Contrasting Worldviews

A worldview is one's big-picture explanation of reality, which can include their understanding of the cosmos and the universe they live in, their philosophy of how they live life, what forces and entities they believe exist in the world, and what basic principles they think ultimately govern the world. As I wrote in a previous blog entry (False Balance / False equivalence), I argue that everyone has a core, default, worldview that is fundamentally naturalistic. They understand that moving through the world involves a lot of give and take with physical reality, and that reality (on a mundane and everyday level) is impersonal and physical.

For example, when one has to detour to avoid falling in a hole, the Christian and the Atheist both interpret this event in a naturalistic way - they each accommodate themselves to the purely physical fact that a hole would not be a good thing to fall into. Primitive humans invented various mystical forces, demons, and gods to rationalize some of life's events - in this case, maybe some sort of malicious imp who placed the hole in their path. In this same spirit, Christians deploy their own supernatural layer on top of the default worldview, introducing their own collection of metaphysical and teleological concepts. The philosophical naturalist does not add any of these extra layers, but continues to interpret both simple and complex phenomena as impersonal, natural processes. Naturalism is a metaphysical worldview that provides an explanation of reality using the assumption that nature and natural entities are all that exist, and that everything in our reality is ultimately reducable to natural entities, forces, properties, phenomena, and interactions. It does not attempt to catelog all of these things, but just asserts that when we encounter them, they can be understood as natural, rather than supernatural. Theistic worldviews add a supernatural layer involving invisible intentional forces and/or beings on top of this base layer.

So, what constitutes nature? Some naturalists respond that nature is basically the same as physical materialism - that nature consists of anything that can be described in terms of matter, the known forces, energy, space, the other exotic combinations non-matter particles, etc. However, there is a more economical and minimal definition of naturalism that doesn't restrict the natural world to the known forms of material existence with which we are familiar, and avoids the messy issue of the existence of abstract entities such as mathematical concepts, properties of objects, love, beauty, ideas, etc. This simpler form of naturalism is just this - there is no metaphysical agency-driven, teleology. There is no conscious entity or force that shapes our destinies, that cares about us, that reveals knowledge to us, or which has a stake in our existence. In other words, there is no "intelligent design" or overall purpose or goal for the universe other than to continue to do what it does - to exist. Naturalism entails a blind and undirected cosmos, recognizing that higher level properties and behaviors can emerge from interactions of these lower level entities. There are certainly processes that exhibit their own internal design, and systems that appear to work together in a beautiful and harmonious manner, but this does not require or imply an external creative intelligence which is directing everything. Everything in naturalism is reducible to non teleological, impersonal causes. This is what is meant when we say that "everything has a natural explanation". This does not preclude an Aristotelian form of goal-directed behavior in nature. He identified impersonal forms of teleology in nature that do not involve a god-like characters.

1. Formal. Biological developmental processes that occur for the sake of self-preservation or preservation of the species (form).
2. Functional. Parts of organisms that are present for the sake of the organism possessing them.

In other words, we might say that sharks have sharp teeth so that they can bite. That is their "purpose". Teleological behaviors of organisms and natural systems may appear purposive, but they are not. Instead, they are non-intentional and intrinsic. Their goal is not an object of any agent's desire.

What this means is that all phenomena that occur do so in the absence of any external supernatural intentionality, and any evidence that purports to come from a supernatural origin (like the revealed word of a god) is not taken seriously. So, when a tidal wave destroys a city without any intention to do so, we would say this was a natural disaster, while when one person intentionally shoots another person, we would say that this was caused by an agency-driven, teleological force (the killer had a goal or purpose). This simpler form of naturalism rejects intention and teleology in the universe and in its metaphysics. Because it makes a more modest claim than philosophical materialism, this form of naturalism is not vulnerable to the apologist attack as being a crude materialist philosophy - it is not that. It merely eschews an outside, interested, intelligence that gets in the way of, and redirects, natural processes.

For the purpose of this blog entry, I will set aside my convictions about the default, naturalistic worldview I believe we all share and grant that Christians and Atheists do differ in major regards in their cosmological and metaphysical worldviews. Everyone has a worldview in one way or another. You can avoid defining or exploring your worldview, but when you believe in anything, ultimately the conclusions that you draw will be based on your guiding philosophy in life. They will be tied to your epistemology, your metaphysics, and so forth. It will shape how you interpret evidence. For example, a naturalist would interpret the evidence of geologic processes in the Grand Canyon differently than would a Young Earth Creationist. I argue in this posting that one world view gives a far more complete and satisfying (i.e., "better") explanation of the Grand Canyon than the other.

The decriptor, "better" implies that we have any way of evaluating whether a worldview is right or wrong. Do we? Or do we all just have our own experiences and beliefs, making one worldview just as good as another - a kind of "worldview relativism"? It's difficult to determine whether a worldview is right or wrong in part because the epistemic criteria that we use to judge the truth of it will be contained in that worldview. It is hard, maybe impossible, to step outside one's worldview to evaluate it (or evaluate a different worldview) objectively. An argument or explanation made following the "rules" of one worldview may have very little influence on someone who subscribes to a different worldview. A scientific/logical defense of naturalism might have very little impact on a fundamentalist Christian, for whom faith and revelation comprise the most convincing proofs. Incidentally, if one feels that objectivity and open-mindedness are not important in their worldview, then I will politely leave them here in peace because we have nothing more to discuss. If someone has a different worldview with a different epistemology (such as belief in revelation or direct communication with god, or belief in the factual truth of ancient religious texts, instead of science) then how could you convince them that their worldview is wrong and yours is right? And likewise, how could someone with a religiously based worldview convince someone with a science-based worldview that theirs is wrong? History has shown that those two camps tend to talk past each other.

Criteria Of Adequacy

Matthew Ferguson, a classics historian and prolific blogger (Κέλσος) on the subjects of philosophical naturalism and counter-apologetics, offers a viable solution to the impasse. He recommends that one way that we might evaluate a worldview is not so much by whether it is right or wrong, but instead by the pragmatic criteria of how well it "fits the data" and how well it actually achieves its purpose of being a robust and complete view of the world. After all, with the imposing name, "Worldview", one might reasonably expect that a good one would encompass a wide collection of things that it can explain. A worldview is not a trivial thing - it is an explanation of "life, the universe, and everything". If one's worldview, for example, proposes entities that don't appear to really exist in the world, or if it makes predictions that repeatedly are proven to be wrong, or at least don't align with what we actually see in the world, or fails to make any interesting predictions at all, then it's probably not a very good fit with the data provided by the world. So, the way you could evaluate a worldview is to ask, "How well does it explain the phenomena around us?" It is an open question as to whether these pragmatic criteria actually have any strong connection to "truth". But they certainly have a strong connection to how consistent and useful our theories are as they apply to the world. These pragmatic criteria, as will be shown, are rather loose and relativistic. But they have the advantage of at least acknowledging that our understanding of the world is not complete and certain, but is only partial and provisional.

First and second of the criteria - does the worldview have both explanatory scope (i.e., breadth) and explanatory power (i.e., depth)? Explanatory scope is something that can explain multiple independent categories of evidence, a measure of the amount of diverse phenomena explained by the hypothesis. Explanatory power is the degree to which it can explain the details of one particular category. For example, Evolutionary Theory has explanatory scope because it can explain biological features across all of Earth's life forms. Evolution's explanatory power can be seen in its ability to explain particular evolved features in great detail and depth. The Theory of Evolution has strong explanatory power, in that it presents strong evidence that explains how specific features developed.

The reason you want a worldview to have explanatory scope is that it would explain multiple things as opposed to only a single thing or few things, but not explaining others. If a worldview has explanatory scope, you would expect to see a lot of things it predicts if it were true, and nothing or very few things that it predicts if it were false. If your worldview has scope, you can explain many different things about the world using it. If it has explanatory power, you can explain those things to a very high degree and give a lot of evidence for them, as well. One worldview would also have more explanatory power than another about the same subject if it offered greater predictive power. That is, if it offered more details about what we should expect to see, and what we should not. Can the worldview predict events that will happen in the future, and also predict future discoveries of things that actually did happen in the past (i.e, "retrodict")? A worldview with both scope and power is more coherent, internally consistent, and effective in explaining the breadth and depth of our experience. Simply put, it is more effective and has a higher correspondence to reality. So, the Christian may argue that their worldview is as "good" as the Atheists (though I am at a loss to explain how they might define "good" in this context). But they would be completely unjustified in arguing that it has the scope or power of the naturalistic worldview. The Christian worldview is comparatively impotent, narrow, and weak, and it does not fit the data of our experience in the world, it fails to predict anything, and is essentially a cobbled-together collection of ad-hoc explanations, admonitions, appeals to authority, and aphorisms.

In addition to explanatory scope and explanatory power, described above, there are other "criteria of adequacy" which help us determine the extent to which a worldview systematizes and unifies our knowledge. Theodore Schick describes these in his article, Can God explain anything?. In addition to Scope and Power he adds fruitfulness (the ability of a hypothesis to successfully predict novel phenomena), consistency (freedom from contradiction), simplicity (not the brevity of the hypothesis, but the number of assumptions it has to make), and conservatism (how well the hypothesis fits with what we already know). And it almost goes without saying that Testability is a key component of the criteria. The hypothesis or theory should be testable against the real world. Without this, the explanation can never be truly grounded. In each of these areas, the scientific/secular/naturalistic hypothesis is superior to the superstitious/religious hypothesis.

