1. Argument from Nonbelief
Summary:
A. If god exists and is benevolent,
B. Every reasonable person would come to believe in god.
C. Not every reasonable person believes in god.
D. Therefore, god does not exist.
B. Every reasonable person would come to believe in god.
C. Not every reasonable person believes in god.
D. Therefore, god does not exist.
Anselm of Canterbury, Italian monk & Catholic Saint, 1033-1109
“I have never seen thee, O Lord my God; I do not know thy form. What, O most high Lord, shall this man do, an exile far from thee? What shall thy servant do, anxious in his love of thee, and cast out afar from thy face? He pants to see thee, and thy face is too far from him. He longs to come to thee, and thy dwelling place is inaccessible. He is eager to find thee, and knows not thy place. He desires to seek thee, and does not know thy face. Lord, thou art my God, and thou art my Lord, yet never have I seen thee. It is thou that hast made me, and hast made me anew, and hast bestowed upon me all the blessings I enjoy; and not yet do I know thee. Finally, I was created to see thee and not yet have I done that for which I was made.”
― Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion, 1078
“I have never seen thee, O Lord my God; I do not know thy form. What, O most high Lord, shall this man do, an exile far from thee? What shall thy servant do, anxious in his love of thee, and cast out afar from thy face? He pants to see thee, and thy face is too far from him. He longs to come to thee, and thy dwelling place is inaccessible. He is eager to find thee, and knows not thy place. He desires to seek thee, and does not know thy face. Lord, thou art my God, and thou art my Lord, yet never have I seen thee. It is thou that hast made me, and hast made me anew, and hast bestowed upon me all the blessings I enjoy; and not yet do I know thee. Finally, I was created to see thee and not yet have I done that for which I was made.”
― Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion, 1078
2. God in a Box
Summary:
Whether or not god exists, many predominant conceptions of god make god all-too-human and limit thinking about the possible properties of reality.
Evelyn Underhill, English Anglo-Catholic mystic & writer, 1875-1941
“If God were small enough to be understood, He would not be big enough to be worshipped.”
― Evelyn Underhill, Practical Mysticism, E.P. Dutton & Company, 1915
“If God were small enough to be understood, He would not be big enough to be worshipped.”
― Evelyn Underhill, Practical Mysticism, E.P. Dutton & Company, 1915
William Blake, English mystic, artist, & poet, 1757-1827
“If the doors of perception were cleansed,
everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up,
till he sees all things through the narrow chinks of his cavern.”
― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1795
“If the doors of perception were cleansed,
everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up,
till he sees all things through the narrow chinks of his cavern.”
― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1795
Carl Sagan, PhD, American astronomer, astrophysicist, & astrobiologist, 1934-1996
“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, ‘This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?’ Instead they say, ‘No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.’ A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.”
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, Headline, 1995 (quoted by Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p33)
“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, ‘This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?’ Instead they say, ‘No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.’ A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.”
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, Headline, 1995 (quoted by Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p33)
Baruch de Spinoza, Dutch Enlightenment philosopher, 1632-1677
“[Definition] D1: In calling something ‘cause of itself’ I mean that its essence involves existence, i.e. that its nature can’t be conceived except as existing...
“[Definition] D3: By ‘substance’ I understand: what is in itself and is conceived through itself, i.e. that whose concept doesn’t have to be formed out of the concept of something else...
“[Proposition] 6: One substance can’t be produced by another substance...
“[Proposition] 7: It pertains to the nature of a substance to exist.“A substance can’t be produced by anything else (by the corollary to 6), so it must be its own cause; and that, by D1, is to say that its essence necessarily involves existence, i.e. it pertains to its nature to exist...
“I’m sure that the proof of 7 will be found difficult to grasp by people who judge things confusedly and haven’t been accustomed to understanding things through their first causes. Such people don’t distinguish the qualities of substances from the substances themselves, and they don’t know how things are produced. This brings it about that they fictitiously ascribe to substances the sort of beginning that they see natural things to have; for those who don’t know the true causes of things confuse everything, and have no difficulty supposing that both trees and men speak, that men are formed both from stones and from seed, and that anything can be changed into anything else! So, also, those who confuse the divine nature with human nature easily ascribe human character-traits to God, particularly when they are also ignorant of how those traits are produced in the human mind.”
