we have) any evidence of the simulation. Hell, since Gödel we’ve known that *even in the realm of pure mathematics*, there are true propositions that cannot be proven (and so, necessarily, statements of mathematical falsehoods that cannot be proven false). If even in the domain of pure logic there are true nonexistence statements that cannot be proven (and this impossibility is itself logically provable!) why on earth should we expect any guarantees in messy empirical reality?
Hear, hear! If there are false mathematical statements that cannot be proven false, why should we expect to be able to demonstrate that “There is a god” is false. I suppose the existence of God might be an easier nut to crack than a Godel conundrum, but that seems to be an overconfident stretch.
I agree with those erudite people you know who believe there is some kind of supreme being (or force or essence or collective consciousness or…).
But it also seems to me that the question of whether God exists is tightly bound up with the question of whether there’s an afterlife. (The two questions don’t *have* to go together, but they always seem to.) I believe that is similarly not disprovable and in fact there is a large body of evidence that consciousness does indeed persist after physical life processes have ceased. They’re called near death experiences (NDE) and researchers have compiled thousands of them and noted numerous common characteristics. One of the common characteristics is that the NDE’er will describe the reality of their experience as being *more* real than this life. They say this life seems like a dream state by comparison. Many also report an encounter with a supreme being.
Materialists will discount NDEs as the effects of chemical reactions in a dying brain. But they’ll also say that before-death consciousness is also the effect of chemical reactions in a *living* brain. So is one experience (or chemical reaction) any less real than the other?
What is your opinion of NDEs?
I discuss them in my book Heaven and Hell. After reading a ton of them and a ton of wrigings about them, ‘m convinced tehy are completely physiologically driven events.
Probably one of the most fruitless discussions ever. First, IMO, “God” needs to be defined. I assume the deity in this context is the Abramic one, which has been said to be “unknowable”. Therefore, it cannot be defined, nor proven to either exist or not exist.
In the natural world, how about the question “Does life on other planets exist?” be disproven? After “life” is defined (easier said than done), contact with a so-called “intelligent” source through SETI could “prove” it, but does no contact “disprove” it? “Absence of proof is not proof of absence”
It’s a matter of belief. The word “belief” itself implies absence of proof. My answer to the question is NO.
I don’t think God can be disproven through scholasticism. Certain intellectuals find this concept maddening.
Just to reiterate—IYKYK
True thinkers are always ready to reflect and record their thoughts. I am the same.
Aquinas’ “First Way” gives me pause
Your statements that we can’t prove Abe Lincoln are spurious. We have tons of independent attestation that Lincoln gave the the Gettysburg Address, and none of that required him to break the laws of Physics. A God that created the universe 6,000 years ago by separating the earth from the water is eminently provable, though genetics or geology or astronomy, but the evidence isn’t there.
But humans learn more, so maybe God triggered the big bang or fine tuned the cosmological constants, but then what are the requirements for God. He has to be able to control great energies. Does he need to be the ultimate arbiter of human morality? No. Does he need to be actively involved in human creation? No. Does he even need to know we exist? No.
What do these erudite people says about the fact that God only seemed to care about a small segment of humanity? Where were the Aztecs worshiping Jesus before the Spanish came? It seems like very undisciplined thinking to me.
Can you “prove” love? I think Tim Minchin gave the best response to this (normally rhetorical) question:
“You don’t have any evidence for love? Sure! Love without evidence is stalking.”
If someone studied you and your relationship to your wife they could quite easily deduce that you do in fact love her. The existence of “love” has real effects on the world that you could observe and study. Emotions do not only manifest in the mind, the have real-world consequences.
Maybe your co-travellers are hung-up on the term ‘God’.
An alternative way in, might be to explore a related question:
“Can You Disprove the Existence of the Universe?”. That is to say, if we take empirical demonstration as proof, is it possible to conceive of an experimental procedure that could distinguish a Reality in which there *is* a Universe, from one where there is *no* Universe?
Likely the answer is ‘no’. If empirical demonstration leads to *meaning*, then there must be a Universe. We can conceive that Reality may simply consist of random chaos – in which case it *would* contain no Universe – but in a Reality of random chaos there can be no systems of proof, empirical or otherwise.
Epistemologically, the existence of the Universe cannot be *purely* contingent – either Reality must be such that there must be a Universe, or Reality must be such that there cannot be a Universe.
So is the existence of the Universe simply a logical necessity, like the irrational value of pi? Most natural scientists – whether religious or not – would demur; the Universe must *also* be an empirical fact.
But consider whether ‘Universe’ and ‘God’, in this argument, are interchangeable terms?
I would say there are many ways to address this question, all depending on how God is perceived.
If one align with theologians like Meister Eckhart, who propably inspired theologians like John S. Spong and his teacher/inspirator, Paul Tillich, they would suggest that God is the true ground of the soul, from where one’s soul finds its ultimate purpose and fullfillment. This perspective trandcends God above the concept of “being”, and further, beyond all categories and definitions. Then, this will make question of God’s existence more one of personal conviction and spiritual (re-?)awakening, not something that can be (conclusively) proven or disproven.
Then, belief in God becomes a journey of the soul, exploring and evolving in the divine within and beyond us, rather than a debate that can be settled by science.
Great discussion,wish I could have been there.
In the opening chapters of the book the Knowledge Machine there is a treatment that says even the rising of the sun is not a certainty, nor is gravity, but most of us can not live with this degree of uncertainty, crucially most just take it for granted.
However, science/philosophy gathers what knowledge it can and attempts to explain through observation, experiment etc. and eventually changes the paradigm of explanation to conform to the best explanation of what is going on. This process the book points out is a very hard, rare and uncomfortable when it comes to strict observation and because the conclusions are often counter to what the previous paradigm provided. It’s not always that the previous paradigm is wrong but merely lacking.
Wonderful discussion. I have to ask my mathematician friend (or an 8th grader – it’s been a long time) if we have sets p and not p, do we inherently know everything not p? But, as stated this is not math… unless it’s probability. But, to know a probability, does there not have to be something “not p” to have a probability? IIRC, Heisenberg said yes… Now I have to check that out!
Sure. All that’s necessary is to realize that God is a fantasy imagined by people who have a dread of non-existence. These people fantasize that humans have an invisible, immaterial, immortal soul that survives the death of the body. After death the fantasized soul moves on to existence in an equally fantasized spiritual realm that is populated by other souls and all manner of other fantasized spirits up to and including the fantasy of an all-powerful God. Of course, there’s not a shred of evidence for any of this.
You aren’t taking into account religions that did NOT posit a pleasant afterlife. Greek belief in the Olympian gods, for instance, in no way depended on a doctrine of the afterlife. Some writers posited an afterlife. Some didn’t. Some ancient Greek writers posited reincarnation — Plato does, but it’s very unclear if he meant that to be taken seriously or if it was, in effect, a parable. Some Greeks were initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, which did claim to offer a happy afterlife for initiates; but most Greeks weren’t Eleusinian initiates. In short, there was no fixed or agreed-upon doctrine of the afterlife and, with the exception of Demeter at Eleusis, the worship of the Olympian gods had very little to do with ideas about the afterlife. That wasn’t the point of that religion. The gods were explanatory of events in this world.
Closer to the subject of this blog, my impression is that Judaism did not include any idea of the afterlife for many centuries — but Dr. Ehrman will correct me if I’m wrong about that!
In my experience, you’ve been wrong just about precisely nothing!
I am not a scientist or even very smart, though I am interested in astrophysics. (Don’t understand it though). It seems to me, for what it’s worth, that the natural world proves the existence of God for me. It is subjective, I think. I don’t understand how something can come from nothing. Even if the universe came from spontaneous combustion, you still have to have the fuel, to create the combustion. That is my view and I totally understand the other view. There is no ‘proof’ of the existence of God but for me having a ‘power that is greater than us’ is comforting since we make such a mess of things. The nature of that power and its relation to our world is one of those mysteries that cannot be fully known or understood but provides endless food for thought. Sometimes, I think we should spend more time helping others and less time in speculation.
I would say that the universe has always existed. (We don’t know what happened before the Big Bang … maybe a Big Crunch). The universe could be an endless cycle of expansion and contraction.
But if you insist on looking for an initial cause, you must then ask the question: what created God?
The only approach that would really be able to disprove a deity is something like theological noncognitivism or igtheism, which holds that the concept of God is incoherent on its face. This isn’t particularly popular, even in atheist circles, but I think it should have more attention paid to it. Our concepts of deity are often quite messy and quite possibly contain contradictory or meaningless ideas. One way to look at it is to ask what the functional difference between an immaterial being and a nonexistent being is. In the end I don’t think it will convince most people but I do think it is useful to question the actual conceptual ground of a deity.
I once had a conversation with Tiger Lily on this very subject. Peter introduced us.
It depends on what “God” means. Gods of revealed religion can be disproved, because the claims to revelation contradict each other and because so many people have alleged they have received divine revelations that it is impossible to believe any of them: no rational person could decide which of those alleged revelations would be accurate and there would be no rational basis to accept any of them. But is there some kind of supreme scientific or philosophical intelligence, forever unknowable to the human mind, that is somehow responsible for the laws of nature? I don’t know, and I don’t think we can know. Science can explain some laws of nature and natural phenomena, but it cannot explain the cause of those natural laws and phenomena. This is why I say I am an agnostic regarding such ultimate scientific or philosophic questions while being an atheist regarding any claim to revelation. If there is a supreme intelligence in the sense I have described, it wouldn’t be “supernatural.” It would be “natural” but would be in a dimension of nature that we cannot access. For “evidence,” consider quantum entanglement. Science can demonstrate that, but can it ever explain it?
I don’t think contradictory claims show that all the claims are wrong. They certainly show that all BUT ONE are wrong!
Perhaps, but, even if so, there is no rational way to ascertain which claim is the true one. It would be an unjust (at least by human standards) God to consign people who don’t guess the right answer to hell. One could argue that some claims to revelation are more rational than others, but then one is already using reason, instead of faith, to make that determination. I went through this exercise when I was a teenager, but I found it to be futile, especially when the revealed religions insist on “faith,” i.e., belief, instead of reason. I was raised a Lutheran, and Luther himself called reason the great “whore” (I guess Thomas Aquinas and his epigoni upset him). Although there is a somewhat admirable rational Thomistic tradition in the Catholic church, in the last analysis even Aquinas said one must take a leap of faith. Or perhaps that was exoteric. Given the alternative (being burned at the stake for heresy), poor Thomas didn’t have a lot of options in that time and place.
My viewpoint is that most ancient societies either invented or adopted deities for worship is the compelling factor for me not having to disprove the existence of God or gods. If your religion is based on faith, then proving the existence of a deity should be irrelevant. For me, the information in books written by scholars who have examined the origins of Canaanite/Israel history whether it be from archaeologists, (William Dever, Israel Finkelstein) or Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Study professors, (Mark S. Smith, Robert Cargill). In other words, go back to the origin and decide for yourself.
Disproving that God exists would be proving a negative–an extraordinarily difficult thing to do. But that’s not really the question, anyway. If someone posits the existence of something, I’m going to call Code of the Schoolyard on them. You know, that life wisdom we all learned (or should have) in 4th grade that said, among other things, If you say it’s true, then it’s your job to show that it’s true, not our job to show that it’s false. If I say that crows exist, and you don’t believe me, I’ll show a picture of a crow in any number of bird ID books. But you can say that’s all made up, like pictures of pink unicorns. So I’ll take you down to the city park, we’ll walk around for ten minutes or so, and there they are. Crows. Just like in the books. And you will have to say, I guess you’re right. Crows exist. OK, now for God. Show me. Even if you constructed a logically perfect argument that God exists, I would still say, all right, now show me.
Would you not have to be God to disprove the existence of God? Would you not have to use an ability to explore all dimensions, times, and all space at once to conclude God does not exist. In doing so, would you not have to be ” a god”, or “The God”?
Possibly so. But I should think that anyone who insists on that as a truth claim is necessarily arguing in a circle.
There are plenty of mysteries in the world of quantum physics, it does not mean these odd happenings are not true.
Oh boy is that ever true.
Full disclosure: this is complete plagiarism, taken from an article on the philosophy of religion from a CUNY textbook because I’m not smart enough to give my own answer.
The person making a negative claim cannot logically prove nonexistence. And here’s why: to know that a X does not exist would require a perfect knowledge of all things (omniscience). To attain this knowledge would require simultaneous access to all parts of the world and beyond (omnipresence). Therefore, to be certain of the claim that X does not exist one would have to possess abilities that are non-existent. Obviously, mankind’s limited nature precludes these special abilities. The claim that X does not exist is therefore unjustifiable. As logician Mortimer Adler has pointed out, the attempt to prove a universal negative is a self- defeating proposition. These claims are “worldwide existential negatives.” They are only a small class of all possible negatives. They cannot be established by direct observation because no single human observer can cover the whole earth at one time in order to declare by personal authority that any “X” doesn’t exist.
Is the argument for the nonexistence of an argument for nonexistence illogical?
No. But who’s on first? 🤔
What’s on second?
No. But who’s on first? 🤔
What’s on second?