According to Schick, a strong worldview should exhibit consistency. Not only should it be internally consistent, but it must also be externally consistent, consistent with external data. If an explanation about reality is internally inconsistent (i.e., self-contradictory) it can’t possibly be true. Thus one of the most effective ways to refute a theory is to show that it harbors a contradiction. The inconsistencies found in the bible (should we stone witches, or should only those without sin cast stones?), much less the disputes and conflicting doctrines between different denominations of Christianity, and between different religions, show how inconsistent religious worldviews are. A recent blatant display of inconsistency was seen in the 2014 debate between creationist Ken Ham and science advocate Bill Nye. Ken Ham argued (1) scientists rely on the Laws of Nature and the Uniformity of Nature, which were created by god, and (2) relying on the uniformity of nature to conduct "historical science" (his term) is invalid because "we weren't there" to confirm that nature was behaving uniformly in history. Also, according to his worldview, the Laws of Nature are not really laws, because god can break them any time he wants by injecting a miracle. Ken Ham (more than most), but really all Christians, put preservation of their religious convictions far above respect for and adherence to consistent use of logic.

Simplicity refers to the preference for less complex theories and worldviews over more complex ones - complexity referring to Occam's razor, "Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity." Like the principle of Conservatism, this was advocated by Quine as being required of a theory for it to be integrated with the "web of belief". All things being equal, the simpler a hypothesis is (the fewer assumptions it makes) the better it is. If phenomena can be explained without making certain assumptions, there’s no reason to make them. Christians perversely see their god-based worldview as simpler than the secular one. They assume just one thing: an omnipotent god, whereas science assumes many, many things (rejection of magic and miracles, naturalistic causes, rules of logic, the value of evidence, external reality, laws of nature, our ability to create meaningful models of reality, reliability of the senses, etc). This is completely disingenuous. Their one assumption, god, is the most complex, all encompassing, overwhelming entity that could ever be imagined. It is far, far more complicated and unlikely than the more modest assumptions of the naturalistic worldview. This criteria must be wielded carefully - not all the best theories are the most simple, but a more complex theory must have other redeeming traits. Examples of complex theories that are better than their more simple counterparts are Mendeleev's periodic table consisting of over 100 elements contrasted with Aristotle's five simple elements, and Quantum theory comprising dozens of elementary particles vs. Atomic theory which has only the proton, neutron, and electron. So, like all these criteria, the criteria of simplicity is a guideline rather than a rule or a law.

Conservatism, which is sometimes called coherence, describes the worldview's fit with other worldviews and theories. This is a desirable trait because if buying into a worldview requires rejecting a good deal of what we’ve already established about the world, instead of enhancing and augmenting existing beliefs about the world, then it may diminish our overall understanding. Like the principle of Simplicity, this was advocated by Quine as being required of a theory for it to be integrated with the "web of belief". Conservatism means that we want to preserve as much of our existing web of belief as we can (don't make big changes if we don't need to). The Christian worldview, specifically the part that allows and even requires miracles, directly conflicts with every experience we have (and have ever had) in the miracle-free world. The moral and social aspects of Christianity can mesh with other aspects of our belief systems, but the Christian push into causality, the injection of religious miracles into our present day world, directly contradicts our actual experience, every other non-magical worldview, and other magical (but non-Christian) worldviews.

Precision is a characteristic of a worldview which means that it makes precise and targeted statements about the world, it is not vague and fuzzy. The naturalistic world view does just that - the more precise and detailed it can be about our experience in the world, the better. The religious worldview is variable, overly flexible, and imprecise. It assigns all outcomes of all events to god's will. If there is a natural disaster, that was god's will. If there was no natural disaster, that was also god's will. It is impossible to nail down on any issue because it is so intrinsically imprecise.

Philosopher of Science, Alan Musgrave, elaborates on the criteria of fruitfulness, the ability of a worldview to generate novel predictions. It is relevant as much to worldviews as it is to scientific theories. Can the worldview make predictions concerning phenomena which were unknown during the development of the theory/worldview - predictions of unexpected and surprising events which play no part in the formation of the worldview? This ability weighs heavily in favor of many of the best scientific theories and the naturalistic world view, as a whole. If a logical model of the world fits reality so well that it not only can explain and predict what we understand, but can anticipate things we have not yet discovered, that is a very powerful strength - a strength possessed by the naturalistic worldview and not by the religious worldview. Examples of such novel predictions in science that served to strongly confirm those theories are:

• Fresnel's transverse wave theory's prediction of a bright spot in the center of a shadow.
• Einstein's General Theory of Relativity's prediction bending of light waves around the body of the sun, as well as the irregularities in the perihelion of Mercury.
• Mendeleev's periodic table and the prediction of several previously unknown elements based on obvious gaps in the table.
• Copernicus' heliocentric theory and the prediction of the phases of Venus and the brightening and dimming of the planets as their distance from the Earth changes.
• Evolutionary Theory predicted that a transitional fossil linking fishes and tetrapods would be found in rocks from the Devonian period (and it was found - the "Tiktaalik"). The existence of the Morgan's sphinx moth in Madagascar was predicted based on the odd structure of a certain orchid. Many other examples exist (so much for not being able to conduct experiments to test Evolutionary Theory!)
• Quantum Theory predicted many previously unknown particles, including the Higgs Boson, that were eventually discovered

In each of the above cases, the phenomena being predicted played no role, whatsoever, in the formation of the theories. But the theories, when applied to those situations, predicted the outcomes. Either this means that the theories (and the naturalistic worldview behind them) are correct, or that a set of incredible coincidences occurred. It is probably not a coincidence. Quoting Hilary Putnam, a modern philosopher of science, "Realism is the only philosophy that doesn't make the success of science a miracle" (called the "no-miracles argument"). Religious theories and the Religious worldview are based on a long series of miracles. They entail no predictions at all, much less novel predictions. They are untestable, unfalsifiable, poorly corroborated, and ad-hoc in the highest degree. "Ad-hoc" is Latin for "to that" or "to the fact." An ad-hoc explanation is one that is constructed solely to save a hypothesis from facts that would disprove it. It has no independent justification. Any hypothesis can be saved from negative evidence by constructing ad-hoc hypotheses. The more ad-hoc hypotheses needed to prop up a claim, however, the less plausible it is. The religious worldview, along with many other similar worldviews (Solipsism, Omphalos, "Brain in a vat", etc) is an example of an ad-hoc worldview.

Pierre Duhem (of Duhem-Quine fame) also proposed a few strategies to decide among theories that are underdetermined by the data. Like others who have considered this problem, he concluded that not all theories of this type are equally justified, or equally hopeless. Quine provided us with a set of standards to apply to competing theories. He called these the "explanatory virtues". Modesty is a virtue, because (all things being equal) logically less demanding hypotheses and hypotheses that claim less are preferable to hypotheses that entail more assumptions, as are hypotheses that assume events of a familiar sort. Simplicity (mentioned previously) is also a virtue because simpler hypotheses are preferable to complex ones (another restatement of Ockham's razor).

Christian Worldview Strategy

The term, worldview, is used by a lot of Christians today. For example, worldview.org is a Christian apologetics website. It describes a "battle of worldviews" and pits the Christian against the Naturalistic worldview. Some Christians place an inordinate importance on the worldview concept, which is why I am blogging about it in this chapter. This Christian focus on worldview is a tactic that Christian presuppositionalists use to undermine atheism and naturalism. They claim that atheists don't believe in miracles, resurrections, god, angels, etc because they have a built-in presupposition of naturalism. They claim that these naturalistic presuppositions causes atheists to believe, apriori, that nature is all that exists. This atheist filtering would cause them to reject all counter-evidence that comes from outside of nature (i.e., supernatural evidence) that would refute these presuppositions. They argue that atheists are therefore inhibited by their implicit rejection of the supernatural, and that they poison the well against any supernatural phenomena. This is completely wrong - it interprets the naturalistic worldview incorrectly. The naturalistic worldview is not an apriori belief that atheists just decide to subscribe to, as some sort of preference or bias. Instead, it can be and usually is arrived at aposteriori, after one has looked at the world, investigated its mysteries, studied and researched it, and after all of this analysis, comes to the conclusion that nature appears to be all that exists. Therefore for all future phenomena that we look at, we would assume they would have a higher chance of being natural events rather than supernatural ones. That is not an apriori process (i.e., based purely on logic), but one based explicitly on evidence - the historical evidence for miracles and supernatural events is simply not strong. Additionally, many phenomena that were formerly considered supernatural (lightning, plagues, disease, insanity, natural disasters, eclipses, comets, creation of species, and so on) have been demystified by science and transformed from supernatural to natural. That process continues.

Atheism, at its most basic level, is not a philosophy or positive assertion of a worldview. It is not a counterbalance to the religious worldview, but involves a far smaller claim. It is just an statement concerning a particular issue - the existence or the non existence of the supernatural. It doesn't necessarily imply the adoption of a set of other beliefs to substitute for superstition (though naturalism is a frequent candidate for that). It really is just an epistemic statement about how one comes to acquire knowledge. It rejects revelation, miracles, and millennia old religious legends as legitimate sources of knowledge. Some atheists go on to assert strong confidence that there is no god, while less assertive atheists would maintain that after centuries of failed attempts, all the evidence presented for a god fails miserably, and they therefore conclude that there is almost certainly no god - in the same sense that there are almost certainly no fairies living in my mailbox, and no boogeyman hiding under my bed.

One justification I commonly hear from Christian apologists, evangelical intellectuals, or students of the philosophy of religion is that their belief in the Christian story is based on an “inference to the best explanation”. In using this justification, they are not only borrowing from the methods of empirical and epistemic philosophy, but attempting to co-opt it. This type of inference, also called "abduction" or eliminative inference, is performed when one chooses among several hypotheses that attempt to explain a phenomenon, throw out those that fail to fit the data, and choose the best of the remainder. In hijacking this reliable reasoning technique, they appeal to god as the best explanation of the origin of life, morality, consciousness, and the entire universe. There are problems with using the convenient and supportive part of abduction, but choosing to leave out the unpleasant parts. They overlook some obstacles that get in the way of their desired conclusion when they employ this technique. For example, they are guilty of "underconsideration", which is not really considering all the other available explanations, and also of extreme subjectivity - when the goal is so attractive, it is not difficult to fit explanations to it. But worst of all, they stop just before the most important step, in that they don't then follow their hypothesis up with evidence to support it. The inference leads to a theory (really, a hypothesis), but the theory needs real-world testing. This is the way you have to test your claims - Einstein's theory of relativity didn't gain full acceptance until it was empirically confirmed in 1919 by the astronomer, Arthur Eddington, when observing an eclipse. But, you can't test god. He is immune to puny human testing. Any evidence in the world can be fitted to god simply by saying that this is how god chose to do something. Because of god's infinite power, the god hypothesis is impossible to test. Coming up with the explanation is only the first half of the battle. Supporting it with evidence to prove that the theory holds up is the second, and much more challenging and really - important - part. It is not sufficient to propose an untestable theory, dust your hands together, and then congratulate yourself with a "job well done". The job is only half done without the backing evidence. The proposed explanation is only a hypothesis until it can be transformed into a true theory of reality, which requires the support of hard evidence.

Some Christian apologists use this approach to try to drag the discussion back to this unhelpful and misleading presuppositional level. For example, an atheist would say that he doesn't believe Jesus was resurrected because he doesn't see any evidence that someone can be resurrected from the dead. The theist would blame the naturalistic presupposition that blinds atheists to the possibility of resurrection. In fact, this is not really a presupposition at all. We have observed billions of people live and die throughout history, and none of them ever come back from the dead. From the tremendous body of knowledge we have accumulated about biology, we understand that there would be many insuperable difficulties associated with reviving a thoroughly dead and decaying corpse. So, the fact that people don't resurrect is consistent with a naturalistic worldview, but strongly conflicts with the religious worldview that says that they can.

In a conflict of world views, once a debate leaves the empirical and moves to the supernatural, then naturalism cannot speak to it, since it takes as one of its premises the reliability of empirical evidence and testing of claims against reality. A trust in empiricism is one of the axioms that cannot be proved, but must either be rejected, or be accepted as self evident and the most likely explanation for our experiences of reality (for other axioms of naturalism, see "Assumptions of Science").

Deciding among explanations

There are multiple worldviews that are capable of explaining our world and our experiences. The Christians have an explanation that involves Special Creation (some arguing that it all happened just 6000 years ago), but all believing that god got it all started and is actively managing things, now. There are other worldviews that also claim to be coherent and complete explanations - among them are Solipsism, Last-Thursdayism, "Brain in a vat", and the many other religion/superstition-based explanations for how things work. When the same evidence is explainable by several theories, we say that the evidence "underdetermines the theories". This is called the underdetermination problem. There will always be more than one theory that fits the data, no matter how much evidence comes in. For example, we have a theory that when several hours of night has past, the sun will rise. Another theory that accounts for our experience so far is that for all of history the sun has risen, but starting tomorrow it will not do so. Both theories explain the evidence so far. Which is better? James Ladyman summarized Carl Popper's approach to resolving multiple hypotheses that account for the same evidence in his book, Understanding the Philosophy of Science. In it he says:

"For any theory H there is always another theory G such that:

1. If H & G are weakly empirically equivalent (i.e., they both account for the observable evidence) then there is no reason to believe H and not G.
2. We see that H & G are weakly empirically equivalent.
3. Therefore, there is no reason to believe H and not G.

This is potentially a real problem for the scientific realist because, if it is correct, there are always rival theories we have not thought of, which fit all the data that support each of the best current scientific theories. If this is the case, why should we believe our best theories and not the skeptic’s alternatives? However, this argument may be challenged by denying the first premise, in other words, by arguing that the mere existence of a rival hypothesis consistent with all the data so far does not mean there is no reason to prefer one of H and G. Hence, for example, Popper argued that if G is ad-hoc, and entails no other empirically falsifiable predictions, then it should be ignored.

Of course Popper didn’t think we should believe H either, but it is easy to adapt his response to defend an inductivist approach to the underdetermination problem. Hence, it might be argued that if H has previously been predictively successful, and G is ad-hoc in the sense of being introduced merely to accommodate the data without entailing any new predictions, then, given the past success of the overall method of believing empirically successful theories over ad-hoc ones, we have inductive grounds for thinking H and not G is likely to be true".

Theory "H" is Naturalism, and theory "G" is any of Solipsism, Last-Thursdayism, "Brain in a Vat", Young-Earth Creationism, or any other religion/superstition-based explanation for reality. Each of these theory "G"s offer no new predictions (and never have predicted any past events either), seem ad-hoc, and are clearly attempts to harrass and nip at the heels of Naturalism, which is the only theory that has anything like a successful history of explanation, description, and prediction. Given Popper's (and Ladyman's) explanation, we have every reason to believe "H" (Naturalism) and none of the competing explanations.

Short hiatus

I am working on a 100 slide powerpoint presentation called Proofs (and Rebuttals) for the Existence of God. In it I will cover these arguments:

• Aristotle's Unmoved Mover
• Thomas Aquinas's Five Proofs
• Anselm of Canterbury - Ontological Proof
• Fine Tuning
• Kalam Cosmological Proof

I will also talk some about the history of Christian apologetics, beginning with Anselm and other Scholastic Theological philosophers. Maybe there will be a way I can insert a PowerPoint slide show into the blog. Need to do a little research on that. So, until I am finished with that project, I won't be adding new content here.

... Actually, here is the finished PowerPoint slide show, made available by Slideshare (www.slideshare.com) ...

And here are two presentations I made on that Powerpoint slideshow. Combined, they last about 3 hours: "Proof of God Part 1" and "Proof of God Part 2"

You Can't Prove Atheism and Naturalism are Correct!

In shifting from defense to offense, theists sometimes attempt to turn the tables by attacking with, "you can't prove atheism is true!", or "you can't prove naturalism is true!", or "atheism and skepticism require just as much faith as Christianity!" The unstated premise in such attacks is that, without an iron-clad proof, atheism/naturalism/skepticism are no more reliable a guide to understanding the world than religion - that all of them ultimately rely on belief and faith. They say that one is faith in god, and the other is faith in science or empiricism, faith in the continuity and predictability of nature, or faith in man. This equating of religious faith and empirical faith is "false balance" or "false equivalence". It so distorts and dilutes the word, "faith", as to render it practically meaningless. If "faith" means having any expectations at all about how the future will turn out based on inference (such as "faith" that the sun will rise, or "faith" that a red hot burner will hurt if I touch it, or that an apple will fall when dropped), then the meaning of that word has been so altered as to be completely useless. I don't think any objective and fair-minded person should call the trust we put in those sorts of expected outcomes to be "faith". Rather a better word for the second type is "trust". It is trust in natural processes which are the essence of naturalism. It is a set of true, justified, expectations that allows all living creatures to interact with the world and to move safely through it.

At first, this may simply appear to be an attempt by religious believers to bring science down to the their level – i.e., having no firm and provable basis for belief. But it is more than that. It is the first step in a process of the destruction of the scientific/rational worldview. That first step to to equate their foundations. The next shoe to drop would be to show that scientific faith is weak and lost without reliance on god; that it is an inferior form of faith, that science "presupposes" god, or that Christianity somehow is responsible for the Scientific Revolution. Next would be to persuade the scientific minded to abandon their principles and join the “saved” and those who subscribe to the “true” faith.

Belief based on empiricism, logic, theory, evidence, testing, and outside review is not at all like a faith whose first principles are inscrutable deities, personal revelations, mystical, myth-filled text, cultural traditions, strong personal emotions, societal pressure to conform, and priestly admonitions. The objects of rational belief – the real world entities to which those beliefs refer - do not reveal themselves only to the privileged few. They are not matters of taste, preference, bias, opinion, tradition, culture, and custom. The truth of these beliefs is easily demonstrated and reproducible by anyone who cares to test them. They are not culturally dependent, and not learned at the foot of priests. If specialized education is required to comprehend some of the more arcane topics, anyone with the aptitude, intelligence, resources, and interest can obtain the training and experience of that knowledge, firsthand. As Phil Plait wrote:

“Trust is when you accept what well-sourced evidence tells you. Faith is believing in something despite evidence to the contrary.”

To put it another way, where there is good evidence, there is no need for faith. And where faith is needed, it is principally due to a lack of evidence. It is simply a devious and dishonest language game when apologists use very broad term, "faith", to describe both kinds of activities. Skeptics approach religious claims, and other faith-based beliefs, very carefully to avoid being taken in by every new idea that is proposed. Skepticism, itself, is not a faith or a belief system. It does not represent an active desire to disbelieve what others believe. It is a very reasonable approach to evaluating truth claims. Skepticism is the hallmark of an adult who thinks for himself. If after approaching a truth claim with skepticism, it survives, then the skeptic has good reasons to accept it. A skeptical approach filters bunk from reality. Skeptics only accept truth claims that pass through the filter. Without that filter, practically any claim would have to be accepted. We see non-skeptical gullibility in popular culture, and we see it in religion.

But what about the proof they request? Is a request for proof of atheism and naturalism reasonable? Can we really prove anything in the real world to a sufficiently high degree as to be convincing to a theist? The atheist, taken off guard, may begin to feel a little queasy at the idea that his antagonist actually may have a good point. But this attack is a smokescreen and is without merit. Of course you can't prove either way of viewing reality - as surely as we can't prove with complete, 100% certainty anything in the world (although there are some things we can be certain of...). Solid proofs and deductive reasoning are applicable primarily in highly controlled scenarios such as in deriving and proving mathematical theorems, formal and symbolic logic, and in applied areas of technology such as software and circuit design - all areas where the conclusion is completely contained in the premises, and the premises are totally clear, unambiguous, and universally agreed to. In other words, rock-solid deductive proofs only can be obtained in extremely constrained and "clean" scenarios. Math and logic, though they lend themselves to the deductive proof, don't reveal truths about the actual world. Instead, they reveal the consequences of their axioms and premises. They start with an axiomatic structure and set of rules, and from those building blocks, theorems can be derived. They don't tell us which of the axioms are actually true. For that you need to go into the real world and look around.

So, what can we be certain of? We cannot be certain of the uniformity of nature, of the existence of other minds, of the external world, the reality of the past - that doesn't leave much does it? But we can be certain of the outcomes of our own logical systems. Logical propositions, do have certain truth value (binary true/false), and we can be certain of their truth - certain in the real sense of the word. The certainty I am talking about depends on the difference between Hume's "statements of fact" or Kants "synthetic" statements (about phenomena in the world) and Hume's "relations of ideas" or Kant's "analytic" statements, which deal with entities that exist in the abstract, non-physical realm (the world if ideas, propositions, and concepts). Relations of ideas do have true/false values. Certainty doesn't play into that kind of knowledge. Analytic statements say nothing of the outside world, but only express the consequences of axioms which we have the ability to define. The truth of their conclusions can be known with certainty - for example, if we define "bachelors are unmarried men", and posit a hypothetical man "John, who is unmarried", then we know with certainty that our hypothetical "John" is a bachelor. However, if we actually met a flesh-and-blood man, John, on the street who claimed to be unmarried, we could only say he is probably a bachelor, because he might be misrepresenting himself, or forgot he was married, or developed rapid onset amnesia, is is a spy, or is cheating on his wife, or something messy like that. The same with the rules of arithmetic. We know, by definition, that 2 + 2 = 4 is true, not just "probably true". But if someone gives us 2 apples and 2 oranges, and we want to determine how much fruit we have, we can't be sure - one of them might be made of wax, or a hologram, or some kind of magic trick, or the giver may have taken a piece back before we get a chance to count them. Usually we will have 4 pieces of fruit, but not always. The real world is messy, the analytic world is not. So for "relations of ideas" we can have certainty, but not for "statements of fact" and one statement of fact is "God told me thus and such" or "I know Jesus died for my sins". You can't know that with any type of certainty, even if you feel certain about it. These are assertions of existence (about god) or some recollection (god talked to me), and we can be, and often are, mistaken about those sorts of things.

Further, science doesn't attempt to "prove" its theories. This has been well understood ever since Karl Popper wrote The Logic of Scientific Discovery in which he introduced the concept of "falsifiability" instead of relying on "verifiability". Nor does science claim that it can "prove" that its Scientific Method is the most reliable way to discover new information - it uses the methods that seem to work best. The Scientific Method and Methodological Naturalism, allow us to create tests about hypotheses that can be disproved, but never really proved with 100% certainty. We have not "proved" that all apples will fall to the ground when dropped, but every experiment done so far to test the hypothesis that gravity acts on apples has failed to be disproved. The results are so consistent that no one is interested in making additional observations of this phenomenon.

As David Hume first clarified 250 years ago, we cannot have "absolute certainty" in some basic things that we must take for granted. Among these are the existence of the external world, of the past and our memories, of other minds, that the sun will rise tomorrow, etc. But we have "reliable knowledge" that these things exist, enough confidence to allow us to get out of bed and proceed with the day. According to Hume, even though our belief in the reality of an external world is irrational, although it is utterly unjustifiable, that belief is natural and unavoidable. It is just something that humans do. We are in the habit of supposing that our ideas correspond to external entities, even though we can have no real evidence for it. Now, Hume thought that there really was an external world, but just felt compelled to note the disquieting fact that you can't really prove it. He recommended that we fall back on a "mitigated skepticism" that readily concedes the limitations of human knowledge, but still continue to pursue our lives, our investigations, and in pushing the frontiers of knowledge forward. We should not be immobilized by the fact that much of life is uncertain, but should press on.

Life is not like a mathematical formula. Deductive proofs are not really of much practical use in daily living, and certainly when trying to understand the nature of reality. They never convince anyone who didn't already believe. If we want to understand our universe, it is going to involve going out and looking at it. When, during that investigation, certain "facts" are discovered, we can go back to the mathematical and logical systems that were invented before the discovery, and find one or more of them that logically map onto the new aspects of the universe that were discovered, and at that point we can follow the logic to the conclusions to try to predict what the consequences of these new facts will be. As Sherlock Holmes put it so well:

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

That describes the apologist approach to their various proofs exactly. Apologists don't do empirical investigation. They engage in this armchair philosophizing in trying to explain "life, the universe, and everything". They think about all of the possible ways the world could be, and conclude that those ways must somehow include the idea of god. There is no step in their thinking process in which they actually go out and look at how the universe actually is, and experiment with their ideas. You don't need to do that in their way of thinking, because they are just interested in finding ways to argue to the conclusion that they have already reached, which is that god must be the centrual hub of the universe. This kind of reasoning has never has never taught us anything true and interesting about the actual world. The early religious cosmologists saw the universe as being made of the flat, circular surface of the earth (the land circumscribed by the horizon), a heavenly firmament (a solid celestial sphere with stars rigidly embedded in it) above, a world of water above the stars and firmament, and another world of water below the surface of the earth. In the complete absence of data, they reasoned their way to this based on the bible:

"And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven."(Genesis 1:6-8)

and

"In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened." (Genesis 7:11)

Here, I offer some proofs...
Getting back to the much desired deductive proof of atheism - there is a form of logical reasoning called “denying the consequent” (AKA - “modus tollens”), which is valid form of reasoning in Propositional Logic. It can be used to "prove" god doesn't exist. But of course, this will convince no one who is already committed to Christianity. The abstract form of the argument is:

• If P, then Q.
• Q is false.
• Therefore P is false.

where "P" is the premise, and "Q" is the conclusion. Used in a simple example:

• If it is raining, the sidewalks will be wet.
• The sidewalks are not wet.
• Therefore it is not raining.

That is an absolutely sound and valid set of propositions. Translated into a concrete set of propositions concerning god:

• If GOD EXISTS, then GOD'S PROMISES will be kept.
• GOD'S PROMISES were NOT kept.
• Therefore GOD EXISTS is false.

So, what is it that constitutes GOD'S PROMISES? How about the promise that Jesus would return within one generation? Specifically:

• Matthew 24:34 - Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.
• Luke 21:32 - Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all has taken place.
• Mark 13:30 - Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.

These passages all look pretty similar, but that is just because Mark wrote it first, and then Matthew and Luke plagiarized him. But that is for a different chapter... In any case, we have three prominent new testament writers communicating a promise from god - that Jesus would return before "this generation" passes away. If you read the preceding verses, you can see that "these things" refer to his second coming. The chapter starts with his disciples asking, "what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?". He answers them with references to "the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory", "heavenly bodies will be shaken", "the stars will fall from the sky", and "he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds".

Obviously Jesus didn't come in that or any other generation. So this appears to be a very serious set of broken promises. This bring us to the conclusion: GOD DOES NOT EXIST. Apologists have accomplished some of their most impressive verbal gymnastics explaining this serious problem away. I won't get into every one of their rebuttals, but among them are:

• the kingdom of god DID come in "this generation", when Jesus died, his spiritual kingdom began.
• "this generation" refers to some future generation. The story is not about the present but about some set of future events.
• "these things" that were going to take place refer to the fall of Jerusalem to Rome in 70AD, not the return of Jesus.
• Jesus did return spiritually before that generation passed away, in judgment on the nation of Israel, when Titus besieged and destroyed Jerusalem in 70AD.
• etc.

Here is yet another proof that god does not exist:

• If GOD EXISTS, then he would not allow gratuitous evil to exist.
• Gratuitous evil does exist.
• Therefore GOD EXISTS is false.

What is "gratuitous evil"? It is evil that has no possible redeeming value, like a fawn being slowly burnt to death in a forest fire (not caused by man), where no one ever learns of the fawn's suffering and agonizing death. Of course Christians have an answer for that - we cannot know god's mind, and there may yet be some underlying good that results from something that (on the surface) seems entirely unnecessary. There are other ways they justify it which I won't go into. But once again, they bend over backwards to show the argument does not work.

So, will these "proofs" convince any Christians that god does not exist yet, that atheism is true? No, I didn't think so. That is because no one really wants to use deduction for this type of problem - there is no deductive proof that would convince a believer. And likewise, there is no deductive proof of God's existence that would convince a confirmed atheist. As the philosopher, Immanuel Kant said, there is a sharp distinction between "analytic judgements" (analogous to Hume's "relations of ideas") and "synthetic judgements" (analogous to Hume's "matters of fact"). He showed that no collection of deductive analytic statements (for example proofs about god's necessary existence) could establish a synthetic conclusion (such as god really and truly exists). Because neither scenario (his existence or his non-existence) causes a logical contradiction, no deductive proof can be brought to bear on it. Each are logically possible, so to prove his existence, we will have to go out and find him, the way we would prove the existence of Bigfoot by going out and catching one. Likewise, if our naturalistic worldview is all an illusion and we are being fooled in a devilishly consistent manner by some devious alien intelligence or malevolent demon (e.g., Descartes' Evil Demon), this would cause no logical contradiction. The truth or falsity of the religious and of the naturalistic worldview do not lend themselves to deductive argument. Instead, I would recommend that one apply the "Criteria Of Adequacy" to decide which world view (religious or naturalistic) is a better fit with our experience. Which has better explanatory power, or explanatory scope; which is more fruitful, consistent, conservative, and modest? Which "fits the data" of our experience better?

Of course no Christian would concede and say, "well, those look like good deductive arguments - I'm convinced!" There are so many opportunities to redefine the details of an argument's premises, interpret events differently, make it seem like it is not a problem, that any offered proof becomes useless. But we already knew that - it is utterly futile to try to use deductive logic to "prove" god doesn't exist. No matter what set of formal propositions you come up with, there will be some way for the motivated theist to find a loophole.

Again, using the argument form of “denying the consequent” (aka “modus tollens”) we can offer a positive deductive proof that naturalism is correct. The argument that we can rely on empirical evidence and naturalistic (rather than supernatural) explanations follows:

• If (P) "using naturalism and induction from sense experience to make inferences about the world" is invalid and unjustifiable, then (Q) "science (which relies on inference and naturalism) has no hope of working".
• However, "Q" is false! Science does work! There are countless examples of the progress that it has introduced, discoveries that it has made, and new technologies it has spawned. There are no counter examples to its success during the centuries it has been practiced.
• Therefore, (P is false) "using naturalism and induction from sense experience to make inferences about the world" IS valid.

Obviously if there was significant evidence in support of the claim that drawing conclusions through the scientific approach was invalid, then opponents would have a case. But such evidence is entirely absent, and there is overwhelming counter-evidence. Nor is there any competing theory as to why science tends to produce correct, useful, consistent, predictive, and informative results. Barring the existence of a competing explanation that accounts for its success (trickery by Satan to test our faith is one such untestable explanation, as is Solipsism), it’s plain, obvious, common sense to accept as fact that inference from the real world is valid, and these real-world experiences are not interspersed with miracles. It would require agonizing logical contortions to explain away the falseness of statement “Q” above (i.e., “science has no hope of working”) using some other argument. The rule of Parsimony would indicate that the obvious explanation, above, is the correct one. Still, this does not convince Theists. Though they may ask for conclusive proof, when it is provided, they reject it.

So, the theist request for the atheist to "prove god doesn't exist" or "prove atheism is true" are just blocking tactics. When such a proof is delivered, the theist rejects it, debates it, and finds ways to redefine the problem so that the proof doesn't satisfy them. I am quite sure that there is no proof that could be provided to the theist that they would accept. To quote Massimo Piggliuci from his Rationally Speaking blog, when discussing a recent lecture by Richard Dawkins, the famous "New Atheist":

"Dawkins still appears to be convinced that religion will be defeated by rationality alone. Were that the case, David Hume would have sufficed."

This is in reference to Hume's Dialogs on Natural Religion, in which he systematically shows how miracles and the resurrection of Jesus almost certainly didn't happen. Logic, reason, and empirical evidence will not be what eventually move Christians away from their faith, if that ever happens. If they were effective, then theism would have died out 250 years ago.

Is God the basis for our ability to know the world?

One Christian argument goes back to the philosopher, David Hume's book, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. In it, he concluded that our reliance on inference and induction about our experiences in the world, and that the existence of the world itself, cannot be logically proved, but are known to us only through custom and habit. In the 250 years since he wrote this, philosophers have tried numerous techniques to give induction a legitimate, firm basis, but that goal has not been achieved. It seems to be the case that there is no way to conclusively prove that we can reliably depend on science and nature to behave the way we have come to expect - that tomorrow the sun may decide not to rise or an apple may not fall to the ground when dropped. A Christian argument is that only by belief in god can we make the firm statement that our inferences about the world, about causality, about the uniformity of nature, are justified. God, in his moral perfection and desire for us to live fully, does not hide reality from us, but reveals it through nature, and in fact is the basis for science!

This hopeful, but desperate (and in my opinion naive), assertion seems to overlook a few unpleasant historic facts. Since the beginning of the modern era science 500 years ago, religious institutions (both the Catholic and Protestant branches) have systematically opposed many important scientific advances. Among these are the facts of biological evolution, cosmology and the extreme age of the universe, and heliocentricsm. They resisted the implication of how geological processes work (case in point - the flood), new discoveries addressing the problems of consciousness and neuroscience, the search for the origin of life, etc. Secondly, apologists regularly allow god to revoke the uniformity of nature and the universality of physical laws by permitting him to break those rules whenever and however he likes. So, on the contrary, their god does NOT care about presenting a uniform face of nature to humans, but arbitrarily violates those laws whenever it is convenient. This shows not a promise to reveal nature to us, but a disdain for consistency regarding laws of nature.

Vincent Torley, an apologist, writes,

"...Even if we assume that objects <in the universe> somehow instantiate rules, there remains the epistemic problem of knowing whether we’ve chosen the right model, or identified the right mathematical equation (i.e. laws of Nature) for characterizing the rules that define a certain kind of object – be it a tiny electron or a star, like the sun. But if we <assume> that God wants to make intelligent beings, and that God wants these intelligent beings to reason their way to God’s existence – then we can infer that the rules which are embodied by objects in the natural world must be tailor-made to fit the minds of intelligent beings that are capable of contemplating their Creator. In other words, the universe is designed to be knowable by us. Hence we don’t need to concern ourselves with the theoretical possibility that the rules which characterize things might be too complicated even in principle for us to grasp. God, then, is the ultimate Guarantor that science can work ... Either God exists or scientific knowledge is impossible."

He is invoking Descartes' attempt to prove that god would never deceive us:

"God ... a being having all those perfections that I cannot comprehend ... and a being subject to no defects whatever ... cannot be a deceiver, for it is manifest by the light of nature that all fraud and deception depend on some defect."

Nevermind that god is a known deceiver (e.g., he told Adam and Eve they would die if they ate the fruit and they didn't, he told Abraham to kill Issac, and then stopped him at the last minute, he planted a "deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets", and in the new testament, "sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie"). The truth is that we don't know why or how it is that humans, and humans alone, have figured out how to probe the secrets of the universe. We do have the curiosity, and we seem to be slowly figuring it out. Religionists are talking nonsense when the confidently credit god with giving us this skill. There is absolutely no basis for making and defending such an unprovable claim. Anyone could make a similar claim about their own personal creator entity, whether it is the Christian god or some super-intelligent alien race, or the result of an experiment by an other-worldly cosmic hacker who threw some rules together and hit the "start" button.

Speculation about such untestable ideas is fruitless. Barring evidence to the contrary, it is most reasonable to provisionally conclude that we humans have developed this talent ourselves despite a steady religious headwind blowing us back, discouraging scientific investigation and any stifling questions whose answers don't come from accepted religious dogma. As a species we happen to be gifted with large brains and dexterous hands and the ability to think about abstract models. It is supremely presumptuous for apologists to now start giving god credit for what man has done with no help from them or their god.

