So for several hundred years now, the atheists and the religionists (actually only a particular variety of American Christians mostly) have been all caught up in this huge argument about whether there is or is not a God - and all the accompanying concepts like spirituality, souls, afterlife, creation, etc. Most of us, both atheists and theists, aren't really arguing about it. But for those who are, I have a few thoughts.
The problem is, you can't prove the existence of God. The second problem is, you can't prove the non-existence of God either. Well as you know, you can't prove the non-existence of anything, you can only show a preponderance of evidence that precludes the necessary conditions for xyz to exist. And that never does really prove the non-existence of xyz - just renders it more probably improbable.
So then you go to disproving the existence of God. You can't do that either. It's on the same order as showing the preponderance of evidence as mentioned above. And, of course, you also can't disprove the non-existence of God on the other side of the argument because if you can't prove the non-existence of God, you certainly can't disprove the non-existence of God and at this point you've gone way over the edge of even remotely intelligible discourse!
The problem for those trying to prove the existence of God starts with the fact that they're using arguments constructed in 12th century. The next problem is the incongruity of even thinking that a finite human mind could comprehend the God they are trying to prove the existence of.
I don't care how brilliant, how logical, how rational any person or group of persons imagines themselves to be. I don't care if God himself/herself has personally dictated the absolute truth of his/her being - in writing - in every language. I don't care if the human soul is an exact replica of God (on an infinitely minute and limited scale). The human mind cannot ever comprehend that which by definition transcends it. It's like a colony of ants presuming they can grasp, define and prove the existence of the known universe. Excuse me but whose idea was this to try and "prove" God?!
The first problem for atheists is that the arguments they are using against the existence of God were constructed to rebut the arguments for the existence of God constructed in the 18th century. They are caught in this weird time-warp with the Christians they're arguing with. The second really serious problem is that they're using definitions of God that are conceptually primitive, simplistic, parochial and mostly just taken from the over simplified popular views of God constructed by the conservative Christians they're arguing with.
The arguments that the evangelical atheists and evangelical christians keep hammering each other on, ad nauseam, are not even contemporary. The rest of us have moved on to far more complex, nuanced conceptions of reality, the universe and God.
An additional problem with the usual arguments being put forward for and against the existence of God is that they're usually not too carefully thought through and don't actually address proving or disproving the existence of God. Well, everyone has done a lot of talking, but apparently without applying a bit of reasonable logic.
OK, for more on what can't be done, see the next blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment