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Arguments for the existence of a god debunked part 2

Arguments for the existence of a god Part 2 – The Argument from Fulfilled Prophecy

Continuing our examination of why people believe in the existence of a god and the arguments put forward as to why everyone should believe.

Many people will cite that a prophecy that was written down long ago in a holy scripture (or made by a recognized prophet) has come true. This validates the holy scripture or prophet and therefore the god that is believed in by the followers of that prophet must exist.

There are a number of problems with this argument, although it does seem to be one that many believers find compelling, and this article intends to look at those problems and show why it does not follow that a fulfilled prophecy is evidence for a god.

1. Which god / religion will that be then?

The first problem with this argument is that followers of almost every religion make it! Christians, Jews Muslims, Hindus and the followers of smaller fringe religions (for the sake of simplify I’ll call them cults) they all do it. Which leads to the question that as they are almost all mutually exclusive, which one is actually right (if any)?

If a Christian makes a claim that a prophecy in the Bible makes the Bible true and therefore Christianity correct, and a Muslim makes a claim that a prophecy in the Koran is correct and that makes Islam true, which one is right, because according to the scriptures the two religions cannot both be true (You have to believe that Christ is the son of God to be a Christian and you must explicitly reject this to be a Muslim).

So it does not follow if a prophecy is fulfilled then it proves that a religion is true.

2. The Vagueness Problem.

Have you ever read a horoscope and the prediction made came true? Most people have, but have you ever noticed how vague some of these predictions are? In fact they can be written so vaguely that any number of real world events can fit.

A classic example of this would be “Two powers shall strive, and an empire will fall”. This could be prophesising a war between two counties or powers of which one loses e.g. the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime to the coalition forces in Iraq, or “The two free newspapers that were given out to evening commuters would battle it out and one of the papers would go bust, and the Evening Standard (or the company that owned it) would win out and be the sole free newspaper distributor.” Or the competition between VHS and Betamax for the VCR trade in the 80s and 90s. Or many other examples, a possible future prediction could be the forces of Microsoft and Apple will battle it out and Apple will vanish…

As you can see if it is vague of course one can point to it being fulfilled, many many times. So what, it proves nothing.

As a relevant side note the prophesies of Nostradamus fall squarely into this category.

3. When is that going to be?

Any prophesy that does not include some sort of timeline is not a useful prophesy. The reason for this is, what happens if the prophecy fails?

Usually when a prophesy does not occur it is either declared that it simply hasn’t happened yet, or when a specific timeline is given, (a classic example is that of the second coming of Christ, where he prophesised that he would return within the lifetime of his followers), the prophesy is simply re-interpreted.

Clear timelines must be given so that success or failure can be determined.

Also, if a prophesy is likely (or even conceivable) to occur (see below) then the more exact a timeline needs to be. E.g. “The forces of Microsoft and Apple will battle it out in the open marketplace and Apple will go bankrupt on 21^st October 2019 at the close of business of the US Stock Market”

4. Is the prophesy already likely to occur?

If the event that the prophesy is predicting is already likely to occur then is not really much of a prophesy. For example, I prophesise that an earthquake will hit San Francisco at some point within the next ten years, this is not going to be very impressive if it does happen as the city has a past history of regular earthquakes and it sits directly on the San Andreas Fault (again referring back to the issue of timeline, an exact time might make the prophesy better, but you can still chalk things up to chance).

Even if it is not very likely, when you look at chance, the number of countries, people and events that have happened over the past 10,000 years or more of recorded history then even unlikely events become probable.

5. Did the event the prophesy predict actually occur?

One very key example of this is when Christians say that the coming of Jesus in the New Testament fulfils the prophesies of the Old Testament.

Leaving aside for the moment the problem of a prophesy in the Bible being fulfilled in the Bible, can we be sure that any of this actually happened? Where is the evidence? Of course for this specific example we have practically none. It may just be the case (and in this example it is certainly the most probable explanation) that someone has made up the events that is said to fulfil the prophesy.