It is true that our expectations of the future matters of fact lies in the relation of cause and effect, say both Hume and common sense.

"By means of that relation alone, we can go beyond the evidence of our memory and senses."

The only way we could obtain knowledge of causality would be to infer it from our past observations of regularities. Our prediction of future events based on the past observations is not a rational activity, but just a matter of habit and an intuitive sense of probability – the odds of the sun not rising are infinitesimal. When we project findings about these relations into the future, we must use an intermediate premise, the uniformity of nature, which is risky, because it can change at any time and be proven false. The chicken thinks that the human will always bring it grain until the day he comes with a hatchet. According to Hume:

"It is impossible, therefore, that any arguments from experience can prove this resemblance of the past to the future; since all these arguments are founded on the supposition of that resemblance. All inferences from experience, therefore, are effects of custom, not of reasoning."

For some reason, there is a trend in modern western thought to obsess with obtaining absolute, complete certainty - in particular it drives Christians to find a god who they can have utter confidence in. It seems to the apologists that unless you can deductively prove your theory (in this case, that the inductive method is reliable), you have failed. Employing the fallacious argument from consequences, Torley and others like him posit a god to save us from the uncomfortable position of not really being sure about our knowledge of the world.

But we should consider this need for a rigorous proof that we are not misperceiving the world - is it really essential to be able to produce such a proof? The problem of induction doesn't have to be seen as such a large obstacle. Pragmatists are not worried by it at all. They see the uniformity question as falling out in one of these ways:

1. Nature really is uniform and regular, or
2. Nature is “somewhat” uniform and regular, or
3. Nature really is not uniform at all, and there is no significant pattern or connection between past and future.

For cases (a) and (b), induction would be a wiser rule to follow than not. Only for case (c) is induction of no help. But in cases (a), (b), and (c) abandoning induction is NEVER helpful. So, the pragmatic approach would be to use the method which produces the most success, which is to act as if induction is warranted.

Yet another approach to "disappear" the problem of induction is to approach it through "Coherentism". This model of knowledge asserts that scientific statements can be said to be valid if they fit cleanly into an existing coherent system of other known facts or beliefs. If they form part of a coherent whole (such as the existing body of science), they can be said to be correct. So, whether or not induction is warranted is irrelevant - it is the integrity and coherence of our theories that matter. In this view, there is no requirement that scientific statements always be supported by more fundamental statements (a la infinite regress), or that we make assumptions about the uniformity of nature. Instead our theories and worldviews can be said to be provisionally “true” if they successfully serve their role in a network of mutually supporting scientific disciplines. Similarly, the fundamental statements that support more complex concepts in several disciplines are buttressed by their repeated successful application.

Wittgenstein advises us to stop trying to talk about things that we will never be able to decide. Some things must simply be observed in awe and admiration. The metaphysics of reality falls into that category. In his view, philosophy had nothing to say about it. He demonstrated that when people try to gain certainty or to convey it to others by making controversial, confusing, or debatable propositions they are engaging in confused thinking and semantic nonsense that hinders understanding instead of helping it. Through his work, he attempted to clear the table of philosophical double-talk (such as the nature of causality and reality) by dismissing it and the majority of philosophical questions as simple misuse of language. He saw a human tendency to become trapped in the language we use to describe our ideas to such a degree that the ideas become more important than the reality that they may or may not actually refer to. Our conceptual confusions involving our use of language are the cause of this, and most other problems in philosophy. To Wittgenstein, the search for certainty of our perceptions is a waste of time.

“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.”

In more recent times, probabilistic approaches have been brought to bear on the problem of induction - specifically Bayes Theorem, which bring in the concept of "prior probability". Of course it is "possible" that the laws of nature are not what we think they are, but is it "probable"? This is a key distinction which some Christians tend to overlook both in this context, and in Pascal's Wager (where they worry about the possibility of going to hell, versus the probability of it not happening). If these laws were going to change at some time, and that time has not occurred in the last several billion years, there is not a shred of evidence that indicates that it is going to occur in the next few seconds, years, or centuries. From a purely probabilistic framework, the odds of everything being turned topsy-turvy in the near future are very, very, very slim when measured against all of the opportunities for change that came and went in the past. For this reason it would be rational to assume the present trend is likely to continue, and highly irrational to assume it will not. The chances of something like this which never occurred in the past, and shows no sign of occurring in the future, are infinitesimally small - below any threshold of concern. Although we can't prove that the continuity of past/present/future will persist, a betting man could reliably count on it.

There appears to be no deductive proof of uniformity of nature or for the inferential process which requires it, and as has been said again and again, you can't use induction to prove itself. But for all the reasons given in the 250 years since Hume, the existence of a uniform and predictable universe is very likely to be the case - so likely that any other possibility is vanishingly small. Whether we choose to defend this assertion with foundational axioms, coherent and mutually supportive lines of evidence, acceptance of an infinite series of increasingly more subtle explanations, relaxing of the requirement for a firm deductive proof, probabilistic methods (such as Bayes Theorem), relying on the "Criteria Of Adequacy", or inference to the best explanation, rejecting the basic principle of uniformity and the inductive method which assumes it requires a far greater effort than accepting it. An obsessive need for utter certainty drives Christians like Torley (and his fans) to invent a god who tells us that everything is OK, that we are OK, that we can have absolute certainty.

In any case, the scientists who are moving the intellectual football down the field are probably not concerned too much with any conclusions philosophers and theologians may or may not reach regarding their work. While we are debating, they are at work unraveling the secrets of the universe for us. Hey - Thanks Science!

Occam's Razor

Applying the "Law of Parsimony" (aka - Occam's Razor) to Christianity highlights its fundamental lack of credibility. For each of the thorny challenges to Christianity (the problem of evil, the failure to answer prayers, god's invisibility and elusiveness, the lack of solid and uncontroversial evidence, god's ability to defy laws of physics, the existence of an afterlife, angels and demons) Christian apologists have handy, glib, overly ornate, ad hoc explanations:

• God doesn't let us see him because he is testing our faith
• If god gave us incontrovertable evidence it would interfere with our free will
• He allows evil in the world for a whole variety of stunningly incompatible and far-fetched reasons
• The fossil record gives the appearance of an ancient past to test our faith, or even that fossils were planted by the devil
• Atheists don't accept miracles because they have closed their mind and heart to god.
• God sometimes does and sometimes does not answer prayers, depending on his mysterious mood, etc.
• The bible is inerrant - you're just mis-reading it!
• Why would someone (i.e., Christian martyrs) die for a lie?

Each of the above explanations favors an active god to account for experiences that could better be explained by the complete absence of a god. The god explanation is strained and reeks of artifice. That is, it feels ad hoc, designed merely to cover the facts but provides no additional predictive or descriptive power over and above the secular explanation. It is designed to provide a cover story for what has already happened in our universe (e.g., the six days of creation, the flood, etc), but is utterly incapable of making novel predictions about future events, or even mundane predictions. It is completely untestable, and designed to be immune from refutation. Philosophers would say that the secular theory and the religious theory are "underdetermined" by the facts (i.e., the observations underdetermine several competing theories), in that each accounts for the facts so far. Occam's Razor is a tool that can be used to help decide between competing, seemingly equivalent theories.

It was named after William of Ockham, who is thought to have originated the most well-known version of it 700 years ago. The word, "razor" is part of the name because this principle is used to "shave away" needless embellishments and unnecessary assumptions from from hypotheses and explanations. A formal phrasing of it is,

Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity

which means we would be wise to seek out the most economical explanation that will fully account for the facts. We see this restated and reinvented from time to time, as with the "KISS" principle ("Keep it simple, stupid"), and a phrase commonly used in medicine where there can be a tendency to over-diagnose, “When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras”. It is also called the "Law of Economy" or the "Law of Parsimony". They all mean basically the same thing - choose the explanation which requires the smallest number of "inventions". For the teacher hearing a student's story about why they didn't turn in an assignment, the explanation which involves the student being lazy requires a smaller leap of faith than that the dog ate the homework.

This guideline does not PREVENT us from denying the existence of these extra entities (i.e., the destructive dog, the rampaging zebra). Dogs are occasionally the guilty party, and probably there has been the rare case of the zebra on-the-loose. But experience shows that it is usually the simpler explanation - the student procrastinated, the hoofbeats were those of a horse. However, it allows us to refrain from including superfluous ornamentation of the explanation in the absence of a compelling reason. In part, this is because human beings can never be sure they know what is and what is not “beyond necessity”; the necessities are not always clear to us.

The application of the principle can help shifts the burden of proof in a discussion to the party making the exaggerated claims. The Razor is a "best practice" for approaching problems. It states that one should utilize simpler theories that can fit the evidence and explain the process or phenomenon under investigation. The simplest available theory need not be most accurate. The exact meaning of "simplest" may be debatable, and people will argue of what "fitting the evidence" really means. Also, since the only reason to abandon the guideline is be confronted with a "compelling reason", the apologist will therefore construct such reasons, typically using one of the standard arguments such as the Cosmological Principle, the Fine Tuned Universe, the Ontological Argument, or the Design Implies a Designer argument. These, and others, are discussed in other sections of this blog.