— Baruch de Spinoza, Ethics Demonstrated in Geometrical Order, 1677 (translation Johnathan Bennett, 2004, 2017) p1-3
“[Definition] D1: In calling something ‘cause of itself’ I mean that its essence involves existence, i.e. that its nature can’t be conceived except as existing...
“[Definition] D3: By ‘substance’ I understand: what is in itself and is conceived through itself, i.e. that whose concept doesn’t have to be formed out of the concept of something else...
“[Proposition] 6: One substance can’t be produced by another substance...
“[Proposition] 7: It pertains to the nature of a substance to exist.“A substance can’t be produced by anything else (by the corollary to 6), so it must be its own cause; and that, by D1, is to say that its essence necessarily involves existence, i.e. it pertains to its nature to exist...
“I’m sure that the proof of 7 will be found difficult to grasp by people who judge things confusedly and haven’t been accustomed to understanding things through their first causes. Such people don’t distinguish the qualities of substances from the substances themselves, and they don’t know how things are produced. This brings it about that they fictitiously ascribe to substances the sort of beginning that they see natural things to have; for those who don’t know the true causes of things confuse everything, and have no difficulty supposing that both trees and men speak, that men are formed both from stones and from seed, and that anything can be changed into anything else! So, also, those who confuse the divine nature with human nature easily ascribe human character-traits to God, particularly when they are also ignorant of how those traits are produced in the human mind.”
— Baruch de Spinoza, Ethics Demonstrated in Geometrical Order, 1677 (translation Johnathan Bennett, 2004, 2017) p1-3
3. Criticisms against faith as a spiritual value
Summary:
Faith can be dangerous and limit true spiritual insight. Spirituality does not require faith, and faith can even be an impediment.
Sam Harris, PhD, American philosopher & neuroscientist, 1967-
“The faithful have never been indifferent to the truth; and yet the principle of faith leaves them unequipped to distinguish truth from falsity in matters that most concern them.”
― Sam Harris, The End of Faith, W.W. Norton Company, New York, 2004 p68
“Despite the considerable exertions of men like [Paul] Tillich who have attempted to hide the serpent lurking at the foot of every altar, the truth is that religious faith is simply unjustified belief in matters of ultimate concern–specifically in propositions that promise some mechanism by which human life can be spared the ravages of time and death. Faith is what credulity becomes when it finally achieves escape velocity from the constraints of terrestrial discourse–constraints like reasonableness, internal coherence, civility, and candor. However far you feel you have fled the parish (even if you are just now adjusting the mirror on the Hubble Space Telescope), you are likely to be the product of a culture that has elevated belief, in the absence of evidence, to the highest place in the hierarchy of human virtues. Ignorance is the true coinage of this realm–’Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed’ (John 20:29)–and every child is instructed that it is, at the very least, an option, if not a sacred duty, to disregard the facts of this world out of deference to the God who lurks in his mother’s and father’s imaginations.
“But faith is an imposter. This can be readily seen in the way that all the extraordinary phenomena of the religious life–a statue of the Virgin weeps, a child casts his crutches to the ground–are seized upon by the faithful as confirmation of their faith. At these moments, religious believers appear like men and women in their desert of uncertainty given a cool drink of data...
“This is the very same faith that will not stoop to reason when it has no good reasons to believe. If a little supportive evidence emerges, however, the faithful prove as attentive to data as the damned. This demonstrates that faith is nothing more than a willingness to await the evidence–be it the Day of Judgment or some other downpour of corroboration. It is the search of knowledge on the installment plan: believe now, live an untestable hypothesis until your dying day, and you will discover that you were right.”
― Sam Harris, The End of Faith, W.W. Norton Company, New York, 2004 p65-66
“The faithful have never been indifferent to the truth; and yet the principle of faith leaves them unequipped to distinguish truth from falsity in matters that most concern them.”
