h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"I was trying to highlight the point that there's a difference between not believing in something and believing that it doesn't exist (disbelief)." And as I said before, this argument is sophistry. Lack of belief and disbelief are the same thing, just as lack of light and darkness are the same. You're attempting to draw distinctions where none exist.

Fragilis: Call the agnostic a centrist, then, varying in degrees between the two polar opposites. I've interacted here with people who label themselves as agnostics that have definite leanings towards one end or another. Based on the comments by Lucinda, I would say she definitely gravitates towards the atheist end of the spectrum. I've run into some that call themselves agnostics that very definitely gravitate towards the believer end, although their specific belief system is unrelated to anything that can be found in any organized religion. And the rest find themselves located somewhere in the middle.

It all began when I was approached by the Churches Broadcasting Commission, an ecumenical body charged with improving God's image in New Zealand through the media of radio and television. They were in need of a "Communications Officer".

I explained that I was not the right man for the job, since I didn't believe in God. They said it didn't matter, God believed in me, and anyway it was a good idea to have someone working for you who knew what the other side thought. A sort of divine undercover agent. The pay was modest, but included a golden handshake in the form of a post-dated cheque for eternity in Heaven, so I signed up for a year. I soon regretted it. God is a difficult client. Thinks He knows it all. So every idea you came up with met with the same response: "It'll never work." "But, God, how do you know it'll never work, if you haven't tried it?" "Because I'm omniscient, dummy." "Then how come your ratings are in the margin of error?"

That always got Her mad, and you'd get home to find plagues of frogs on the lawn and your family covered in boils. And of course it had to be, "Yes God, no God, three bags full, God." All kow-towing and forelock-tugging. I draw the line at worshipping the client. As I explained, "My job is to make you look good, I don't have to adore you as well." Bad call - locusts in the ensuite and it hailed over the vege garden for a month and ruined the tomatoes.

And then there were the Celestial PR Committee strategy meetings. Everybody was there: God, of course. And the 2IC. (Quite a nice bloke actually. Good sense of humour. Halfway through your cappuccino you'd find it'd been turned into Baileys Irish Cream.) Assorted disciples. Saint Peter on the door. John the Baptist, scaring the living daylights out of everybody by putting his head on your chair just before you sat down. Charlton Heston. God knows what he was doing there. "What's Charlton Heston doing here?" I asked John the Baptist's head. "God knows." Turned out he was there for a book signing.

Who else? Satan. (It was supposed to be Santa, but the angel who sends out the invites is dyslexic.) The Grim Reaper, endlessly doing his knock-knock joke: "Knock knock. Who's there? Death. Death wh... [sound of person dropping dead]. " He stole it from Rowan Atkinson. Not all that funny really, but when the Reaper tells a joke, you laugh. The Holy Ghost was there, too, but you never saw him.

Anyway, you can imagine what these meetings were like. Total chaos. And every positive suggestion rubbished. "The beard has to go," I said. "It's ageing and doesn't look good on your woman days." But, no, the beard had to stay. And the sandals and the nightie. "How about a photo opportunity? Kiss a few babies at Foodtown? Quick miracle at a political party conference - turn them all into nice people. Maybe a guest spot on a garden show." Might as well have saved my breath. God will not make a public appearance. Not company policy. "No man hath seen God." All this bureaucratic stuff.

Satan suggested a press statement, which seemed a good idea to me. God said they'd already put out a press statement and it didn't get a mention in any of the liberal rags. So he'd cursed that lot for eternity.

Though I approved of the sentiment, I could understand why so many of the media had turned it down. Who's going to print a 2000- page press statement with subheads such as Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, four different versions of the same story about the 2IC, a whole list of things you aren't allowed to do (that everyone wants to do) - and, worst, there wasn't a contact person for further information. I mean, it breaks every rule in the PR book.