Applied to Christian apologetics, we are presented with two explanations. One posits god's involvement vs. one that does not. The second is less complex and should be preferred in the absence of a reason not to. It does not require the invention of a super-being who is certainly is far more complex than the universe he created and continues to control (although I have heard Christians perversely argue that, on the contrary, god is the simplest of beings!). So, barring any compelling evidence to the contrary, the non-supernatural reason should be preferred. By the standard of Occam's Razor, the explanation that does NOT involve a god, afterlife, heaven, hell, virgin births, parting seas, pillars of salt, burning bushes, talking snakes and donkeys, exorcisms, stopping the sun, walking on water, resurrections, salvation and assorted miracles is, by far, a superior explanation for what we see here in our lives. As additional confirmation, it doesn't hurt that the naturalistic explanation has a perfect 500 year long batting average (I am starting with the Renaissance, here, though it could be argued that it began with the Greek philosophers). Never has a natural explanation fallen to a supernatural one, though the opposite frequently occurs.

If we have no good evidence for likely candidates for a supernatural event, then we clearly have no reason to postulate supernatural causation. Refusing to accept the existence of supernatural causes, however, is not equivalent to rejecting their existence. Accepting the natural explanation requires us to deny the existence of supernatural causes altogether. Occam's Razor provides us with grounds for denying the existence of supernatural causation rather than remaining agnostic about it. If we have no convincing evidence in support of the supernatural explanation for our experiences, the simplest explanation is that there are no supernatural causes influencing the natural world. Second-hand testimony, apocryphal stories, ancient documents, testimony based on personal experience, revelation, and other weak evidence for possible supernatural events can always be explained more simply than the actual occurrence of such events. It is far more likely that the testimony or evidence can be more cleanly explained in terms deception, fraud, exaggeration, imagination, poetic license, hallucination, memory errors, misunderstanding, wishful thinking, propagandizing, perceptual errors, mistranslation, or misinterpretation.

Issac Newton, although a very devout Christian, had no tolerance for what he called “occult causes” both because he saw them not only as unnecessary, but positively unhelpful. They had no explanatory power, but were simply excuses for explaining away what we didn’t yet understand. In his day, the nature of magnetism, electricity, gravity, optics, cohesion, friction, thermodynamics, fermentation, cell biology, and other natural phenomena were not well understood. Pretty much 80% of what is in a Freshman College physics textbook had not been discovered yet (he did have Galileo to rely on, but not a lot more). He envisioned that from the confusion that then reigned, laws of nature would emerge to resolve those mysteries. He criticized the Aristotelians (as we criticize Christians) for ascribing occult causes to incomprehensible natural phenomena by correctly observing that “such occult qualities put a stop to the improvement of natural philosophy, and therefore of late years have been rejected. To tell us that every species of things is endowed with an occult specific quality by which it acts and produces manifest effects is to tell us nothing”. Even so, he himself subscribed to two seemingly occult entities – the invisible force called “gravity”, and the luminiferous ether through which he believed light traveled.

However, it is important to keep in mind that he lived on the historical edge of the scientific revolution. During his lifetime, there was not a clear distinction between chemistry and alchemy, between the natural and the supernatural, between science and magic. He helped to refine those distinctions in many ways, not the least of which was an often reprinted work of just a few pages called “Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy”. It was a simple guide to help thoughtful observers make sense of their experiences in the natural world.

He enumerated four rules for understanding real world “natural philosophy” (i.e., science) problems. I won't present all of them, but one in particular applies in this context:

We are to admit no more causes of natural things such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. To this purpose the philosophers say, that Nature does nothing in vain, and more is in vain, when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.”

Newton was not alone in originating his own version of the Razor. Other philosophers such as Aristotle, Scotus, Maimonides, and Ptolemy restated this principle. According to Ptolemy, "We consider it a good principle to explain the phenomena by the simplest hypothesis possible." Phrases such as "It is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer" and "A plurality is not to be posited without necessity" were commonplace in the middle ages.

Even religious scholars such as Thomas Aquinas followed this rule. He said, "it is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many".

Anselm's Ontological Argument

Around 1100 AD, the theologian/philosopher, Anselm, proposed the following set of propositions which seem to flow logically and prove the existence of god. This was among the first (of many) "ontological arguments" for the existence of god. Ontological, in this context, means the use of logic to prove that god is metaphysically necessary. In other words, using pure logic to show that there is no alternative to god's existence:

1. Our understanding of God is that he is a being, a being greater than any other being that can be imagined or conceived.
2. The idea of God exists in the mind.
3. A being which exists both in the mind and which exists in reality is greater than a being that exists only in the mind.
4. If God only exists in the mind, then we can conceive of a greater being, a being which also exists in reality.
5. We cannot be imagining something that is greater than God.
6. Therefore, God exists.

QED, right? Not so fast. This is a perfect example of Christians' slippery and dangerous use of logic to prove that their fiction is reality. This was the first of many attempts to show god to be "logically necessary". It was followed by other ontological proofs by Descartes, Kant, Leibnitz, Godel, Plantinga and many others, which I won't repeat here. They are extremely tedious and academic. However, they can easily be found here on the web if you are interested.

Immediately after Anselm presented his case, a contemporary named Guanilo showed the argument to be nonsense, or to result in absurd consequences if the same argument were to be applied to the "greatest island" or the "greatest pencil". There is an infinity of "greatest" entities that can be shown to "exist" using the above logical "recipe". This fact does not necessarily disprove Anselm, but shows that its application results in assertions that we cannot reasonably accept. For example, Guanilo's reply to Anselm was along these lines:

1. The "Lost Island" is an island greater than any other island that can be conceived, full of riches and beauty and joy.
2. It is greater to exist in reality than merely as an idea.
3. If the Lost Island does not exist, one can conceive of an even greater island - that is, an island that does exist.
4. Therefore, the "Lost Island" exists in reality.

When reduced to this trivial form, or even sillier ones such as a "greatest pencil" or "greatest bar of soap" you can easily see how what appears to be a valid and sound argument can lead you to ridiculous conclusions. Hume, Aquinas, Kant, and others have picked it to shreds, pointing out problems with several of the assumptions that go into the premises. Kant said (and most philosophers since then agree, though it continues to be contested by apologists),

‘Being’ is obviously not a real predicate; that is, it is not a concept of something which could be added to the concept of a thing.…. By whatever and however many predicates we may think a thing…we do not make the least addition to the thing when we further declare that the thing is.

In other words, existence is not a quality that something has, like size or shape or color. Existence does not add to the essence of a being, but merely indicates its occurrence in reality. Though syntactically, a statement about existence is structurally identical to to a statement attributing qualities to a thing, it is a very different type of statement. The two statements, "the tree exists" and "the tree is tall" have a similar sentence structure, but they are saying two very different types of things about the tree. Kant concluded that it is conceivable for a completely perfect being to not exist in reality - only conceptually, like a perfect triangle or Guanilo's perfect island.

David Hume argued that nothing can be proven to exist using only a priori (purely logical) reasoning. You could only prove this sort of existence if its opposite (non-existence) generated a contradiction with one or more of the premises. With the god argument from Anselm, the non-existence of a perfect being is just as viable as its existence, so the argument fails to accomplish its goal. Simply imagining a perfect being doesn't cause that being to exist. This is starting to sound like Anselm was into the same wishful thinking as followers of "The Secret" and the "Law of Attraction", who believe that if you imagine things hard enough, they become true!

Despite the deficiencies and logical shortcomings of this type of argument, early ontological arguments like Anselm's serve as a model for today's crop of apologists (such as Plantinga and Craig), who continue to defend the logical proofs for god's existence which they have derived from it and augmented with their own additions.

False Balance / False equivalence

It is a case of "false balance" (assigning equal weight to two sides of an unbalanced argument) to argue that Christianity and Naturalism are just separate world views, each one making extraordinary claims - that they each have their share of pros and cons, that they are equivalent, but opposing views or "belief systems". Naturalism, although admittedly a worldview, is specifically not a belief system. Or if it is a belief system, it is one that attempts as much as possible to avoid overlaying human beliefs on reality. To the largest degree possible, it suspends and puts aside preconceived, agenda-driven explanations, and attempts to let reality speak for itself. It does not impose human expectations on nature, but lets nature teach us. Obviously any human interpretation of reality will involve some biological and psychological filtering, but naturalism is the least intrusive one imaginable.

Naturalism removes Animist preconceptions require that all natural events have a purposeful agent behind them. It removes supernatural preconceptions that spirits, both benign and malevolent, manipulate nature. It removes Aristotelian preconceptions that events unfold according to their purpose - fire "wants" to go up, and stones "want" to go down, because that is where they belong, they seek their "natural places". It removes religious preconceptions that god is behind all natural events. It removes teleological expectations that nature has an conscious, agency-driven agenda and purpose which it is trying to achieve. It removes New-Age preconceptions that everything unfolds and develops for a reason (i.e., a mystical, hidden reason). One could argue that naturalism does have one fundamental preconception - which is that it is preferable to avoid imposing human preconceptions on our observations. That is a charge that I can live with. It's like admitting you have just one flaw - and that flaw is excessive modesty :).