― Sam Harris, The End of Faith, W.W. Norton Company, New York, 2004 p68
“Despite the considerable exertions of men like [Paul] Tillich who have attempted to hide the serpent lurking at the foot of every altar, the truth is that religious faith is simply unjustified belief in matters of ultimate concern–specifically in propositions that promise some mechanism by which human life can be spared the ravages of time and death. Faith is what credulity becomes when it finally achieves escape velocity from the constraints of terrestrial discourse–constraints like reasonableness, internal coherence, civility, and candor. However far you feel you have fled the parish (even if you are just now adjusting the mirror on the Hubble Space Telescope), you are likely to be the product of a culture that has elevated belief, in the absence of evidence, to the highest place in the hierarchy of human virtues. Ignorance is the true coinage of this realm–’Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed’ (John 20:29)–and every child is instructed that it is, at the very least, an option, if not a sacred duty, to disregard the facts of this world out of deference to the God who lurks in his mother’s and father’s imaginations.
“But faith is an imposter. This can be readily seen in the way that all the extraordinary phenomena of the religious life–a statue of the Virgin weeps, a child casts his crutches to the ground–are seized upon by the faithful as confirmation of their faith. At these moments, religious believers appear like men and women in their desert of uncertainty given a cool drink of data...
“This is the very same faith that will not stoop to reason when it has no good reasons to believe. If a little supportive evidence emerges, however, the faithful prove as attentive to data as the damned. This demonstrates that faith is nothing more than a willingness to await the evidence–be it the Day of Judgment or some other downpour of corroboration. It is the search of knowledge on the installment plan: believe now, live an untestable hypothesis until your dying day, and you will discover that you were right.”
― Sam Harris, The End of Faith, W.W. Norton Company, New York, 2004 p65-66
4. Argument from Nontheistic Spirituality
Summary:
Spirituality can be found in ways other than worshipping a deity, regardless of whether deities exists.
Albert Einstein, German-American theoretical physicist, 1879-1955
“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
— Albert Einstein (quoted by Richard Dawkins), The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p36
“I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion.
“I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.“The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive.”
— Albert Einstein (quoted by Richard Dawkins), The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p36
“To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious.”
— Albert Einstein (quoted by Richard Dawkins), The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p40
“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
— Albert Einstein (quoted by Richard Dawkins), The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p36
“I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion.
“I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.“The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive.”
— Albert Einstein (quoted by Richard Dawkins), The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p36
“To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious.”
— Albert Einstein (quoted by Richard Dawkins), The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p40
Richard Dawkins, PhD, British evolutionary biologist, 1941-
“Human thoughts and emotions emerge from exceedingly complex interconnections of physical entities within the brain. An atheist in this sense of philosophical naturalist is somebody who believes there is nothing beyond the natural, physical world, no supernatural creative intelligence lurking behind the observable universe, no soul that outlasts the body and no miracles – except in the sense of natural phenomena that we don’t yet understand. If there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world as it is now imperfectly understood, we hope eventually to understand it and embrace it within the natural. As ever when we unweave a rainbow, it will not become less wonderful.”
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p34-35
“Human thoughts and emotions emerge from exceedingly complex interconnections of physical entities within the brain. An atheist in this sense of philosophical naturalist is somebody who believes there is nothing beyond the natural, physical world, no supernatural creative intelligence lurking behind the observable universe, no soul that outlasts the body and no miracles – except in the sense of natural phenomena that we don’t yet understand. If there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world as it is now imperfectly understood, we hope eventually to understand it and embrace it within the natural. As ever when we unweave a rainbow, it will not become less wonderful.”
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p34-35
Rudolf (Rudy) von Bitter Rucker, American mathematician, computer scientist, & science fiction author, 1946-
“The central teaching of mysticism is this: Reality is One. The practice of mysticism consists in finding ways to experience this unity directly. The One has variously been called the Good, God, the Cosmos, the Mind, the Void, or (perhaps most neutrally) the Absolute. No door in the labyrinthine castle of science opens directly onto the Absolute. But if one understands the maze well enough, it is possible to jump out of the system and experience the Absolute for oneself... But, ultimately, mystical knowledge is attained all at once or not at all. There is no gradual path...”