Beats me.
Laplaces demon….it does not exist and is only good for thought experiments. Unless, Laplaces demon is God, in which case we are back at the start😂
“to know that a X does not exist would require a perfect knowledge of all things (omniscience)“
If that were true, we’d have a hard time navigating the world. If X = “a gorilla living in your bathroom”, then you could have a look and see if there’s one in there. I’m sure there isn’t one, and once you’re satisfied that there isn’t one too, we could agree that this X does not exist. Bathe in peace. You don’t have to keep asking yourself “…but what if I’m wrong?”
The point is that once you assign attributes to X, then you can certainly evaluate whether it exists or not. If X = God, then we ask “what attributes does God have?”
“Who gets to say what attributes God has? Surely there is no agreement?” Well, there is agreement among groups, and the only one relevant in discussions on a site called “Misquoting Jesus” set up by a Biblical scholar is going to be the Christian God. Christians make definite claims about God, and these can be evaluated.
I’m sure that there isn’t one, and I don’t keep asking myself “but what if I’m wrong?”
But I don’t know who’s on third.
Dr. Ehrman,
To me, no, it is not possible for mortals to disprove anything beyond our scope. We are mortal. We live by and within the physics of this universe. There might be other universes, or types of universes, dimensions or types of dimensions, other realities that are different from ours. We can’t know everything, so we can’t disprove anything beyond what we can know… such as the square root of 9.
Do I *believe* the Earth will rotate for a sunrise tomorrow, yes. But it could explode or be consumed by a maurading black hole. We don’t know what we don’t know, but we build our realities on probabilities.
Thus humans build realities that include gods, or at least properties of gods. I don’t give 2 flips what your erudite friends *believe*. Thinking of eternal beings, infinite power, infinite knowledge, omni-this-that, it’s not our domain, at least not like gravity or 3*3. Gods *might* exist. Hard stop. Beyond that exists only belief.
When someone *believes*, they by definition lose the ability to discern reality from belief, because their belief is part of how they define reality.
Would love to share a beer with you on this topic.
It might take three beers before we began to see the truth….
Of course I can disprove the existence of God, I do it regularly.
(Looking skyward): “Hey God, do you exist?”
No answer. There’s my proof.
Y’all gave this 77 year old grandma some fun reading this morning! Thanks😊
From above:
“At the same time, it also seems to me that almost all our knowledge – with the exception of mathematics, I’d say – is probabilistic”
Mathematics is also probabilistic. I believe that it was a third century Pythagoras who mathematically calculated the motion of the planets. He could predict where they will be at any future date. The math was based on the earth as the center of the solar system. It proved that the sun and the planets revolved around the earth.
Today’s math can “prove” that worm holes, time travel and multiple dimensions exist.
Take it all with a grain of salt.
some is. But it’s not merely probably that the square root of 16 is 4.
We may never be able to prove or disprove God, but it seems science pushes “him”(it”) further and further into the remote. Fewer people think praying for rain does much good. Large scale study on prayer for hospital patioents showed either no effect or a slighly negative affect.
Once the idea of the supernatural took root in culture and became a binding principle that joined people together, it became next to impossible to negate supernatural beliefs through reason. People believe in culturally determined ideas because not to believe is to be left out. People live in societies of cultural emotion and want to be accepted, not rejected.
Logic cannot be used to prove or disprove emotionally held beliefs. When events appear to align with supernatural predictions, people see that as proof. When events contradict supernatural predictions, people begin to drift from their favored beliefs.
Having said this, I hope that as more cities melt under the heat caused by climate change, some who believe their God will never let it go too far wake up to the fact that their God doesn’t exist or doesn’t care and they better invest in renewable energy.
There is no certain proof for anything even mathematics; because mathematics is based on axioms and many of these axioms were formed by induction, and induction is not a certain approach.
However, if we have a conclusion that doesn’t have any opposing evidences, and this conclusion can be proved by many different “likely” proofs, then the synergy and combination of these proofs would present a level of confidence that is much more than “likely”.
This is my view about the existence of God: There are no opposing evidences for this existence (there are questions but no evidences), and this existence does have (in my view) many different “likely” proofs that none of them are necessary certain, but their synergy and combination can present a very highly likely confidence for the existence of God.
I did write an article about this, and I structured it not to prove the existence of God, but to prove that the existence of God is a “legitimate and rational” belief. Therefore, this article was structure from a defensive angle rather than an active one, which would allow me to bypass many circular subjective arguments that are normally attached with this subject.
The article:
https://omr-mhmd.yolasite.com/resources/61-EvidencesOfGod-15.pdf
Hey, Bart:
Above somewhere you gave your definition of God as ” a superior being outside of the natural order in the world.” Would you argue with someone whose view of God could be described as “panentheistic”? That is, a conception of Being or the Absolute Ground of Being that exists “immanently” within all that we know as nature, but also “transcendentally,” that is, extending beyond our experience (and perhaps our comprehension) to perhaps an infinite degree? This is always how I have viewed God (as an adult, at least), and though I cannot prove such a theory, I regard it as a workable human construct that “explains” reality in a way that is comprehensible to me. (I believe that any “actual” definition of “God” is most likely beyond human comprehension.)
I tend not to argue with people about their views of God. For me, if someone has a view, I’m interested in both what it is and what reasons they have for believing it. In this case, I’ve never seen any good reasons for thinking a God like this exists; usually my sense is the people who believe it are those who are disastisfied with the idea of a transcendant God, and instead of giving up with the idea of God altogether come to think he is immanent. But that move seems usually predicated on the idea that *some* kind of God has to exist, and for my part I don’t see why that is. That is, what would make anyone think so? If there’s no evidence/reason, then I tend not to believe it.
If we replace the word “God” (which I confess is a rather loaded concept) with a phrase like “absolute reality,” do we still have a problem? Doesn’t “absolute reality,” by its very nature, have to exist? The question, then, really, is how we reasonably define it or think about it. If we confess that we do not (and most likely cannot) answer this question, we form picturizations or models which we hope will conform most closely to that elusive ultimate reality. In essence, the models are metaphors through which our limited human comprehension can begin to think about that absolute reality, which – it appears to me – MUST exist in some form. Many ancient peoples pictured anthropomorphic gods (and eventually one God) to represent this concept. Other traditions, such as some forms of Eastern thought, pictured an identity between the subjective self and the absolute (or “Brahman” or “Dao”). For me, the question is really not “Is there a God?” so much as “How should we envision God?”
Thanks. For me the question is: why should we think there is anything out there that stands outside the natural world that came into existence at the Big Bang. I don’t think we can assume there is or is not, but if I believe something such as “there is” I usually want some reason to think it.