Naturalism does not approach nature randomly, naively, and blindly, though. Obviously, there are filters that underlie this interpretation of the universe. Without some sort of expectations and preconceptions and categories, all experience would be a blinding mix of colors, sound, and movements. It would be as William James described the experience of the infant, "as one great blooming, buzzing confusion". We investigate and categorize according to our interests, not randomly or purely objectively. Because of our human self-interest, we find some things more worthy of inspection than others, some questions more interesting than others. Naturalism generally assumes the rules of logic are valid tools for learning and understanding, that the world is real and is full of objects and forces, both with properties that can be described and understood, that these objects that interact with each other, of processes that unfold in a manner that can be understood, that the world is knowable and comprehensible, that the universe is orderly, having regularity, pattern, and structure known as "laws of nature", that all phenomena have natural causes (some known, and some yet unknown), unexplained things can be used to explain other phenomenon (e.g. gravity is thus far unexplained but it is used to explain the movement of planets and the bending of light), etc. It does not presume to catelog all of the entities, properties, and phenomena which exist in the universe, but that when we encounter them, they can be understood as natural entities, properties, and phenomena.

People who defend the religious worldview say that their view and Naturalism are just different ways of viewing the world and different ways of interpreting same evidence. They assert that proponents of both worldviews have their respective biases and filters which restrict the set of possible conclusions they will reach upon consideration of the evidence. This is emblematic of just how weak a position that the religious worldview is. They may admit that their worldview is not a science, but then they say the same thing about Naturalism - that both are just belief systems - trying to drag Naturalism down to the level of Faith by incorrectly equating them. These arguments are not valid. Naturalism is backed by actual science that makes predictions and could, or can, be falsified. It has multiple independent lines of evidence supporting it, while the religious worldview isn't a scientific theory - it can't be tested at all. There is no equivalence whatsoever. Its defenders are free to make whatever claims they want and are absolved from the requirement to prove them.

However, even with these assumptions, Naturalism is a respectful, humble, and wise way to approach the unknowns of the universe. It avoids imposing ill-informed human biases on nature, and allows nature to reveal its secrets to us. It is an approach that systematically avoids extraordinary explanations. It is, by definition, limited to "ordinary" (or natural) explanations, and it is open to the real possibility that the domain of natural explanations can and will expand as we increase our understanding. In the last 500 years, it has been shown to be the "correct" world view time and again. Going back 2500 years to the ancient Greeks, the explanations of the world that have held up over time are those that were based on an empirical and naturalistic world view (with some notable exceptions, such as "atomism", which was deduced mostly apriori but turned out to be roughly correct). The most rational explanation for the success of science is that the Naturalistic world view, which is intimately tied up with science, is correct. If one has even a single pragmatic bone in their bodies, the success of naturalism in explaining the world we live in (and the failure of all other approaches) speaks volumes!

Everyone is a naturalist at the most basic level. For everyday events, like hearing a noise and looking for its source, or watching out for obstacles to walk around, to looking for food and shelter, to interacting effectively in social situations - we all use the evidence provided by habit, nature, and our senses to try to determine how best to react. Animals do this without thinking - they have no "belief system" in place that allows them to navigate the world, and humans don't need one either. Unique among the animals, humans are driven to figure out how the world works. One thing that sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom (with the possible exception of ants, beavers, and a few other creatures) is that we are able to exploit the natural order of the world, leverage it, make tools to manipulate it, and control it. And we do this by understanding the way it works, and then applying that knowledge. Supernatural explanations don't help us accomplish this at all. Even the most devout Christians use this naturalistic approach in all other areas of their lives. Christians make fine mathematicians, engineers, accountants, and even scientists (though the overlap of Christianity and Scientists is smaller than average). It is ONLY in the religious sphere that they add on the superfluous and needless layer of religious belief. It can be completely stripped away with no diminution in our ability to survive, prosper, and be happy in the world.

Religious apologists frequently try to shift the burden of proof to Naturalists, off their own shoulders. OK, we can take that challenge. For the last several centuries, since the Renaissance, and arguably since ancient Greece, Naturalism has made claims for how the world works, and those have been validated and shown to be correct each and every time. Anything new that we have learned about about the world, about the universe, has come through Naturalistic discovery, not religious. Religion is stagnant and unable to discover new information. It has systematically inhibited and sabotaged intellectual growth, and seen forward thinkers as heretics. As an approach to thinking about the real world, as a source of knowledge, as an epistemology, Naturalism continues to chip away at religious (including Christian) explanations of "how things work". Prior to the intellectual advances spearheaded by Naturalism, Science, Empiricism, and Rationality, conventional wisdom informed by religion was that Earth was the center of the Universe, disease was caused by demon possession or "bad air", stars were fixed in the sky in a "firmament" hanging over the flat surface of the Earth, storms and earthquakes were the acts of an angry god or gods, wars were won or lost based on a a deity's whim, comets were signs from heaven, the earth was 6000 years old, that we all descended from Adam and Eve, that slavery, rape, and torture of outsiders were acceptable, that snakes could talk, and that followers of other religions and neighboring tribes were practically sub-human and needed to be either exterminated or, at least, conquered.

Many philosophers and scientists have concluded that the best explanation for our ability to develop successful scientific explanations for such a wide range of phenomena in terms of natural causes is that there are no genuine instances of supernatural causation. As Keith Augustine wrote in "In Defense of Naturalism"

Barbara Forrest, for example, describes Naturalism as "a generalization of the cumulative results of scientific inquiry". In other words, the best explanation for the success of science is that Naturalism is true. Given the proliferation of successful scientific explanations for phenomena, Forrest concludes that there is "an asymptotic decrease in the existential possibility of the supernatural to the point at which it is wholly negligible". If Naturalism were false, there would be some phenomena that could not be explained solely in terms of natural causes. However, because science can explain all of the "uncontroversial phenomena" we have encountered (i.e., known to have actually occurred) in terms of natural causes, there probably are no phenomena which cannot be explained in terms of natural causes. Therefore, Naturalism is probably true.

However, because this is an inductive conclusion, we can never be 100% sure, but as sure as we can be of anything in our experience. The possibility of it being wrong asymptotically approaches zero.

Individual theories may be disproved, but the overall body of science is fundamentally “right”. Its theories are able to explain what we currently see, to anticipate events that will occur in the future, and to predict discoveries about what occurred in the past (as in geology, astronomy, and paleontology). Its epistemological basis is nature itself, rather than mythology, tradition, personal testimony, or revelation. Apologists insultingly disparage the naturalistic worldview as "man centered" while theirs is "god centered". On the contrary, naturalism is not man-centered but focuses on all of nature, which includes man. It is universe-centered. Ironically, the Christian worldview, which claims to be god-centered, is really the man-centered worldview, since god and the bible which are the source of its epistemology, are both man-made inventions.

The increase in knowledge that results from the application of the naturalistic worldview passes through the rigorous filter of the scientific method. It is coherent (it does not contradict itself), self-correcting, consistent, reliable, open and responsive to criticism, and it makes continual progress and theoretical refinement. Further, there is no compelling reason to disbelieve it. The religious alternative is a concoction of ad hoc, dogma-driven, just-so stories that attempts to insert god as the central figure of the universe. Religious explanations contribute no new empirical success to any field they attempt to address. The explanations provided by religions are specifically suited to provide cover for what has already happened in the universe, but are utterly unable to make any worthwhile predictions or theoretical explanation for future events, and are completely incapable of being tested. They also fail in their complete inability to retrodict past events in the geological or biological history of the earth, and in any past cosmological events. They fail because they are terrible models of the universe, and so have none of the predictive power of a useful theory.

No credible competing acceptable explanation, including the religious explanation, has been proposed. And the religious explanation is missing a key ingredient required of all claims about the real world - it is not supported by evidence. This doesn’t constitute irrefutable deductive proof (which is probably not possible for any explanation of reality), instead utilizing “inference to the best explanation”, meaning that among the only set of available explanations Naturalism is by far the strongest both because of its explanatory power, and because all the evidence collected over a span of hundreds of years supports it.

Religion, on the other hand, has done nothing to advance intellectual progress in explaining the source of natural phenomena. They do no research outside of clarifying of old texts, commenting on each others writing, or trying to find fault with non-religious thinking. On the contrary, it has a history of suppressing scientific discovery (Galileo's assertions about atomism and heliocentrism, discoveries in evolutionary biology, new information from geology about the age of the Earth, discoveries from astronomy about the size, age, origin, and extent of the universe, advances in neuroscience that are beginning to uncover the source of consciousness, anthropological and psychological advances in the study of morality, current scientific attempts to unravel the mystery of life and the origin of the universe, and more). Only reluctantly and belatedly does organized religion accept the findings of science that go against entrenched dogma. The primary books they publish for the general public are of two flavors - praise-the-lord books for the already converted, and Apologist books to convert skeptics. So, when they are not celebrating amongst themselves, they are trying to sell something.