"Maybe we could ease off on the sex laws," Charlton Heston suggested. "They're terribly unpopular and a bit silly. I mean, eternal damnation just for lusting after a woman in your heart!" John the Baptist vetoed the idea. No surprise there. He's been a misogynist since the Salome incident.

"What we need is a slogan," I suggested at one of the meetings. "Something attention-grabbing - "If you covet your neighbour's ass, you're a bloody idiot."' And what do we get? "Repent, for the end is nigh!" The Reaper liked that.

I gave the job up after a year. My heart wasn't in it. I'm told they had NZ politician Jim Anderton handling the account for a while, but it didn't work out too well. Apparently, Jim made God feel inferior. Never a good idea with the client.

Parts of this yarn are true and parts aren't. You can decide which. But I'll give you a clue - there is a Churches Broadcasting Commission and I was their Communications Officer for a short while. I quite enjoyed the job. It was a challenge and the people were really neat. I've still got the post-dated cheque for eternity in Heaven, but I'm expecting it to bounce.

I was in Kiwiland when Radio Rhema was launched. Good effort that. But I can't try and bring Christianity into the Noughties without feeling slightly foolish (q.v. the Reverend A.R.P. Blair - Private Eye passim). I separate the academic discussion of Ontology from my personal experience of God in himself. It adds perspective and it avoids sounding like a lecturer or someones Dad (not always very successful actually - see Guide entry on "God" and the way I lost perspective BIG STYLE). People who know me (in real space and time) know what I believe and what I have been through. I know what they believe and what they have been through. I WILL tell you about it if you buy me a coffee and give me the impression that you really care about it. Most people don't anymore. Christianity is a bit like archaeology. You tell people about something from the past and they have a grudging respect for it. Tell them that it has real relevance today and they think you, like your small piece of terracotta pot, are totally cracked. I do think that if dogma could be exchanged for argument by many christians they would benefit greatly from things like University and the Internet (irony - Alanis fans, irony). However I also respect absolute unwavering belief because it gets people killed and earns people a great deal of money. I'm not happy about the way the church has become divided or the way it has prostituted itself. But I will say one thing for belief - imagine a world without it.

> "However I also respect absolute unwavering belief because it gets people killed and earns people a great deal of money."

like, uh, cigarrettes? You have a bizzare system for allocating respect...

MyRedDice - dancing to 'The Vatican Rag'

Lack of belief and disbelief aren't the same thing. Neither are light and darkness!

If I claimed that wet and dry were different things, would you claim that's also sophistry? I call it applying the definitions of words...

[bows respectfully]

--Caledonian

I said LACK OF LIGHT and DARKNESS are the same thing. Lack of moisture and dryness are the same thing. Lack of logic and sophistry are the same thing. Please read my comments fully next time before responding.

This particular argument is going in a circle, and as most circular arguments, there is a flawed underlying assumption. That assumption, posited by Caledonian, is that atheists disbelieve in god just to be spiteful, and then gather evidence to support the position. I'm sure there are some of those out there, who chose to disbelieve simply because their manifestation of god failed to meet expectations. For me, and for many others, it occurred just the opposite. I learned the evidence first, and based on the evidence, with no malice aforethought, rejected the flimsy conjecture that there might be a higher being. So when you apply that stereotype to all atheists, you make a grave mistake. Just as with all stereotypes, it will consist mostly of exceptions.

If I could crave you indulgence, may we examine Swinburne's argument. Now I already know that you will reject this out of hand because for the rationalist everything in their world is totally explicable, there are no surprises, nothing is unknowable etc. etc. And someone has probably already put this argument, way back in the stream, it has been refuted and I just missed it. But just in case, here is a rendering by Roy A Jackson...

"A curious criticism (of Ontology) comes from Richard Swinburne who attacks the very notion of requiring a logical argument to prove the existence of God. To require a truth of logic to prove God's existence makes God dependent upon that logic and, therefore, God is no longer an independent being! Swinburne, here, is not denying the existence of God, but stating that God as an omnipotent, necessary being would contradict the dependence upon a logically necessary principle for its existence. "

Jackson goes on to say...