— Rudy Rucker (quoted by Paul Davies), The Mind of God, Touchstone, 1992 p228
“The central teaching of mysticism is this: Reality is One. The practice of mysticism consists in finding ways to experience this unity directly. The One has variously been called the Good, God, the Cosmos, the Mind, the Void, or (perhaps most neutrally) the Absolute. No door in the labyrinthine castle of science opens directly onto the Absolute. But if one understands the maze well enough, it is possible to jump out of the system and experience the Absolute for oneself... But, ultimately, mystical knowledge is attained all at once or not at all. There is no gradual path...”
— Rudy Rucker (quoted by Paul Davies), The Mind of God, Touchstone, 1992 p228
Douglas Adams, English science-fiction author, 1952-2001-
“And I thought and thought and thought. But I just didn’t have enough to go on, so I didn’t really come to any resolution. I was extremely doubtful about the idea of god, but I just didn’t know enough about anything to have a good working model of any other explanation for, well, life, the universe, and everything to put in its place. But I kept at it, and I kept reading and I kept thinking. Sometime around my early thirties I stumbled upon evolutionary biology, particularly in the form of Richard Dawkins’s books The Selfish Gene and then The Blind Watchmaker, and suddenly (on, I think the second reading of The Selfish Gene) it all fell into place. It was a concept of such stunning simplicity, but it gave rise, naturally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity of life. The awe it inspired in me made the awe that people talk about in respect of religious experience seem, frankly, silly beside it. I’d take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.”
— Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt, Macmillan, 2002 (quoted by Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p141-142)
“And I thought and thought and thought. But I just didn’t have enough to go on, so I didn’t really come to any resolution. I was extremely doubtful about the idea of god, but I just didn’t know enough about anything to have a good working model of any other explanation for, well, life, the universe, and everything to put in its place. But I kept at it, and I kept reading and I kept thinking. Sometime around my early thirties I stumbled upon evolutionary biology, particularly in the form of Richard Dawkins’s books The Selfish Gene and then The Blind Watchmaker, and suddenly (on, I think the second reading of The Selfish Gene) it all fell into place. It was a concept of such stunning simplicity, but it gave rise, naturally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity of life. The awe it inspired in me made the awe that people talk about in respect of religious experience seem, frankly, silly beside it. I’d take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.”
— Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt, Macmillan, 2002 (quoted by Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p141-142)
Paul Davies, PhD, English physicist & professor, 1946-
“In chapter 6 I described how some scientists and mathematicians claim to have had sudden revelatory insights akin to such mystical experiences. Roger Penrose describes mathematical inspirations as a sudden ‘breaking through’ into a Platonic realm. [Rudy] Rucker reports that Kurt Gödel also spoke of the ‘other relation to reality,’ by which he could directly perceive mathematical objects, such as infinity. Gödel himself was apparently able to achieve this by adopting meditative practices, such as closing off the other senses and lying down in a quiet place. For other scientists the revelatory experience happens spontaneously, in the midst of the daily clamor...”
— Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Touchstone, 1992 p228
“The expression ‘mystical experience’ is often used by religious people, or those who practice meditation. These experiences, which are undoubtedly real enough for the person who experiences them, are said to be hard to convey in words. Mystics frequently speak of an overwhelming sense of being at one with the universe or with God, of glimpsing a holistic vision of reality, or of being in the presence of a powerful and loving influence. Most important, mystics claim that they can grasp ultimate reality in a single experience, in contrast to the long and tortuous deductive sequence (petering out in turtle trouble [turtles all the way down]) of the logical-scientific method of inquiry. Sometimes the mystical path seems to involve little more than an inner sense of peace – ‘a compassionate, joyful stillness that lies beyond the activity of busy minds’ was the way a physicist colleague once described it to me. Einstein spoke of a ’cosmic religious feeling’ that inspired his reflections on the order and harmony of nature. Some scientists, most notably the physicists Brian Josephson and David Bohm, believe that regular mystical insights achieved by quiet meditative practices con be a useful guide in the formulation of scientific theories.