Great discussion. ChatGPT-4 summarized for us. I wonder if it stole comments from this blog!
Me: is there a god?
ChatGPT
“The existence of God is a deeply philosophical and theological question that has been debated for centuries. Different cultures, religions, and individuals have diverse beliefs and interpretations regarding the existence of a higher power or deity. Some believe in a personal God who actively intervenes in the world, while others hold more abstract or pantheistic views of divinity. Ultimately, whether or not one believes in God often depends on personal faith, experiences, and cultural upbringing. It’s a question that individuals often grapple with throughout their lives, and there is no definitive answer that satisfies everyone.”
AI mic drop.
😉
That’s all AI could come up with after all the money, time, and energy going into it? I’m disappointed and am just going to pull the covers over my head and go back to sleep.
I assume ChatGPT is not a Christian ahahaha
You can disprove that something happened, such as some baseball player hit a home run in New York when it is public knowledge that the only game he played in that day was in Atlanta. Disproving the existence of something = it does not exist, is a different matter. This is much like the ether wind that was the medium through which light waves were assumed to be transmitted. The Michaelson-Morley experiment did not disprove the existence of the ether wind, but showed that if there is one, it has no effect on the transmission of light, so it might as well not exist. And that is all the farther it needed to be taken. The same goes for searching for the God effect. We haven’t found one yet anywhere, so we are led to the same conclusion–maybe there is a God, but wherever we look we don’t find it.
In my experience, God is Hope. In that sense He exists and is very real. My God is always with me and keeps me happy, balanced and grounded. Sometimes I pray to Him but not often. He’s as much a part of my world as anything else. What’s the problem?
I suppose people who ask whether God existes are thinkibng of a transcendant being that is actually in existence rather then the feelings of hope and happiness that someone has in life that could be derived from pyschological or physiological processes and the situation they fid themselves in..
1. If God had no attributes, then we couldn’t disprove His existence. However, by using Occam’s razor, we can eliminate such an attributeless entity from consideration.
2. God, in most formulations, does have attributes. Those attributes can be used to determine whether He exists.
3. Generally the attributes given to God negate the possibility of His existence, or are so vague that the existence of such an entity is meaningless. In effect, this means we can disprove God’s existence.
4. History and most science may be probabilistic, but this doesn’t open the door to the possibility of any God we would recognize as God. It certainly will never give us the Christian God.
5. It’s the last point here that matters in dealing with the Christian argument from scepticism, i.e.”We can’t be absolutely sure of anything, since we don’t know everything, so God could exist”. Not any God we would call God, however, and certainly not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
The hornets certainly are circling this nest. A couple of general observations may be helpful. First, it’s important to distinguish truth from knowledge and from belief. A belief may be false – many are. If something is known, then it’s true. But knowledge requires more than truth: it requires proof or justification. So there are many truths that are not known. Some – see Godel’s theorems – may be impossible to know. For many, having “faith” means simply believing without good justification. This usage (for which Kierkegaard is largely responsible) does no justice to the long discussion, within the Judeo-Christian traditions, over what faith is. Others think that every belief must depend on faith – because in the end, justification must begin with premises, which have to be taken “on faith” – another serious mistake. Some beliefs are fully justified even though not derivable from other, more basic beliefs (because themselves basic). They aren’t provable, but need no proof. They’re self-evident. Examples: 1 < 2; I am now feeling pain. Oudeis' 5 is invalid. Skeptical theism rests on different premises.
I take it you mean that my point (5) misrepresents “skeptical theism”. I must confess I am ignorant of what that is, so please try deleting “Christian argument from scepticism i.e.”, and replacing it with the word “statement” and see if that makes it any better.
Point (5) is attempting to say that if you make a case that we can’t know whether God exists, you haven’t thereby opened the door to the existence of the Christian God as commonly understood. Take the description in the Apostolic or the Nicene Creed. Part of the creed is belief “in Jesus Christ our Lord…born of the Virgin Mary… was crucified dead, and buried…he descended into Hell. On the third day he rose again. He ascended into heaven…”. Lots of claims being made here and elsewhere about the Christian God, claims that can be challenged.
Hopefully this isn’t invalid. If I’m wrong about what you meant, I’m happy to be corrected.
Let’s see if I understand you now. Let G be the proposition that God exists. Let S be the proposition you find in the ecumenical creeds – viz., that the Second Person of the Trinity exists. If (as Christians might allow), G does not logically entail S, then, indeed, a proof of G does not ipso facto prove S. So S might be false – for all that’s been shown – even if G is true. If that’s what you mean, I agree with you.
I’m making a bit more of a claim than this.
First, I claim S is false, not just might be.
Second, for many people, G=S. Billy Warfel’s God, for example, from your excellent essay. If they say “G”, they mean “S”. A lot of attributes, and disprovable.
What is G where it isn’t S? It could be another creed. An Islamic creed. Lots of attributes, again. Or it could be one without many attributes, nebulous in its formulation. Or maybe a tautologically true God, “God is everything”.
Perhaps we have a scale. At one end (call it “A”) you have an abstract and inert God which doesn’t do anything and can’t be disproved. At the other end (“B”), are attribute-rich versions of God, like S.
If people are going to bother with a God, they generally are going for something down the “B” end. Who cares about an “A” type God? Outside of philosophical or theological discussions, where does it even come up? Who believes in it? Can we just say “meaning is use”, and deal with what the vast majority of believers – and people generally – understand by “God”?
@ Oudeis: Thanks for your generous remarks. As a crotchety old teacher, I always appreciate those who demonstrate serious industry in preparation for a discussion. As for trifling, I have no quarrel with people who trifle with me – as long as I get to trifle back.
On the substantive matter, it seems to me that we are in full agreement that, the more logically independent properties you add to a description of an individual X, the riskier the assertion that X exists.
As for the assertions we find in the Nicene Creed about God and Jesus, I should just add that, before we undertake an assessment of truth or falsity, it behooves us to do our level-best to get clarity on what the claims assert – no trifling matter. As a methodological principle, I would defend this principle of interpretation: our (defeasible) presumption should be that the most rational meaning that can be assigned to a claim, consistent with all our evidence, should be preferred over interpretations that impute stupidity or ignorance.
Thank-you very much for your reply. I agree with your principle, but before scrutinizing the Creeds, let’s recap.
I asserted that we could disprove the existence of God. I said that “God” as commonly understood had many attributes which described an entity that demonstrably does not exist. Other versions of “God” that might be defensible (by virtue of providing fewer attributes) described an entity that was alien to the commonly understood “God” and that was irrelevant.
So what constitutes disproof? How can we definitely say something doesn’t exist? Isn’t there always a penumbra of doubt, as Bertrand Russell said?