"But it does not require much working out to see that Swinburne is confusing `the existence of God' with `proving the existence of God'. God's existence does not depend on the argument; only the proof does. If I somehow fail to prove that my car exists (for example, some misled individual does me the favour of stealing it) then it does not follow that it's existence is dependent upon that proof. "

Here's the crunch: Swinburne may not have proved the existence of God (fair enough) but he has allowed for the possibility of a being existing that is outside the logical universe by which we are governed. This is all the proof an agnostic needs to maintain his agnosticism.

Apologies if this has already been refuted elsewhere, but please could you re-render the refutation for my benefit.

Yours, a Romantic in the manner of Rousseau who thinks some ideas are worth holding on to, Glider

Hmm - if Swinburne is saying that there are some things which are true and unprovable, I'm quite ok - if he's saying that God is one of those things, then I have to ask him what his evidence for this is, and what leads him to think so.

More likely I don't understand what he's saying...

Wait. You want evidence to prove that you can't use evidence to prove something? What a true skeptic!

I did laugh to myself as I wrote that - but it's not so hugely dumb as it sounds - often you can rigororously prove that something cannot be proven either true or false. Sometimes you can prove that the question of whether something can be proven true or false cannot be proven either true or false (). And sometimes, of course, you can prove diddly squat, and have to look for ways round the problem.

Notice I asked for evidence, not proof - and I want evidence for a balance of probabilities, rather than for some absolute proof which is blatantly never going to happen.

Which seems entirely reasonable - in similar problems evidence has been forthcoming by pointing out the similarities to other problems which are known to be unproveable - by a number of attempts being made to prove it, which all end up stuck against things which seem obvious, but unproveable. Sometimes you can run tests which show that the unprovable thing holds true for all cases ever tried, despite the best attempts to find counter-examples.

So there

My apologies for missing the word 'lack' in your earlier posting. I'll read more carefully next time.

I am not suggesting that atheists "disbelieve in God just to be spiteful, and then gather evidence to support the position". I never have -- and if you have that idea, I suggest that YOU go back and read MY comments fully next time before responding.

What evidence against a higher being? The only evidence you have is inductive evidence that rules out specific higher beings -- how can you claim that the conjecture of a higher being is flimsy? A conjecture doesn't require proof or even evidence, as long as existing evidence doesn't contradict it! You haven't offered any evidence disproving the existence of a higher being at all. The evidence that you have presented doesn't support your conclusion -- I'm not saying that you've found evidence that fits your pre-existing opinion, just that you've drawn a conclusion from data that can't support it.

Lack of belief and disbelief aren't the same. I might not believe that a person is telling the truth, but that doesn't mean that I believe he is lying. Unlike light and darkness, the absense of belief isn't the presence of disbelief.

Let's say I make the following statement: I'm wearing a green shirt. Now, you have three options:

1) Conclude that I'm telling the truth. "I think that Caledonian IS wearing a green shirt."

2) Neither conclude that I'm telling the truth or lying. "I have no idea what color shirt Caledonian is wearing or whether or not he's telling the truth."

3) Conclude that I'm lying. "Caledonian isn't wearing a green shirt."

Condition 1 corresponds to belief, Condition 2 corresponds to lack of belief (as well as lack of disbelief), and Condition 3 corresponds to disbelief.

[bows respectfully]

--Caledonian

I think you're cutting down the options somewhat... I'd say rather that your conceptual options are:

1) assign a probability to caledonian wearing a green shirt.
2) do not assign a probality to caledonian wearing a green shirt.

Regardless of which, concretely you have one option:
- Act as though the probability that caledonian is wearing a green shirt is a certain value, of your choice. This probability may be different to that in (1) above.

Alternatively, if the question of whether caledonian is wearing a green shirt is irrelevant to you, then there are no concrete options - acting as though the probability is 1 gives identical actions to acting as though the probability is 0.