“In other cases mystical experiences seem to be more direct and revelatory. Russell Stannard writes of the impression of facing an overpowering force of some kind, ‘of a nature to command respect and awe... There is a sense of urgency about it; the power is volcanic, pent up, ready to be unleashed.’ Science writer David Peat describes ‘a remarkable feeling of intensity that seems to flood the whole world around us with meaning... We sense that we are touching something universal and perhaps eternal, so that the particular moment in time takes on a numinous character and seems to expand in time without limit. We sense that all boundaries between ourselves and the outer world vanish, for what we are experiencing lies beyond all categories and all attempts to be captured in logical thought.’
“The language used to describe these experiences usually reflects the culture of the individual concerned. Western mystics tend to emphasize the personal quality of the presence, often describing themselves as being with someone, usually God, who is different from themselves but with whom a deep bond is felt. There is, of course, a long tradition of such religious experiences in the Christian Church and among the other Western religions. Eastern mystics emphasize the wholeness of existence and tend to identify themselves more closely with the presence...”
— Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Touchstone, 1992 p226-227
“In chapter 6 I described how some scientists and mathematicians claim to have had sudden revelatory insights akin to such mystical experiences. Roger Penrose describes mathematical inspirations as a sudden ‘breaking through’ into a Platonic realm. [Rudy] Rucker reports that Kurt Gödel also spoke of the ‘other relation to reality,’ by which he could directly perceive mathematical objects, such as infinity. Gödel himself was apparently able to achieve this by adopting meditative practices, such as closing off the other senses and lying down in a quiet place. For other scientists the revelatory experience happens spontaneously, in the midst of the daily clamor...”
— Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Touchstone, 1992 p228
“The expression ‘mystical experience’ is often used by religious people, or those who practice meditation. These experiences, which are undoubtedly real enough for the person who experiences them, are said to be hard to convey in words. Mystics frequently speak of an overwhelming sense of being at one with the universe or with God, of glimpsing a holistic vision of reality, or of being in the presence of a powerful and loving influence. Most important, mystics claim that they can grasp ultimate reality in a single experience, in contrast to the long and tortuous deductive sequence (petering out in turtle trouble [turtles all the way down]) of the logical-scientific method of inquiry. Sometimes the mystical path seems to involve little more than an inner sense of peace – ‘a compassionate, joyful stillness that lies beyond the activity of busy minds’ was the way a physicist colleague once described it to me. Einstein spoke of a ’cosmic religious feeling’ that inspired his reflections on the order and harmony of nature. Some scientists, most notably the physicists Brian Josephson and David Bohm, believe that regular mystical insights achieved by quiet meditative practices con be a useful guide in the formulation of scientific theories.
“In other cases mystical experiences seem to be more direct and revelatory. Russell Stannard writes of the impression of facing an overpowering force of some kind, ‘of a nature to command respect and awe... There is a sense of urgency about it; the power is volcanic, pent up, ready to be unleashed.’ Science writer David Peat describes ‘a remarkable feeling of intensity that seems to flood the whole world around us with meaning... We sense that we are touching something universal and perhaps eternal, so that the particular moment in time takes on a numinous character and seems to expand in time without limit. We sense that all boundaries between ourselves and the outer world vanish, for what we are experiencing lies beyond all categories and all attempts to be captured in logical thought.’
“The language used to describe these experiences usually reflects the culture of the individual concerned. Western mystics tend to emphasize the personal quality of the presence, often describing themselves as being with someone, usually God, who is different from themselves but with whom a deep bond is felt. There is, of course, a long tradition of such religious experiences in the Christian Church and among the other Western religions. Eastern mystics emphasize the wholeness of existence and tend to identify themselves more closely with the presence...”
— Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Touchstone, 1992 p226-227