Also under this section we must look to see if the prophesy has been altered to “make it fit” the events which it is describing. If it has then it must be dismissed.

Again, what we ask for is evidence, the key element to rational thinking.

6. Is the prophesy self fulfilling?

If a prophesy is made and there are enough people who are aware of it, in a position and with a desire to make it happen, then it will happen.

An example often alluded to by Christians and some Jews is the founding of the state of Israel. However when you look closely at its founding in 1948 it happened because people made it happen. They worked together and founded the new state and at least some of them were aware and were motivated by the prophesy. No gods were needed in its founding (not to mention that the prophesy had not time scale and scolars now believe from evidence, there’s that word again, that that prophesy was about the founding of Israel by the Maccabes).

Another potential prophesy is that I may predict a united Ireland within the next 50 years. It is possible (although not for a while under current political and religious divides), and there are people who desire this to happen and are working towards it, and if it did happen it would be because of these people and their work and not because I predicted it!

7. A prophesy must be written down before the events which it predicts.

This may seem a little obvious but some historical documents that have been discovered describe events that happened before or during the times they were written and have been mistaken for prophesies.

The documents must be examined and evidence collected!

8. Conclusion

Any prophesy that has ever been made to date will not survive the seven points above. The conclusion is very clear there is no prophesy that is reliable and has come true which actually shows that a god exists. So the next time someone points to a prophesy and claims that as evidence for their god, question it using the above points as a guide and again demonstrate that this is not evidence.

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“So long and thanks for all the cheese”*

*With apologies to Douglas Adams.

I was going to say that it’s just about safe to turn on the TV or open a newspaper now without being bombarded by the intricate and often banal details of the Pope’s roadshow, but then again it is my job to monitor such events.  However, I won’t be sorry to be spared the platitudes of the string of religious apologists that have appeared just on the BBC alone, including the fascinating fact that, according to News 24, the Pope is having Welsh lamb followed by treacle pudding for lunch today. I’m having Welsh lamb for dinner tonight (really), but for an atheist that’s just a coincidence, not an excuse to ponder some divine meaning.

Much has been made of how Catholicism and other religions are coming under attack from “aggressive secularism” and other similar, pejorative phrases currently being used by religious apologists, and further perpetuated by the media. Journalists and broadcasters love such neologisms as their indiscriminate use can quickly spread like some viral YouTube video. The problem is that they can then become unthinkingly accepted as ‘factually descriptive’. This is an example of social constructionism in action and contributes to the game of power relations between different groups – how we treat people depends on how we view them. An analogy may help here. Nelson Mandela was defined as a ‘terrorist’ by the white South African state under apartheid when he was imprisoned. However, as the anti-apartheid movement grew, he was increasingly defined as a ‘freedom fighter’ – we all know the rest of the story.

I’ve been watching how the BBC has reported the Pope’s visit over the last few days and I don’t think many would disagree with me for suggesting that the reporting was a tad biased towards showing crowds of ardent supporters, and very little of the numerous demonstrations that took place. For me, it was also disheartening to see so many young children ceremoniously paraded before the baby-kissing Pope. That is, children who are far too young to be able to understand what being indoctrinated into a particular faith actually means.

Whatever criticisms have been levelled at the Pope and Catholicism, and there have been many, we should not lose sight of the fundamental fact that all religion is based on the falsehood that a god exists.

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Arguments for the existence of a god debunked : Part 1

Arguments for the existence of a god debunked: Part 1 – The Argument From Ignorance.

At Atheism we thought it was about time we started a series of articles looking at the individual reasons that religious people give for the existence of a god and subsequently dismantle them.

The aim is to provide helpful ammunition for atheists that will be useful when arguing with the religious (as I’m sure we all do from time to time). So to start off our ‘debunking’ series, we are going to begin with the daddy of them all: “The Argument From Ignorance”.