Russell said he was agnostic about God, but also about Zeus and the possibility of a teapot being in orbit around the sun (pre-Sputnik, too). Brilliant though he was, I don’t think many of us really think either Zeus or the teapot exists, or could exist.
We reason in the first case that Zeus was a mythological being generated in Greek culture; we can trace the development of the myth, and the demise of it being believed.
A teapot is a human artefact; there is no possibility that one could have been in space before Sputnik.
Neither exists.
So far, so good?
@Oudeis: Good points, well taken. I might add a few thoughts which complicate the picture a bit but aren’t fundamentally in disagreement.
1. The term ‘proof’ is, we can agree, polysemous: different standards apply in different contexts. Some conceptions of God are actually self-contradictory: that yields proof in the strongest sense that they don’t exist. But mostly here we’re concerned with empirical evidence.
2. The Zeus case is trickier than Russel realized. He proposed a famous theory for how proper names denote, that sparked decades of debate. On his own theory, all claims about Zeus are false if nothing satisfies the fictional description of Zeus. R’s theory of reference has been largely abandoned; Kripke is the new leader of the pack, and on his theory it is (surprisingly) actually *impossible* for fictional creatures (like unicorns or Zeus) to exist.
3. When it comes to agnosticism vs. belief, some (including Russel and myself) are more cautious than others. But we can agree for present purposes that an astro-teapot and a real Zeus are very long shots.
I wonder if an educated answer to this question is possible if the question is reposed a bit differently in the way late physicist Steven Weinberg asked it: “does the universe show signs of having been designed by a deity more or less like those of traditional monotheistic religions–not necessarily a figure from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but at least some sort of personality, some intelligence, who created the universe and has some special concern with life, in particular with human life.”
A Designer Universe?
by Steven Weinberg
Professor of Physics, University of Texas at Austin
Winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics.
https://www.physlink.com/Education/essay_weinberg.cfm
Faith is an immaterial, subjective, entirely personal experience, intrinsically impervious to extrinsic confirmation.
The tools of science (instrumental measurement, experimental data, theoretical analysis, etc.) are only appropriate to quantifying and apprehending aspects of the physical universe. They are inherently and by definition useless for verifying — or falsifying — metaphysical truths.
To borrow a rhetorical tactic from Jesus, if you’ll create a portrait for me on a grand piano, or a symphony in oils on canvas, I’ll provide you with scientific proof for the existence of God.
The best a believer in God — or for that matter, Santa Claus — can do is point to material manifestations as evidence, e.g., a medically inexplicable healing, or the overnight appearance of gifts under the Christmas tree, and argue that such can only be attributed to a mysterious, immaterial source. Neither God nor Santa ever makes a personal appearance.
The quest to irrefutably demonstrate the existence of God is a fool’s errand. So, the answer is clearly: no. Because attempting to prove the negative is merely doubling down on illogic. The best an atheist can do is credit doctors for the healing, mom and dad for the the yuletide cornucopia, and enjoy the Greek isles. 😎
Can we prove the existence of G’d using the ”Scientific Method”? No
Can we disprove the existence of G’d using the ”Scientific Method”? No
What about using Philosophy or Theology? Depends on who you ask.
I apologize for raising something off-topic, but I’m part of church discussion group that was considering their reaction to the phrase “the end justifies the means.” There was a general opinion that the Bible does not endorse this ethics. But there was concern that Exodus suggests that God used repeated bad means (harm to the Egyptians) to bring about the good end of freeing the Jews. At the heart of this discussion was Pharaoh’s hardened heart. The NSRV text sometimes says that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, sometime that Pharaoh hardened his own heart, and sometimes it is a passive case. Is this variation found in the early manuscripts? Did God have his thumb on the scales?
My sense is that the various biblical writrs would probably answer this in different ways, but the overall perspective is “It depends on what ends and on what means” (!)
After years of deconstructing I’m finding myself really doubting Christianity, but I do, for whatever reason still believe in some type of a higher power. I don’t really know what I think of that higher power, but every time I try to think okay, I believe in a higher power, but I don’t know what it’s like, I’m just going to love ppl, try to be a good person etc I have all these c.s Lewis apologetic arguments in my head like “well where did your idea of morality come from” or “well define your higher power” etc…and then I almost start thinking well, maybe Christianity is right because if I do believe in a higher power, why would they just put all this into motion, but give us no idea what they are like and know so many ppl wouldn’t get it right. I feel like I’m not thinking about this right. Any insight?
Yes, I used to be a big fan of that moral argument for the existence of God as well. I will be talking about it in my book, to show who how I think it’s completely problematic. Morality is not a constant across cultures, with some cultures advocating moral actions that others would consider grotesquely immoral. If we all have the same source of morality, why are there such huge differences? Apart from that, there are extremely good reasons to explain why all human cultures have some kind of morality or another. Evolutionary biology is very important for this. You may want to read around in it. Amazing stuff.
I know this is a big question, but I just have a hard time believing in Jesus divinity after everything, but I do feel like there is a creator of some kind. All the Christian apologetics make me feel like that I can’t just say I believe in a creator without defining it and part of me feels like that is kind of silly because what kind of a creator am I saying I believe in or what kind of a God do I believe in. Am I just thinking of the Christian God, but without having to make myself subscribe to the Jesus story? Do you have any thoughts on this?
My only thought is that you should keep thinking and pursuing the question until, if ever, you are satisfied with where you come down on it! But there can *certainly* be a Creator who started this whole business without the Christian claims about Jesus being true. For “creation” itself, most people who want to think deeply about it read up on (layperson-level) discussoin of the Big Bang and astrophysics as a very compelling alternative.
Thank you. Are there any books or resources in that realm you would recommend for a very late person like me to start with? I have read a little bit about the Big Bang, but I always thought that that would not include a creator of any kind, or at least not a creator, responsible for consciousness or a personal creator of any kind.
Yes, all science is required by its very nature to bracket religious claims of every sort when doing it’s investigatoin. I think Sean Caroll and Brian Greene are both excellent authors to start with ot understand how science now understands the beginnings of the universe.
@Bart – It ain’t necessarily so. A born heretic, let me challenge you (and lots of other kids on the block) on this. Let’s suppose, arguendo, that there is a God, who is omnipotent and can influence what happens on earth, e.g., Jesus walking on water. That couldn’t have happened, in that time and place, if God hadn’t provided heavenly suspenders. Science fundamentally seeks causal explanations for events. Why couldn’t the only adequate explanation include the suspenders? Atheists and scientists have come up with a cornucopia of reasons why not; no space here to present them, let alone refute them (see, e.g., Robert Pennock, Mike Ruse and many others). But I know of none that succeed (cf. Fales, Maarten Boudry). More critical is the metaphysics of divine action; it is not clear that a non-material, non-spatiotemporal being could influence matter at all. The issue has important political consequences – e.g. in the battle over teaching creationism in public schools (see, e.g. https://infidels.org/library/modern/evan-fales-intelligent-design/).