So there are really a wealth of options available - much greater than simply atheist/agnostic/theist.

I leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out which choice correspond to which ism...

That's a rather interesting way of looking at it...

I suppose my post describes the logical statements that can be made about the color of the shirt (lacking proof or evidence) and your post describes the ways we actually react to ideas.

In real life, faith is usually on a continuum between belief and disbelief... although that doesn't change the conclusions that can logically be made with a given set of evidence.

Still, it's food for thought.

[bows respectfully]

--Caledonian

True, you never came right out and said it, but that was the theme I detected underlying your arguments of a leap-of-faith for atheism. I probably put it more bluntly than you would have, but the underlying assumption is still there.

The theist argues not only that you are wearing a green shirt, but that it is invisible, but still keeps you warm. Thus, by its very definition, it cannot be any color at all, since it cannot be seen in the visible spectrum, and thus cannot give off a visible frequency that approximates green. Still, it has been ascribed all sorts of other physical properties which can be measured, so I test them. I spill something on you and it stains your skin. I subject you to cool and warm temperatures, and note the effect. I investigate your childhood and mental history to determine whether this conception has any psychological roots. After weighing all the evidence, and seeing none to support a green shirt, or any shirt at all, I am forced to conclude that there is no shirt, of any color whatsoever.

The agnostic, on the other hand, concludes that there might be a shirt, just a shirt of a kind that has never been conceived of. It could be a concept that is something completely different, but only our word "shirt" can approximate it... perhaps it is a coating of microorganisms, or perhaps you were simply referring to the dying flakes of skin, which can be interpreted as green on certain types of ultraviolet sensors. The atheist then argues that if it's something else, it is not a shirt. The agnostic makes faces at the atheist, and he joins the theist in a round of brews.

Beautifully and cogently argued.

As a "hard" atheist (to use a definition coined earlier), I am tempted to set up a "There Is No Shirt" foundation (I was going to call it "There Is No Shirt There" or TISN'T until I realised my acronym was wrong).

To quote the back cover of "Aqualung" by Jethro Tull:

"In the beginning Man created God and in his own image created he him"

Or wasn't it Sartre who said:

"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to create him"

Some people have a need of shirts to clothe themselves metaphysically, if not literally. Their choice - I think they're wrong, but who knows if I'm right? Me, I'm an each-way better: that's why my children have been christened. Just in case.

Phil

That famous quote by Jean Paul Sartre sets up the chicken and egg question of the origin of a concept of God it is a circular argument that is very difficult to get out of. I'm not even going to try.

I like the Green Shirt proof and the Colonels response. The colour of Caledonians shirt is one of those logic problems beloved of psychologists (see the wason test). In this case we are asked to make a conclusion from a premiss. For the argument to work it is essential that we cannot find out the truth of the argument - it must not be possible to observe Caledonian. It is therefore logically valid but its truth is uncertain.

The Colonel adds additional propositions to the argument to try and ascertain the truth of the statement (ascribing an invisible shirt to Caledonian is a bit cheeky, but I thank you for it and I will try and explain where it fits in in a minute). Actually, simply observing that Caledonian is or is not wearing a green shirt would be sufficient to establish the truth or falsity of the premises, but leaves its validity untouched (I think we've been here before as well).

Lets say that we are presented with a situation in which Caledonian exists outside of the known universe of experience. Say we cannot EVER know what colour his shirt is (if truth, evidence, proof call it what you will cannot enter the argument), does that make the argument invalid? By no means.

What the Colonel is saying is that he would like visible evidence of Gods existence in order to believe in Gods existence. What Caledonian is saying is that we must be allowed to argue the validity of the possibility of Gods existence without having convincing evidence for it. (Have I got this right? Apologies if I have misrepresented anyone). Ideally the answer would be to have both the validity and the truth - but then we wouldn't have such a great discussion - we'd be too busy asking God some pretty probing questions.