Now, you will never hear a religious person refer to this argument as the argument from ignorance (as they don’t want to appear to be ignorant), it is usually used in far more subtler forms, but the vast majority of their arguments eventually revert to the following tiresome formula:

1. I don’t know how something came about (I am ignorant).
2. Scientists and atheists also don’t know how this thing came about (you are ignorant).
3. Therefore, a god had to have made it come about (I, therefore, know how it happened).
4. Conclusion: A god exists.

I have tried to keep the argument as simple and as religion-neutral as possible because this argument has been posited by many different religious faiths that have many different gods.

Although most people (and probably everyone who subscribes to this site) can see the glaring logical fallacy in the above argument, “I don’t know; therefore, I know,” which in itself makes no sense at all, but let us deconstruct this argument and look at it in a bit more detail.

1. I don’t know how something came about.

I call this the “look at the trees” argument, and it often comes in the form, “Look at the trees, how could this have come about in any other way except as a creation of a god!” This is a classic and stalwart argument of religious apologists. However, we know how the tree came about. The development of trees is also now well understood by scientists, so this premise fails from the start – just because you don’t know, doesn’t mean nobody else does.

They often reply, “Well I can’t believe it could have come about any other way”. However, this doesn’t change the fact that the phenomenon is known and has been adequately explained by science without the need for a god, their own ignorance or incredulity (Richard Dawkins actually calls this the “Argument from Personal Incredulity”!) is irrelevant. If a god is not required, then it is most likely not to have anything to do with the explanation.

2. Scientists and atheists don’t know either.

Now this is an interesting one. It is what is commonly known as the “God of the Gaps Argument” and is one step on from “I don’t know”. Most of the cosmological and origin of life arguments take this form (some of these will get their own detailed refutation in other parts of this series).

‘God of the gaps’ type arguments claim that if scientists or atheists don’t know how something happened (e.g. the initiation of the big bang, the formation of life, or even a transition between two species), then their god must have done it.

To quote the comedian Dara O’Briain, “Of course science doesn’t know everything, if it did it would stop!” Or to quote Richard Dawkins, “It gives them [scientists] something to do.”

Science is the process that we use to fill the gaps in our knowledge, and if we don’t know something now it doesn’t mean we won’t in the future; but, even if we never find out how something happened; this just means that we don’t know, nothing more and nothing less. Filling the ever shrinking gaps with a god is simply not good enough. You need to demonstrate positively that this god exists before explaining how that god filled the gap. The only method that can possibly do this is science.

3. Therefore, a god had to have made it come about.

This simply does not follow from the first two premises, and, as the above paragraph suggests, opens up a whole lot of other new and even more inexplicable gaps. Where did this god come from? How did this god go about making these things come about? How can we demonstrate these last two points?

From the point of view of actually seeking knowledge, positing a god doesn’t answer the question of where things come from, it just delays us from finding out the actual answer by distracting us with other pointless questions, which get in the way. This is wilful ignorance, actually it’s worse than wilful ignorance in that they [the religious] are trying to get everyone else (including scientists) to adopt and be happy with wilful ignorance.

The promotion and propagation of this wilful ignorance is something that all rational people should take a stand against, hence this refutation and the founding of organizations like Atheism.

4. Conclusion: God exists?

From the above discussion, we can clearly reject this conclusion. From the logical contradiction of “I don’t know, therefore, I know” or in even more basic logical terms “A is not A”, to a more in-depth explanation of the premises in detail showing how and why point 3 simply does not follow from points 1 and 2. The argument from ignorance is both logically invalid and intellectually flawed. It is not an argument that we can accept for the existence of any god, let alone one of the gods of a specific religion, for example, Christianity, Islam or Hinduism, etc.

If someone uses an argument from ignorance when debating with you, no matter what form that argument takes, point to the fact that they have done so, why it is an argument from ignorance, why that fails to convince you and why it should not convince them either.