@haleyjr: Cosmology is currently in a state of upheaval, thanks in part to new data from the Haley and JWS telescopes; the Big Bang theory is very much in question. Alternatives – including ones in which there’s no origin to what exists – are under development. (The Big Bang theory has been importantly deployed in the service of theism, in the context of the so-called Cosmological argument for God, prominently recently by Wm Lane Craig.) All that’s up for grabs, I think. The new stuff is *very* interesting, but of course requires current physics fully to be understood. The landscape is changing so rapidly that books have a hard time keeping up; YouTube can be a useful resource, if you can steer clear of the sensationalistic nonsense. A very clear more or less lay exposition of one exciting stab at a new view is given by Neil Turok in this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUp9x44N3uE
@efales “let me challenge you”
I’m happy with the case you make in your linked article. Great stuff. Everyone should read this before making any further comments.
There are some other great articles you have on that website. I also read:
. Is Faith a Path to Knowledge?
. Despair, Optimism, and Rebellion (I especially liked this one)
. Are the Gods Apolitical? (Written in 1999, and even more relevant today. A must-read in the face of Christian Nationalism)
I also note that you have been a philosopher at the University of Iowa since 1974; not someone to be trifled with. I’ve located some of your other listed publications as well.
https://infidels.org/author/evan-fales/
Following this link will give readers links to the essays listed above. They’re at the bottom of the page. Thoroughly recommended. Thought-provoking and well argued.
No free lunch: Books abound about: what it means to “prove” something; give a definition; what scientific method is/isn’t; what distinguishes a priori from empirical knowledge; whether/how either past or future are knowable; what the distinction between natural and supernatural is, etc. (One definition of naturalism: there are no disembodied minds.) 1) If proposition P can be proven, then it can be proven that not-P can’t be proven. 2) Philosophers have pretty much given up on defining linguistic ‘meaning.’ Trying for a “definition” of God is likely to bog down. More hopeful is to ask: What properties must a being have essentially (that is, necessarily) to be God? But there are different ‘species’ of necessity/possibility that must first be specified.
Can you prove that you love your wife? There can be complications: self-deception, the many forms of love… But if you do love her, you surely know it… with more certainty than that you have two hands. Just as you know when you suffer acute pain. There are literally hundreds of proofs (and disproofs) – some better and some worse – for God.
Are you ever going to post my comment above?
I post every comment I get nless it’s offensive to others or not connected with the blog. Unfortunately, I’mnot able to get to comments every day, but only 2-3 times a week. I wish there were more of me….
“I wish there were more of me….”
That would be fantastic! Multiple Barts!
As it stands, I find it mind-blowing that I can post a question and get an answer from someone of your standing at all. Your dedication to public education on your area of expertise is amazing and greatly appreciated.
FWIW&IMHO there’s no *proof* of God’s existence because that would render our traversing this “vale of tears” pointless (which also explains “Divine Hiddenness” BTW.)
Anyone *can* have such proof. But each only for him/herself — because salvation is an entirely personal quest, not a group effort. Your Pearly Gatepass will say: “Admit One.” There won’t be a: “Plus Guest.” 😏
The problem here is not the unavailability of evidence, but ubiquitous preconceptions of an omniscient and omnipotent (though apparently *not* omnibenevolent 🤔) deity — a legacy of the primitive, animal-sacrifice cult into which Jesus was born.
The idea that spiritual attainment is an intrinsically individual undertaking actually arose in eastern theology five centuries *before* that, and was, in fact, also a tenet of some early Christian sects — but quashed by the aborning, church establishment.
Although this theological understanding reemerged a millennium later (after western thinking finally became more “Enlightened”), it was repudiated again! 🙄
It seems people don’t want a transcendent God offering spiritual salvation. They want one who can be importuned to suspend the laws of nature and intervene to rescue them from their temporal travails (by curing physical ailments, mitigating natural disasters, siding against their enemies in endless wars, etc.)
Proofs are for math and symbolic logic. If we use the word “proof” elsewhere, it’s a coloquialism. It’s not a technical term. This is not some weird idea up for debate. This is the kind of thing you learn in your first logic class if you study philosophy.
I’d say most Christian apologists, professional or amateur, are not logicians.
With regard to your last paragraph, how is it even meaningful to talk about a non-empirical God? Even divine revelation and divinely-planted innate ideas have to have some kind of experiential component, don’t they? Otherwise aren’t they simply fantasies or meaningless assemblages of words?
I also bristle at the idea that humans are too intellectually limited to comprehend whether God exists. Must we not have some ideas, some reasons, based at least in part on experience that suggest the idea of God in order to believe in one?
Maybe we can’t completely comprehend God if there is one, but how can that mean that there can’t be evidence for one or at least evidence that points toward one?
I don’t recall ever referring to “a non-empirical God,” and I don’t know what it would mean. Things don’t empirically exist, they either exist or they don’t. They can be *shown* to exist empirically, but that involves empirical *demonstration*. And lots of things exist that cannot be empirically demonstrated.
Why is it that believers so often pose the question of belief in God’s existence as a moral issue rather than simply a factual one?
I’m trying to think of what it would mean for it to be a moral issue. Do you mean that if God didn’t exist it would lead to immorality? Or that someone would be immmoral if they did not believe inGod? I’m afraid I don’t see what either one of those could mean either.
Why don’t atheists more forcefully repudiate the oft-repeated (and manifestly bogus) charge by Christian apologists that they have necessarily “stolen” their moral code from Yahweh?
That ethically challenged “God” (allegedly documented in a magical source 🙄) provides the *only* possible foundation for morality? Seriously?
This *either* Biblical moral precepts *or* abject nihilism is not the triumphalist “gotcha” they smugly proclaim. It’s a textbook example of the False Choice fallacy!
A compelling alternative moral standard was propounded in the mid-20th century by well-known and widely-admired, Russian-American philosopher (and patron saint of libertarians and atheists), Ayn Rand, who said:
“The standard by which one judges what is good or evil—is *man’s life,* or that which is required for man’s survival *qua* man” [emphasis in original].
“The achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity.”
“All that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; all that which destroys it is the evil.”
[But wait. There’s more! 🙂]
Many atheists do indeed address tha isue and reject it. It’s the entire point of “evolutionary ethics”.