Either God exists (true and valid), or we don't know that he does or doesn't exist, (validity without truth/proof of existence). The idea that we can have a proof of Gods non-existence (truth without validity) is absurd (that word is not meant to offend by the way - a logical argument that is true but invalid is always absurd. See Wittgenstein).

How can you have evidence for a proposition not being the case? Only by having evidence for the opposite being the case. When we say a shirt is not green, that is because it is red, or blue or yellow. If it is invisble, we cannot say "there is no shirt" but only that the values we normally assign to the concept of a shirt are missing. (We are back at absence of evidence not being evidence of absence).

Lets say that Caledonian does exist in the known universe and we can observe him. Can we still have a valid argument about the colour of a shirt when we can see a white vest (preserving your modesty sir and bowing respectfully in return)? Tough one. We could say that Caledonian is wearing a shirt of a colour that puts it beyond the range of any known eye or detection equipment to identify. But then he couldn't at the same time claim it was green because he himself would not be able to detect what colour it was. Maybe the knowledge that it is green is divinely inspired (wandering off into speciousness and facetiousness). But putting God within this realm of logic makes it possible to deny his existence with what seems like great accuracy. We can see no shirt, feel no shirt, Caledonian is visibly shivering. We are victorious in stating that he is telling a fib. WE would STILL not be right to say that we KNOW he is not wearing a shirt, only that we are 99.9999999% certain that he isn't and even more sure that if he is, it ain't green.

Back to Swinburne - God is outside logic. Will somebody please deal with this because I'm tired, there is a whining sound inside my head, smoke is coming out of my ears and I have developed a sudden craving for a subcutaneous cranial injection of Castrol GTX.

> "Say we cannot EVER know what colour his shirt is"

Fair enough. In which case the rationalist will observe that the difference in action from assigning a probability of 1 to the shirt, and 0 to the shirt is identical. Therefore an assignment of probability of 0 (or undefined) to the shirt is the correct thing to do, because it simplifies the world view at no expense in accuracy.

Just like the invisible pink unicorn.

Just a quick note. My experience is that agnostics generally do not pop off to the pub from for a brewsky with the theists. They are far, far too busy arguing with the atheists.

If a person analyzed all the reports of UFOs, alien abductions, and big-eyed gray monsters who probed unsuspecting people in embarrassing places, and concluded that Earth probably hasn't been visited by extraterrestrials, that would be reasonable. If they came to the conclusion that there is no other life in the galaxy, I'd say they were nuts, since the evidence they looked at has very little relevance to the conclusion they reached.

I have nothing against atheists who realize that their position cannot be logically proven to be correct but feel that it is probably right. In a way, atheism is a leap of faith for them as much as any religion is a leap of faith to its believers. However, I reserve the right to criticize atheists who claim that they can prove that they're correct. I have yet to meet any person who can actually prove the non-existence of God -- I haven't even met anyone who could produce evidence that had any bearing on the question.

To summarize:

I have nothing against atheists in general. I vigorously attack impossible claims and unreasonable conclusions; your position falls into these categories.

Your analogy is incorrect, because in it you can actually examine evidence relevant to the question of whether the shirt exists. There is no such evidence with regard to God. That's why belief in God is logically unjustified; it's also why belief in the non-existence of God is logically unjustified.

Besides, an agnostic would pour his beer on both the theist and atheist and go off to play pinball.

A couple of people writing in this forum have seen this posted elswhere. Caledonian obviously hasn't.

I had an email from my old friend Bob Jones in Brisbane. Bob's a bit worried about his mortality. People of his own age, and younger, are dropping like flies. "We are," he wrote, including me in this dire prognosis, "in the death zone." Death is a no-win situation for the atheist if you're right, you don't get to tell anyone; if you're wrong, everyone, including God, gets to tell you. That's the scary bit. There is of course an upside to being right - you don't have to worry about being tormented for eternity by some divine psychopath. The downside is that you are inevitably going to find yourself, like Monty Python's Norwegian Blue: "stone dead, demised, passed on, no more, ceased to be, a stiff, bereft of life, snuffed it, up the creek and kicked the bucket, extinct in its entirety, an ex-parrot".

