Ask the Atheist

To begin with, "weak atheist" definitely does not apply. It means someone who does not believe in gods simply because he/she has not been exposed to religion. Young children, some remote tribespeople and the mentally impaired can be weak atheists, but you can't be one if you've been to a church service and understoood what was going on.

Your answer, "I would like it if there was [a god], but I see little to no evidence for one," is absolutely atheist. You can be an atheist and either wish there were a god or be glad there isn't.

During periods when you do think there's a god, however, you are definitely not an atheist. You don't accept the truth of any particular religion, so I would suggest "agnostic spiritualist": someone who believes in spite of the lack of evidence that there is SOMETHING out there.

You accept at all times that there is no evidence for gods. I'd say therefore that you are an atheist when this premise leads you to the conclusion that there are no gods, and an agnostic spiritualist when you're nevertheless inclined to believe there is one. These terms are just too tightly bound to specific positions for just one term to apply to someone who swings back and forth.

For the sake of conversation, I would regard you as an agnostic on the verge of a decision.

- SmartLX

There are a few laws governing attraction. The law of gravity is one. Electromagnetic principles ensure that opposites attract. The Secret's famous "law of attraction" is directly counter to the second one. It does not in fact exist.

I don't doubt that you feel a law of attraction has attached itself to you. This is probably because of a confirmation bias: you pay more attention to supporting evidence than to contrary evidence. A car's ramming into you? Notice that all the others aren't. You are not a magnet.

Explain your situation a bit more. How did you get INTO the law of attraction? Why? What's going on? Help us help you.

- SmartLX

Thankyou for wording the question so well.

Let's split this hypothetical higher power into its two possible roles: creator, and intervenor.

A being which directly created the universe to a design would have to be more complex than the whole thing put together, and therefore be the most complex and unlikely thing in existence. Furthermore it would itself need an even more complex creator, and so on ad absurdum. If you assert that the creator has existed forever and needs no creator-creator, why can't the (less complex) universe be eternal and need no creator in the first place? Whatever constraints you put on the universe to necessitate a creator, you immediately have to break to allow a creator. It's just not a good explanation by any standard at all.

Now consider an interventionist entity, built with or into the universe. Strip away all the usual rules like omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience, and we're left with a force which acts some of the time, succeeds some of the time and leaves the rest to physics. Far more plausible than an almighty Godhead.

It's possible, sure, but is it likely? Are there enough unexplained events in our lives to make us seriously think that some have no material explanation? Perhaps your life is full of incredible coincidences, through which you believe you are being guided. The trouble with coincidences is that we only notice the ones that happen; not the ones that don't.

Say you're walking down the street to the grocer and you bump into someone you went to school with 15 years ago, in another city. The chances of this event are incredibly small, so it seems like destiny that you two would meet again here.

The thing is, how many people were there at your school? How many other people do you know, and how many of them might you have bumped into today? What about a stranger wearing the exact same clothes as you? Or your childhood hero whom you've never spoken to? Could there be a car crash right next to where you're walking? Could bird droppings fall right in front of your face and ruin your shoes? Or a meteorite?

There are an infinite number of possible events which might happen to you at any time and which you would regard as coincidences, or serendipitous. The probability of each one is almost nothing, but the probability of all of them simultaneously NOT happening is just as small if not smaller. A large amount of coincidences is practically certain for anyone on this planet. Even if you seem to experience more coincidences than anyone else, remember that you're in a sample space of six billion people and some of them are bound to have a surplus. Today's mass media trumpets any unlikely event to the whole world and makes us feel like our world is saturated with the incredible.

When I see a coincidence, I remember how many other amazing things might be happening, but aren't. I don't need a higher power to explain anything. I just know that it's a big world with lots of people who live for a long time.

None of this disproves gods, of course. It just shows that a creator is unlikely and an intervenor is unnecessary. This doesn't bode well for any power which is both creator AND intervenor.

- SmartLX

You can be both, or either by itself.

A pantheist believes that God is the universe and everything in it. Put another way, we are all part of God (rather than just part of God's plan).

