Reply #14: Non-theist - not atheist.

[Eileen]

"I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian God may exist; so may the Gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them."

"The argument that there must be a first cause is one that cannot have any validity. If anything must
have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God."
Bertrand Russell, The Quotable Bertrand Russell
ed. Lee Eisler, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1993)

Because we really don't know where we come from we invent answers and demand others accept them. Thence comes religion. Which leads to the questions; "if the universe was created by the Big Bang or some other event, where did the materials involved in the Big Bang come from? Nowhere? How? I mean how can something come from nothing?."

As I see it the theist "fills in the knowledge gap" by creating a figmentary world peopled by rules they claim are natural and beings that create these rules from the ether. The non theist, accepting reality and unconfounded by uncertainty and cognitive dissonance is capable of accepting current knowledge and building on that as the evidence presents itself.

This brings us to the prime difference between the answer to those questions as provided by a theist and the contrasting answer from a non theistic source.

The theist requires that there be answers always, and is incapable of living without answers, and for this reasons - where no answer exists - turns to superstition or supplies the answer from the ether which makes hir comfortable. Essentially for the theist cognitive dissonance is less uncomfortable than uncertainty; because self deception will always provide a coping mechanism for the cognitive dissonance but there is no coping mechanism for uncertainty.

The non theist on the other hand has difficulty rationalizing the cognitive dissonance associated with acceptance of the unfounded and unprovable mythology necessarily associated with belief in a theos and furthermore is not uncomfortable dealing with uncertainty which s/he recognizes as simply a part of the human condition. If we walk on the street we recognize the possibility of being struck by a random bus which has for whatever reason intersected our path despite our taking the normal precautions to prevent such accidents. We even recognize the possibility of an explosion of sewer gas opening the roadway in front of us and swallowing us - even in non earthquake prone zones - so we live with the possibility of such random and chaotic occurrences on a daily basis - but rather than despair that they may occur we posit our actions on probability, since there is a far greater probability they will not occur.

Einstein, Hawking, and many modern physicists speak of what is sometimes called "the big bang" which began the creation of the universe, as we know it, by the term "Singularity" (or usually "The Singularity"). Our modern mathematics and physics can "predict" or perhaps a better term is "project" from that singularity using what we currently know about the laws of physics but this is always a work in progress and subject to revision (as for instance recent "dark matter" revelations show) and we thus can give some form to what happened centuries, or hours, or evan speculate what happened minutes after the singularity. They refer to what happened before the singularity as "undefined" since, among other things, the time space continuum as we know it did not exist and all our 'rules' for time and space therefore cannot be applied. The 'laws' of physics, and mathematics, and logic, - in other words - stop at the singularity.

Theists consistently commits the "petitio principii" or 'question begging' fallacy in their diatribes by appealing to the unproven existence of a creator and designer for the universe. Now "evidentialism" maintains it is irrational to continue with such certainty in unproven premises that form the basis of arguments as theism does. The contemporary "Reformed Epistemogy" movement calls evidentialism into question. Many modern theists appear to accept the tenets of reformed epistemology as fact and presents arguments that seem rational from this basis. That this only works within the confines of reformed epistemology as a discipline is ignored. Also ignored are the required manufacture of a theos, a form of insanity some claim, to provide the substance missing in the arguments; and the creating of "laws" from the ether to remove the ability for rational examination of arguments. From the card house of "natural laws" and theism the reformed epistemologist then claims we are incapable of living with uncertainty and in order to fulfill this requirement embellishes the fantasy world already created by denying the existence of an a-posterior knowledge but posits an a-priori form based on a game of smoke and mirrors wherein unprovable entities whisper their "truths" into hir ear and the ears of those who also believe like hir.

I contend that unless an opponent is capable of citing actual data that factually does corroborate the arguments presented s/he is forced to appeal to unelaborated phenomenological arguments. While I respect others right to hold their own particular or peculiar religious and philosophical viewpoints, and practice those religious beliefs, and to associate freely with like minded individuals, for exercises in freedom of speech, and freedom to worship - my respect only lasts as long as the exercise of those rights do not lead to injury of others. Theists may appear to establish some invalidity of non theistic arguments through particular premises and heuristics that are indigenous to their own epistemological and ontological community. Using their own bel;ief system, in other words, they may "prove" the existence of a theor or theoses.

In other words the consistent fallacy of the theist is basing a conclusion on untrue syllogisms and then assuming the resultant conclusion is correct. It might be but the reasoning is faulty. The syllogisms must be correct before valid conclusions can be drawn from them. Theists are quite entitled to believe their own epistemological premises, but I will not be convinced until I see reproducible and generalizable data. Doxastic logic is not a replacement for a veridical ontology.

For these reasons I do not refer to myself as an "atheist" since to some that claim would be interpreted as a belief in the non-existence of a theos. Rather I say I am a non-theist. Some people, and I'm among them, recognise the stupid game played in the USA where atheism has been defined as a religion (sometimes called secular humanism) strictly for the political purpose of preventing the teaching of certain subjects. Non-theists recognise the logical fallacy of trying to prove a negative and instead opt to live our lives as if there were no such entity as a theos and ignore the need for such proof.

So I ask myself: "Self - Does it make better sense, even pragmatically, to live as though fairies, trolls, Her Horny Pinkness The IPU (pbuH) does exist than as though they don't?" and answer with a resounding NO Rather it's the result of my being a rational animal and a careful examination of the evidence to follow Russels advice and ignore the speculation which lies outside the relam of probable nowledge. The prima facie case favors non existence of a theos. I can't prove that any more than you can prove the non existence of the IPU.Just to make myself clear I am not saying a sky fairy does not exist - since there is no evidence (and can be none) of non existence. Neither do I say that Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, or Leprechauns do not exist. So he/she/it is, and they are, the equivelant of the IPU - an amusing philosophic exercise not to be taken seriously.



Eileen