“For centuries,” Rand observed (through the John Galt character in her magnum opus, “Atlas Shrugged”), “the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors — between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one,” Rand/Galt pointedly concludes, “came to say that your life belongs to *you* and that the good is to live it” [emphasis added].
This nearly century-old, alternative, moral standard, shows Christian apologists to be the living-in-denial apotheosis of (and all the justification needed for) Rand’s famous tautology: “Existence exists!”
Finally, there’s an Ayn Rand truism that might equally well have come from my favorite professor:
“The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.” 🙂
Rand was an intelligent, skillful dialectician, but certainly no philosopher. And she is no credit to atheistic work on morality (alas). Her bon mot “Existence exists,” articulated in *For the New Intellectual,* is no tautology but (if not a category mistake) a heavy-duty metaphysical claim that Rand might not even have understood. The tautology – “That which exists, exists” is – like all tautologies – true and trivial, having no empirical consequences whatsoever (certainly not moral ones). The serious work on these issues began with Plato; and most subsequent metaethical theories have no theistic implications whatsoever (pace, e.g., Bill Craig). Rand perpetuates the myth that pure selfishness, not selflessness, has the highest utilitarian score. That is not supported even by game theory (the long-term winners use a mixture of self-interest and altruism). If it were so, why would social creatures such as we (and other social species) have evolved altruistic behaviors and instincts?
Thanks for the thoughtful response, efales.
In the glee Rand took using words for their shock value she frequently painted herself into a rhetorical corner — and then defensively propounded (at book length) on “The Virtue of Selfishness.”
Challenge Randroids to explain, say, how drug use is *not* in a junkie’s “self-interest” and they immediately insert a “rational” qualifier. Press on by asking who, if not the user, makes this distinction and its: “blank out.” 😉
Still, I think you’re being a tad pedantic here. It’s the tautological flavor of “Existence exists” that puts the bon in the mot. Further, “That which exists, exists” is an argumentation distinction without a difference. (And the bon mot “hits just keep on comin’.”😎)
You make a good point about the utility of her ‘selfishness über alles’ assertions as being discredited by (later) game theory analysis.
But your outright rejection of Objectivism as a philosophy and critique of its sainted, Pope Ayn I, seem overwrought.
Let’s give credit where credit is due. Rand was undeniably an in-your-face opponent of religion, and even more vociferous proponent of an atheism-derived ethics — my point (notwithstanding whether her fellow unbelievers consider her a credit to their cause.)
No doubt this is partly a matter of literary taste, Tim. And, to be sure, there’s a lot of Rand I haven’t read, tho I suspect much is repetitious. I do plead innocent to pedantry here. In *New Intellectual*, Rand emphasizes that her entire philosophy follows from two tautologies (I forget what the other one was). I take her at her word. The problems with Objectivism are straightforward. It’s an attack on skepticism, but she doesn’t recognize the many species of skeptism (with respect to the senses, to the material world, to the reality of moral values, to reliability of memory, etc., etc., each with its own problems). And her attack on skepticism is to say, loudly, that it’s wrong! – with some table-pounding. That’s no argument at all; she’s all gunpowder, no lead. The various forms of skepticism pose serious, extraordinarily difficult problems, that have engaged philosophers for over two millennia; so far as I know, Rand has made no contributions to that discussion.
You’re astute in observing that an early Randian move against objections is to add ‘rational’ to … continued
“self interest” is a way out of the junkie-objection. It comes at a price: it puts Objectivism squarely into the cross-hairs of Plato’s argument against selfishness in *The Republic.* Plato argues that rational self-interest coincides with altruism; we are by nature social creatures. Does Rand anywhere squarely tackle Plato with a carefully thought-through reply? Evan
@Tim – Post Script: I do have other fish to fry; it would be fun (elsewhere, other time) to dissect Galt’s long speech in Atlas Shrugged. But here’s one fundamental fact that Rand’s economic theory ignores (at its peril). It perpetuates a myth that John Locke’s theory of the foundations of the right to private property made (Rand is copying Locke): the assumption of limitless natural resources available in the public domain. In Locke’s day, such short-sightedness was perhaps forgivable; in our day, it is not.
As for the distinction between “Existence exits” and “That which exists, exists” – the nit I am picking makes an enormous difference. ‘Existence’ is a noun which (putatively) names a property; ‘exists’ is a verb. Ever since Kant, there have been BIG debates about whether existence is a property (in Kant’s terms, a predicate – which is a grammatical error). Sorry; on my turf, imprecision is fatal. — Evan, unrepentant pedant
I was referring to the second. It seems quite common to me. You’ll go to hell if you don’t believe in God/that Jesus is your savior. People typically face punishment for immorality. People are also accused by theists of rejecting God’s existence-not for good intellectual reasons-but so they can reject his law and do immoral stuff. And doesn’t Alvin Plantinga argue that our own sinfulness makes it difficult for many to perceive God?
I think the idea is that you go to hell for your lack of belief, not because of morality. In the Christian tradition it is sin that condemns a person; belief can save from that sin; failing to believe means you cannot be saved. But it’s not because lack of faith is an immoral act. It’s a very bad decision for your soul. And yes, in traditional Xn theology, sinfulness is the problem and does make it hard for people to see God.
I would agree with Seeker that unbelief as a rationale for immorality is a very common belief among Christians, connected to the sin of Pride. A very dear friend of mine, a devout Catholic and university professor, told me that she (and most Christians she knew) were convinced of this – in her case, until she got to know me! (As a statistical matter, there’s some evidence that atheists are more moral than Christians – allowing, to be sure, for differences over what’s immoral and what is not.) I think (call me proud) that intelligence, in general, has more to do with moral sensitivity than religiosity.
Plantinga’s views on sin are pretty complex – and in the end, I think, inconsistent. (He runs into the shoals on the Calvinist doctrine of Total Depravity – a misinterpretation, I think, of Is. 53.6, 64.6, et passim, and Paul). That is hard to square with Plantinga’s famous version of the Free-Will Defense against the problem of human evil.
On the statistical issue: can you refer me to a study? I’d love to know it! (Hey, some of my best friends are atheists…)
This is really part of a much larger conversation. I have little patience for those who see religion as the source of all evil, and those who blame atheism. Human nature is labyrinthine. My grounds for associating (much) immorality with religion are three-fold: anecdotal, common-sense, and inference from some statistical findings (which are by no means conclusive): data that show (in the US) that various types of immorality are more common in Bible-belt states, data suggesting higher levels of education and intelligence produce better behavior, on the whole, and data that associate religious fundamentalism with personalities more given to authoritarianism and dogmatism, and more afraid of moral nuance and “slippery slopes.” I consider moral wisdom and maturity to be deeply engaged in thinking about moral dilemmas. My memory being what it is (atrocious) I can’t straight-off pluck citations to specific studies out of the academic stratosphere, but would be happy, upon request, to do a bit of digging for sources.