If a pantheist believes on top of this that the universe has a purpose - not that it is meant for something, but that it WANTS something - and can break its own physical laws to achieve that purpose, then he or she is effectively a theist in the modern sense, i.e. a believer in an interventionist god.

Otherwise a pantheist accepts that the universe is beholden to its own laws and cannot act intelligently. This is equivalent to an atheist (or, with an additional belief in a Creator, a deist) who simply names the universe "God". Then either label is appropriate.

- SmartLX

What we have here is the most complex form of the cosmological (first cause) argument I've seen yet, but it's the cosmological argument nonetheless. It's worth dismantling this incarnation to show how easily new caveats can often be stripped away.

Firstly, the basic premise of cause and effect ain't what it used to be. Studies of quantum mechanics have revealed a system of particle movement which is probabilistic and, as far as we know, completely random. Anything with a cause is not truly random, only made to seem that way by the onset of chaos and entropy. It's just possible that these movements are genuinely uncaused, which would remove the need for a First Cause altogether. That said, let's accept the premise of cause and effect and move on.

Saying that any creator must have existed outside time and space is firstly trivial and secondly not guaranteed. Whatever resulted in the Big Bang self-evidently existed (or exists) outside of whatever space and time resulted FROM the Big Bang. That's not necessarily all the space and time there ever was.

Any precursor could have existed in an entirely different system of spacetime; another universe, or simply an exterior section of this universe. (Consider that the aftermath of the Big Bang may not constitute this entire universe. The "super universe" theory mentioned is a valid possibility.) The precursor, if any, is certainly not exempt from questions of origin.

If we assume completely linear time (which is far from certain) then it's true that an eternal universe or multiverse is required in the absence of an eternal or timeless deity. Why is that harder to accept than the deity?

A god which created everything directly is more complex than the whole of existence put together. Therefore if Occam's razor is applied, ANY other hypothesis is preferable to a god: multiple concurrent universes, consecutive universes, basic matter and energy occasionally catalysing into a self-contained universe, etc. An uncreated, uneducated superpower/superintelligence is quite literally the most unlikely thing in the world.

There's another reason why the multiverse theory (in quantum mechanics, the "many-worlds interpretation") in particular is preferable to the god hypothesis. We know beyond reasonable doubt that there is at least one universe - this one - but we do not know to anything like that level of certainty that there is even a single god.

Multiple instances of a known object are generally more likely to exist than an object with no precedent or evidence. Choosing God over a multiverse is like seeing a ravaged cabbage patch with one tiny rabbit in the corner, and asserting that Bigfoot ate most of the cabbages rather than that more rabbits might be hiding nearby.

With the central argument covered, I want to pick up on some other points.

1. What do "we know about the design of the universe"? The phrase implies a designer and begs the question, and the knowledge is not given but asserted.

2. Mark the phrase "the atheist", singular instead of plural. This is an old convention designed to belittle the subjects. Think back to "the Jew", "the Hun", "the savage" or "the infidel". It says to the reader, "They are all the same, and I've got them pegged."

3. Even if the argument were airtight and a Creator were proved absolutely, the author is all set to jump straight from that premise to the Creator's identity: the Christian God. This is a deist argument being used to push a theist view, and it will not go the distance. Refuting atheists is only the first step for this apologist. There's still every other religion to beat. But like those who use Pascal's Wager, Rich Deem's basic assumption is that there is only one possible God.

- SmartLX

Just bad timing. There was a server crash which wiped the previous two weeks of everything. I lost a lot of work myself. Don't let it get you down.

- SmartLX

The Christian God certainly does. It's just a matter of whether the Christan God is a fictitious character.

This demand certainly isn't contrary to the idea of free will. We're all free not to accept Jesus, accepting instead the supposed consequences of rejecting Jesus. The choice is Jesus or Hell, or at least the possibility of each. It all gets really sticky when you toss in the possibility of other gods being the true god, because then you don't know whose Hell you'll end up in.

Where Christianity does get complicated on the issue of free will is predestination. If God knows the future and is in complete control of everything (omnipotent), our fates are set and there's nothing we can do to change them. How then is free will possible?

- SmartLX