Death is first and foremost an affront to the ego. It's not the fear of eternal damnation that bothers me about dying, not even the terror of the unknown; it's the "no more, ceased to be, extinct in its entirety, ex-parrot" bit that gets up my nose. How dare things go on as usual with me not there! How dare the Earth presume to turn, the sun to rise, the moon to shine, flowers to grow, birds to sing, TV's Judge Judy to smite the wicked! How dare people continue to conduct conversations without seeking my opinion! How dare there be newspapers and magazines and books and radio and television and the Internet and yet-to-be-invented forms of mass communication without my being in or on them! How dare I not exist! "Vanity of vanities," saith the Preacher, "all is vanity." And mark that fellow down for the sin of pride.

There is a view among my religious friends that I will undergo a last-minute Road-to-Damascus-style conversion. I doubt it. If there is a god, I'm sure she's not going to be fooled by a piece of self-interested, panic-induced hypocrisy like that. And anyway, I just couldn't do it. No need for any sophisticated dialects here. Belief in god or an afterlife just doesn't make sense. Homo sapiens have been around for four or five million years. Billions and trillions and zillions of us have been born, lived and died, and there isn't a single verifiable example of survival after death, not a shred, not a scintilla, not a scrap, not an iota, jot or tittle of evidence of the existence of a divine being.

Thank god for that! The versions we've made so far in our own image haven't been too attractive. Still, there could be an argument for hedging your bets, just in case. Trouble is, it's not a two-horse race, not just a simple choice between believing and not-believing, between theism and atheism. It's the Everlasting Cup and there are a stack of runners. Put your money on the wrong nag - Muhammadanism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity - and you're a gonner. "You know the odds," says the celestial betting shop, "now beat them!" I prefer to put my money on the nose. Win/lose. No great dividend either way. But whichever horse romps home, I'll still have kept my dignity and self-respect. Imagine for a moment that I'm right, that there is no god. Imagine that every time you get down on your knees to pray, you're actually talking to yourself. Imagine that each time you call on god for help in time of trouble, only the wind hears your entreaties. Imagine that for years you've prostrated yourself before, glorified, worshipped ... no one.

Imagine that the guilt, the self-denial, the adherence to a set of arbitrary, illogical and often punitive tenets have been totally without point or profit. Imagine that the centuries of ecclesiastical ritual, the pomp and circumstance were all mere dressing-up and play-acting. Imagine that the churches, cathedrals, synagogues, temples, mosques are nothing more than monuments to man's despair and delusion. Imagine that all the martyrs to religious belief, all the victims of religious persecution, died in their hundreds of millions for ... nothing. Imagine that everything you were taught, believed, clung to for meaning and comfort is wrong. Imagine that it's all been the most terrible joke, the most cruel hoax conceivable, and you the butt of it.

Doesn't bear thinking about, does it? Which is why so many people don't. On the other hand, I could be wrong. God may not be non-existent, he may merely be painfully shy. And if he does exist, there's just the possibility that he may be assisted by a devil with all the wit and style of Rowan Atkinson's "Toby", as he welcomes the latest batch of newcomers to Hell - murderers, looters, pillagers, thieves, bank-managers, adulterers, Americans, sodomites, Christians ("I'm afraid the Jews were right."), everyone who saw Monty Python's Life of Brian ("He can't take a joke after all.") and atheists ("You must be feeling a right lot of charlies! "). Well, that would be embarrassing, I admit. But I'm betting it's never going to happen. I'm betting that god doesn't exist. And have you never had a moment of doubt, Grahame? Oh yes - as a 25-year-old drunk, standing under a tree outside a beer-tent during a thunderstorm in Munich with lightning strafing the rain-sodden pavement less than a metre from my feet. I did have a moment of doubt then. We atheists hate lightning.