Finally, this is important from a tactical point of view, get them to recognise this error and concede the point, preferably publicly and get them to pledge not to use it again. If they do use it again in another debate (which they probably will – many of the professional apologists certainly do, they have their pet arguments and stick to them no matter what), simply point out that they have already conceded this argument and have now moved on from wilful ignorance to wilful dishonesty (and don’t the religious have rules and commandments about that?).

The ‘Ground Zero’ hypocrisy

Can Islam show sensitivity?

The recent row over the proposed mosque near the site of the World Trade Centre, where 3,000 people lost their lives following the 9/11 bombing, revealed some exaggerations. Firstly, the location is not at ‘Ground Zero’, but at least two blocks away and secondly, the building, which will be an Islamic centre rather than a mosque, to be known as Cordoba House, is intended to house a multi-story complex boasting a theatre, day care, culinary and sports facilities, as well as an area for prayers.

Objections to the project were swift and vociferous from families of the victims. Other opponents such as the republican right were reputed to have led a campaign of fear, panic and Islamophobia. They described it as inappropriate, wrong and insensitive. They proclaimed it would be a monument to the triumph of 9/11, a desecration, a provocation and a further encroachment of Islam on American soil. Even President Obama was sucked into the furore, giving his full support to the proposal, based on the rights of the American constitution for freedom to practice one’s religion. His message extolled the virtues of living in a tolerant society. Not surprisingly, the next day he backtracked on his statements when rumours spread that he was secretly a Muslim. One can’t help but wonder at the wisdom of such partiality to a particular faith in endorsing this project publicly, and the irony it generated in the context of the American constitution to keep State and religion separate.

While opponents of the project argued over the right to allow an ‘enemy’ of the USA to build a monument as a triumph of their religious conquest (equating this to accepting the right of the Japanese to build a shrine at Pearl Harbour), Muslims of the proposed centre were busy trying to allay fears of any covert Islamist plots, giving assurance that the complex would be open to all visitors and would help to demonstrate that Muslims are part of the community. Moreover, they announced that the Centre would be a shrine to those who lost their lives and would help to build bridges between the West and the Islamic world. But how much of this rhetoric in regards to community cohesion and the moderate aspect of Islam by supporters of Cordoba House are we to believe? The Finsbury Park mosque in London was an example of where a house of prayer was turned into a recruiting ground for extremism. There is also the question of who is funding the project. If it is Saudi Arabia, as many suspect, would followers be obliged to adopt the extremist Wahabi form of Islam which radical muslims are in favour of and which has been responsible for suicide bombers carrying out 9/11, 7/7, bombing in Madrid, Indonesia, Bali and other parts of the world?

The question of sensitivity to the feelings of the victims’ families has been an emotive one. While respecting the constitutional right of freedom to practice one’s religion and the democratic right to buy and build legally on American soil, many Americans and non-Americans feel that the decision to erect such a building in close proximity to Ground Zero, in the name of a religion whose fundamentalist doctrine were directly responsible for the destruction of the site, shows a total disregard of the American people and Western values, and a lack of consideration for the feelings of those who suffered from it. Moreover, it endorses the blatant hypocrisy of Islam, which itself shows no respect for democracy or human rights in many parts of the Islamic world, but insists on fair treatment from others abroad. Quick to condemn any criticism of their dogma even with violence, muslims, to their advantage, have repeatedly played the ‘victim’ card, complaining of hurt feelings and insensitivity. But the table is about to turn. In the spirit of community cohesion, respect for the memory of the victims, recognition of human dignity and sensitivity, would they now take up this mantra and reciprocate? One would hope that these so-called moderate muslims would want to seize an opportunity were it to present itself and demonstrate to the world that Islam can respect the sensitivities of its host nation, if it helps to foster a better and peaceful society. Instead, no sooner do we hear of their demands for tolerance, religious rights and freedom, than we witness the first example of the now familiar voice of hypocritical Islam.

