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Journal Liora's Journal: Testable Hypotheses 6

Journal by Liora

There are people out there who say that God does not exist. Yes, athiests exist. They are very convinced in their arguments and some are so jaded and fervent as to dismiss everything that someone who believes contrary has to say even if it is on another topic entirely. If this is you, you may stop reading immediately. I won't be offended.

The grounds on which many athiests make their claim is that the existance of God is completely unprovable, and therefore unscientific. If there is no evidence, and no proof, of God's existance, then they are not going to believe. This is a logical conclusion. Except for one thing. They are not being scientific at all. The science that they are holding so high is not one that they are actually practicing.

There are two completely logical hypotheses that can be made regarding the existance of God. The first, is that God does not exist; the second is that God exists. We all know what you do with a hypothesis, right? The scientific method is pretty clear. You test it. Unfortunately, if you have the first hypothesis, God does not exist; there is nothing to test (no test can be designed), and you simply live out your life thinking you are right but not bothering to test at all and thus know you are right.

If you have make the second assumption, you can devise a test. You hypothesize that God exists and then take the next logical course of action and believe that God exists. In believing, you do all of the things that you think you should do given your belief. The test is whether or not you experience evidence of God given this. There are two possible outcomes: You either find evidence supporting your hypothesis, or you live your whole life given your belief, but never get any evidence.

What is there to lose? You have a lot to lose one way, and nothing to lose another way. I do not know a mathematician who would not change his method of proof based upon his ability to prove one thing or to disprove the converse. I also do not know anyone who has started this test and ended up in that life-long limbo that happens if you start the test and never get any evidence.

I wish the people that fall under that jaded athiest category I put forth in the beginning would stop appealing to science as their rationale for disbelief. If they don't believe in God because they don't want to, or can't, or have issues, fine; I have no problem there. But to appeal to science, when there isn't any there? I am beginning to resent these scientific believers for their completely biased observations and triviality. Are they trying to sound like scientists without actually being thus? The real scientists I know are the kinds of people who have decided they will test their hypotheses.

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Testable Hypotheses

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  • I believe that God exists, and she's very cute, too! She enjoys wearing and old man form and playing Skee-ball with the children in Red Bank, NJ.

    (Damn, Red Bank sounds like such a cool place. Should I visit there?)
  • I'm not a jaded athiest, but I don't beleive that anything I'd call God exists.

    I agree, there are many people who argue theological points from an illogical and inconceived stance. This is why I'm troubled enough by your journal entry to reply to it.

    It's disingenuous to lead a theological arguement with a disclaimer that's its potential critics are welcome to go elsewhere. (Or, alternatively, it's cowardly to make a public statement about a framework of belief and ask that its proponents not defend it.)

    That said, you essentially pose Pascal's wager with the additional trapping of scientific method. Its well and good to insist that if scientific arguments are made about God then they must be held to, and the scientific method applied. But, you've presented a dilemma (that there are two reasonable hypotheses: that God must either exist or must not) but only carried one lemma to its conclusion: that it's impossible to propose an experiment proving the hypothesis that God doesn't exist.

    The other lemma comes to a similar conclusion: what experiment can you propose that demonstrates existence of God? Belief or not isn't really an experiment, since the belief in no God is essentially (for this purpose) equivalent to the belief in God.

    As for Pascal's wager, what sort of faith is founded on a gamble?

    • I didn't say that critics were welcome to go elsewhere, or that people who disagree with me not reply to my journal. I said they may quit reading and I wouldn't be offended. They didn't have to quit reading (not that I could have stopped anyone anyway, but I was releasing them, allowing them to lump me into the 'religious fanatic making broad generalizations' category if they so chose; you're welcome to do so as well, although you didn't, you chose instead to reply).

      Upon rereading what I wrote, I first feel I should state what caused me to write this in the first place. I had a friend, who had an appendicitis. I had another friend who was asking about it and I made the offhand remark that perhaps appendixes are something left on the evolutionary ladder from back when we were cows. A friend of this friend (who consequently despises all Christians, me included) came in and announced that the person I was talking to should not believe a word I said because I was a Christian and by definition I didn't even believe in evolution. That person went on to say that because I was obviously an idiot for believing something so unscientific, my friend should not believe anything I ever say. Thus I was dismissed as a religious fanatic on all matters, religious or no. The journal entry was just venting.

      That said, I believe in God, and I know a lot of people who believe in God, and a lot who don't. I know a lot of people. Of those who believe in God and were once in the other group, I am fairly certain that they changed groups because they were looking for truth. That's what scientists are doing right? (Well, sort of... we can discuss their actual goals if you'd really like.) Those people devised this 'belief in God' experiment, and it had two possible outcomes. Either A., they would live their whole life believing in God, but with not enough evidence to actually do anything about it, or B., they would be met by God, experience direct divine revelation, and therefore have an end to the experiment and be able to make a conclusion. I have never met someone who didn't arrive at B. eventually if they made it so far as to start the experiment.

      As for your question about Pascal's wager, and faith founded on a gamble, well, that's kind of what faith is. It's believing in what seems unbelievable. It doesn't take any faith to believe in something that is completely believable, just as it takes faith to do the converse. I am not going to make a Kierkegaardian kind of statement here and say I believe because well, damnit, I do, but that is sort of on the right track.

      I know this word has been thrown around altogether too much in some circles, and not enough in others, but I am a postmodern. Yeah, the implications of calling oneself that are indeed ridiculous, but I am using it as a tool to simply define and describe my frame of reference. All of my p's and q's do not have to be minded, all of my ducks need not be in a row. I can believe in God and the big bang at the same time. (Not that those two beliefs are necessarily mutually exclusive.) I don't have to know all the answers. It doesn't bother me, mostly because I know there are too many answers really to know them all, and I am likely to change my mind about one of them at any given time anyway.

      I believe that God exists. I believe that in a black hole all probabilities break down anyway. I also believe that implies I could be wrong about everything or right about everything. Such is life.

      • I feel like I ought to reciprocate your illumination of previous posts. I run into so many people who hold dear poorly examined beliefs, usually Christianity, but atheism as well. (Vegetarianism as a moral stance seems big right now, too.) Somewhere along the line, it bit in so deep that it still rubs raw when I think I see it happening. So, you've been subjected to a sort of constant, low level rant.

        My own faith, for instance is based on Occam's Razor. I see no need for a God: the existence of a god is a complicated and difficult hypothesis, and the inverse is simple and provides just as much purpose (for me.) I tend towards humanism, which fulfills much of my requirements that another theology might. I will concede that there might be a God, but I don't see a need for it, nor it needing me.

        Anyway, it's been a pleasure meeting you, and I look forward to further entries in your journal.

        Nyarly. (atheism - a perverse way of getting God's attention. - Ambrose Bierce)

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