Also, a little reflection will expose the facial implausibility of the hypothesis that atheists commonly use unbelief as a shield against guilt for wrong-doing.
Thankyou for an interesting piece, as usual. I note several comments ask further re the definitions involved for God in the first place. I recall some popularised work of the late Francis Schaeffer in which he stated that, in relation to a definition of God, if you take away the attributes of being Eternal and being Personal, then you are just left with the word God as meaningless?
It seems to me there is a fine line between humans talking up any evidence or logic supporting a god’s existence and acknowledging what we WANT such a god to be (which is dancing with idolatry!).
I was a big Fancis Schaeffer fan back in the day. Then as I started looking into what he said and argued by concisering the philosophical and cultural figures he was talking about, I realized that, well, he didn’t know what he *was* talking about…..
Thanks. I should go read more about how Schaeffer morphed into being an evangelical influence in the political sphere – for good or for bad? The reflections of son Frank are interesting – esp his raging against bibliotatry & turning his back on earlier life directions!
Topic change – I’m not holding my breath re you making a public visit to Australia any time soon but I wonder if you’ll be back in UK for summer 2025? Say mid June, if possible?! 😊
It’s part of the plan. I’ll probably arrange a blog dinner or two at the time. (I’m about to arrange one now for this summer)
God as a “superior being outside of the natural order in the world” is certainly a more sophisticated (and ironically enough, fundamental) conception of the divine than is the primitive, Jewish, storm god of the late Bronze Age, now enthroned as the first person of the Christian Trinity.
The word “being,” however, still implies an anthropocentric conception of a “personal” God. A better definition would be: the transcendent, ineffable power at the nexus between the physical and spiritual planes that (somehow) suffuses with and transforms otherwise inanimate matter into what we label: “life.”
Perhaps proponents of naturalistic explanations for *all* aspects of existence will one day account for what, thus far, remains the “miracle” of abiogenesis. But that would, notwithstanding, merely identify the location of the physical/spiritual interconnection, and not (for yours truly at least) disprove the source of life’s ethereal component.
FWIW it seems to me that the place to begin the search would be with ribonucleic acid (RNA) and/or deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) which appear to be the sine qua non point of transition between “inert” and “alive.”
Finding even the tiniest, most unprepossessing instance of life independent of earth’s ecosystem (say, on Europa or Enceladus) would be enormously instructive in that effort.
You can’t disprove the existence of any particular god such as the triune god. You can’t disprove the existence of Bigfoot either. But there is no evidence for Bigfoot. Likewise, there is little evidence for any of the gods.
Probably the best argument for God is, why are we here? How did something come about rather than nothing? My answer is: You can’t get from here to there. You can’t get from the apparent fine-tuning of our universe (here) to any particular god such as Zeus, Yahweh, the triune god, Einstein’s god, the deist god or any one of thousands of other gods (there).
Sam Harris argues: Why is an all-powerful God communicating to us through ancient handwritten documents where the originals are missing. God could type or print documents. He could hold town hall meetings with each group of people on earth. Worse, why is God allowing non-Christian religions to flourish, each with its own ancient handwritten documents? And hell awaits the wrong choice. God could clear up what the true religion is in 15 minutes, but of course he won’t.
cost of life in Greece how is that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_government-debt_crisis
how did christians more faithful fare compared to the christian more realistic to local struggles.
believing in Jesus Christ is living the Christian way as dictated in the more stable nt & to doctrines.
yesterday, professor Robert Reich had come up with another term for the USA evangelists: Christofascism. since they aren’t humble, tend to be violently hateful to others, neither follow Christ nor St
Paul [teachings]
2) how can I love Jesus Christ?
I don’t understand him. He didn’t do ANYTHING FOR ME just condemn me. I better understand God & the Holy Spirit & what George Washington & what Ben Franklin did for me. his death & risen on the cross mean nothing to me.
hebrews 11:1 Faith and Assurance
1Now faith is the assurance of what we hope for and the certainty of what we do not see.
Great post. I would agree that God cannot be proven or disproven empirically.
The idea that got me back in the realm of spirituality, was this: “Either the universe created itself, or something created it. Both seem equally ridiculous. And yet here we are.”
So it is a probabilistic choice, as you pointed out. I then started thinking on, what are the psychological or emotional consequences of believing one way or the other?
Several studies have correlated a belief in a loving higher power with higher rates of happiness and emotional resilience. I think these are things most of us want. (Belief in a vengeful deity naturally creates worse mental health outcomes than atheism).
So I’ve adopted spirituality primarily for the mental health benefits. It’s a brain hack, more or less. But it seems to be working (anecdotal evidence, I know 😅)
Exploring concepts like pantheism and other eastern religious thought started opening my mind to the possibility of an all encompassing force or divine power that made sense to my scientific brain (or at least didn’t contradict observed reality and my own moral compass).
I disagree with Professor Ehrman’s viewpoint on this issue. But I think we should first clarify the concept of God before arguing.
The great scientist Newton studied God in his later years, believing that it was God who established the laws of nature.
And I discovered God through studying prophecies. If multiple prophecies from over two thousand years ago are perfectly fulfilled now, does this mean that history is arranged and God existes above human history?
I agree with Newton’s viewpoint: the existence that sets the laws of our world can be regarded as God, and similarly, the existence that arranges our historical development can also be regarded as God.
Even if it is not the highest God, as long as it is above our world or our history, it can be seen as our God.
When the Messiah, the savior prophesied by various religions in both the East and the West over two thousand years ago, appeared exactly the same in the 21st century, can this prove that history is arranged, in other words, God does indeed exist?
There are three Gods: Jesus, the God described by Christian missionaries in the New Testament; The Jewish God described by Jewish priests in the Old Testament. Both of these two Gods are false.
But in the Old Testament, there is another true God who arranges history and inspires the prophecies of the Old Testament. (He is also the God who inspires prophecies of other religions.)
So we cannot know God from the mouths of religious figures or missionaries, but only from prophecies. Only the wonderful fulfillment of prophecies can let us know that history is arranged by God, and there is a God above history.
Professor Ehrman went from a devout Christian to an atheist due to his study of the Bibles. But the falsehood of the Bibles can only prove that the God spoken by religious figures and missionaries is false, but it cannot prove that the true God is false.
I agree with you. I think the people you mentioned towards the end of your post are wrong, but not necessarily wrong.
But those believing on the god of the Bible are wrong without doubt.