When news broke of a proposed gay bar next to the Islamic Centre, one would have expected them to practice what they preach. Instead, a senior Muslim cleric was reported to have said that this was going too far, given Muslim sensibilities. This, in spite of the announced intentions of the proprietors to emulate the message of the supporters of the Centre in hoping to break down barriers by welcoming ‘secretly’ gay Muslim men and catering for their needs, by providing non-alcoholic drinks on one floor. If this venue goes ahead, will we soon be observing demonstrations by Muslim zealots on the streets of New York with the burning of effigies of gay couples in true extremist fashion? Given their history of intolerance to anything that they believe is an insult to their religion, I wouldn’t be surprised.

When President Obama declared that the American Constitution must protect Islam, it’s only fair that Islam and muslims living in the United States should be held to those same constitutional requirements. If not, they are failing in their duty as citizens to exercise American values of freedom, tolerance and liberty. The double standards practised by the followers of Islam who want to have their cake and eat it, is one of the reasons the right often gains political influence and why Islam is shamelessly hypocritical.

Despite the understandably strong feelings of opposition to the building of an Islamic Centre, so close to Ground Zero, I believe that they have just as much right to build a mosque or Islamic Centre as any other religion proposing to build a particular place of worship. However, when the project is completed, in stark contrast to the insular ideologies and practices of Islam, it should stand as a monument to democracy, a beacon to equality of religion and above all, a symbol of the grown up mentality of a Western nation to respect the civil rights of all citizens including those who may choose to follow their teachings literally and who may not hesitate to condemn or even kill for their delusional religious beliefs.

Hawking: Translating the ignorant responses

Assertions by Professor Stephen Hawking is his forthcoming book, The Grand Design, that science leaves no role for God in the creation of the Universe triggered the usual predictable and inane responses from religious leaders this week, as reported in The Times on September the 3^rd.

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was quoted as saying,

“Belief in God is not about plugging a gap in explaining how one thing relates to another within the Universe.  It is the belief that there is an intelligent, living agent on whose activity everything ultimately depends for its existence. Physics on its own will not settle the question of why there is something rather than nothing.”

Does he really think this is a serious rebuttal that says anything useful or coherent? Reading between the lines here is my translation of what he was really saying,

“Belief in God is not about knowledge.  It is the belief, without evidence, and wild speculation and baseless hope that there is an intelligent, living agent on whose activity everything ultimately depends for its existence. Physics on its own will not settle the question of why there is something rather than nothing, even though I have no reason to think that this is even a meaningful or valid question.”

In other words Faith is living in a perpetual state of un-knowing, of ignorance, whereby beliefs are states of mind decoupled from reality and has no meaning.

The statement from the Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks was even more telling, who said,

“Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation … The Bible simply isn’t interested in how the Universe came into being.”

Well, yes, that is nothing new, but it is great that he admits that religion is about subjective interpretation and not objective truth. Here’s my translation,

“Science is about explanation. Religion is about making things up … The Bible is wrong about how the Universe came into being even when it describes (in Genesis) how the Universe came into being.”

The Muslim version came from Imam Ibrahim Mogra,

“God calls on us to ponder God’s creation, to realise his presence. The fact that we have an extraordinarily complex universe which continues to grow before our eyes is the strongest possible evidence that of the existence of a creator.”

No, he has missed the point, the laws of physics explain how the universe grows without recourse to a God. My translation,

“God calls on us to ponder God’s creation, to realise his presence, though this is based on an assumption for which I have no evidence that there is a God. The fact that we have an extraordinarily complex universe which continues to grow before our eyes is the strongest possible evidence for an extraordinarily complex universe which continues to grow before our eyes.”

Such statements from these religious leaders remind me of two of the three wise monkeys as their beliefs are derived from their perspective on the universe of seeing nothing and hearing nothing. One would only hope they would follow the lead of the third monkey and keep their mouths shut too!

Stephen Hawking’s The Grand Design (hardcover and audio-book) is available to pre-order at a reduced price in our bookshop.

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