I must admit I’ve shed my hardcore atheism for a far more modest one that I may be inclined to call agnosticism. Though I do think that if God exists, they would have various sorts of Vegan ideals. I.e. it’s wrong to farm animals.
Reading about Fine Tuning and Souls in Knowledge, Reality, and Value opened up my mind a bit. I have always been taken back by how strange it is that anything exists. I still think Abrahamic religions are implausible, but I'm probably 50/50 on there being SOME entity it'd be appropriate to call God
Your remind me of a quote from the introduction to C. S. Lewis's book *The Problem of Pain*
"If the universe is so bad, or even half so bad, how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good Creator? Men are fools, perhaps; but hardly so foolish as that. The direct inference from black to white, from evil flower to virtuous root, from senseless work to a workman infinitely wise, staggers belief. The spectacle of the universe as revealed by experience can never have been the ground of religion: it must always have been something in spite of which religion, acquired from a different source, was held.
"It would be an error to reply that our ancestors were ignorant and therefore entertained pleasing illusions about nature which the progress of science has since dispelled....Certainly at all periods the pain and waste of human life was equally obvious. Our own religion begins among the Jews, a people squeezed between great warlike empires, continually defeated and led captive, familiar as Poland or Armenia with the tragic story of the conquered. It is mere nonsense to put pain among the discoveries of science. Lay down this book and reflect for five minutes on the fact that all the great religions were first preached, and long practised, in a world without chloroform.
"At all times, then, an inference from the course of events in this world to the goodness and wisdom of the Creator would have been equally preposterous; and it was never made. Religion has a different origin."
I think this is an important point. Nobody believes in a benevolent God because of the evil in the world. They come to believe for other reasons and, having believed, accept that there must be an explanation for this evil. Even if they themselves do not know it exactly.
So it took a couple months to go from 5% to ~50%. We can extrapolate that you will be doing rounds as a post-atheist evangelical by early summer!
Now I don’t want to be demeaning. If you’ve considered all these weighty arguments and found that they outweigh hiddenness and evil, then good for you. It’s still funny that your belief in animal suffering is what emotionally drives you to theism.
Ehhhh I find that most atheist questions are just reframed within the theist frame, plus new ones. If I put all the mysteries together I haven't made them smaller. I hope there is a heaven, bit I don't know how I'd forecast it and I don't feel optimistic.
A little bit beside the point, but in the audio commentary of "Pan's Labyrinth", the director says that up until a certain point, both readings could be true. But when she is punished and locked into her room, and then she draws a door on the wall with chalk and escapes through that door, this is something which cannot be explained if it is all only happening in her little mind.
I personally am a reluctant naturalist. I was a christian for most of my life and, unwillingly, i end up losing my faith. The problem i see with most of the arguments for theism is that "theism explains x" is a poorly defined term. Some people, influenced by bayesian epistemology, by "explain" mean just "make it more expected". According to this view, explanatoriness is just expectedness. But then we get in those old problems (The fact that the word displays the features that it does incrementally confirms the hypothesis "the Babylonian god Marduk exists and he created a word with the features our world displays".
If one is allowed to posit whatever one wants as long as it "explains the evidence", no wonder we can find a potential answer for everything. But i doubt it's the best methodology.
Although i currently very far from believing in a personal creator of the universe (not to say a good one), i think we all should exercise intellectual humility by actively putting our views to the test, seriously engaging the best "from the other side". That's why i really enjoyed your text and i found your experience very intriguing. I'll check Dustin's work. I encountered many references to him online, but never took time to read more about his work.
You're a very smart and thoughtful guy. So i'm looking for your next reflections on these subjects.
Btw, i'm a graduate philosophy student (from Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil) and my dissertation is about this very topic: the evidential (ir)relevance of explanatoriness. Maybe we can talk about sometime.
I consider myself an (and i'm not sure this is the appropriate order of the words) Agnostic Theistic Naturalist and it took years to get to that point. If there is a religious tradition I feel calling to me, it is Eastern Christianity, for various reasons. I can expand if anyone is interested but what Bentham's Bulldog wrote here resonated with me enough to share.
It sounds like you are on an interesting journey, and much of what you have shared resonates with me. I started off as an atheist who thought that theism was just too stupid to consider. Then I met a Christian who's version of Christianity seemed a lot more logical and reasonable than the others I had encountered. I still didn't believe it to be *true*, but I could see how it held together - rather like comparing a really good episode of Star Trek to some really bad ones. But months later I experienced an unexpected paradigm shift, and suddenly I just couldn't see how I ever found atheism believable. So I can't point to a clever theistic argument and say "that" is what persuaded me to believe. I also never found a fatal flaw in atheism, and I still have a lot of respect for honest open-minded atheists. I've gotten used to being abused by closed minded bigots from both sides who can't bear the thought that there might be any merit in anything said by someone from the other tribe! I wish you all the best on your search for truth, no matter where it eventually leads you.
Intelligent design might explain fine tuning, but it doesn't require a perfect, omnipotent being. The existence of evil could be explained by an imperfect designer. I also think omnipotence and omniscience are probably metaphysically impossible anyway.
I must admit I’ve shed my hardcore atheism for a far more modest one that I may be inclined to call agnosticism. Though I do think that if God exists, they would have various sorts of Vegan ideals. I.e. it’s wrong to farm animals.
Reading about Fine Tuning and Souls in Knowledge, Reality, and Value opened up my mind a bit. I have always been taken back by how strange it is that anything exists. I still think Abrahamic religions are implausible, but I'm probably 50/50 on there being SOME entity it'd be appropriate to call God
Your remind me of a quote from the introduction to C. S. Lewis's book *The Problem of Pain*
"If the universe is so bad, or even half so bad, how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good Creator? Men are fools, perhaps; but hardly so foolish as that. The direct inference from black to white, from evil flower to virtuous root, from senseless work to a workman infinitely wise, staggers belief. The spectacle of the universe as revealed by experience can never have been the ground of religion: it must always have been something in spite of which religion, acquired from a different source, was held.
"It would be an error to reply that our ancestors were ignorant and therefore entertained pleasing illusions about nature which the progress of science has since dispelled....Certainly at all periods the pain and waste of human life was equally obvious. Our own religion begins among the Jews, a people squeezed between great warlike empires, continually defeated and led captive, familiar as Poland or Armenia with the tragic story of the conquered. It is mere nonsense to put pain among the discoveries of science. Lay down this book and reflect for five minutes on the fact that all the great religions were first preached, and long practised, in a world without chloroform.
"At all times, then, an inference from the course of events in this world to the goodness and wisdom of the Creator would have been equally preposterous; and it was never made. Religion has a different origin."
I think this is an important point. Nobody believes in a benevolent God because of the evil in the world. They come to believe for other reasons and, having believed, accept that there must be an explanation for this evil. Even if they themselves do not know it exactly.
So it took a couple months to go from 5% to ~50%. We can extrapolate that you will be doing rounds as a post-atheist evangelical by early summer!
Now I don’t want to be demeaning. If you’ve considered all these weighty arguments and found that they outweigh hiddenness and evil, then good for you. It’s still funny that your belief in animal suffering is what emotionally drives you to theism.
Ehhhh I find that most atheist questions are just reframed within the theist frame, plus new ones. If I put all the mysteries together I haven't made them smaller. I hope there is a heaven, bit I don't know how I'd forecast it and I don't feel optimistic.
A little bit beside the point, but in the audio commentary of "Pan's Labyrinth", the director says that up until a certain point, both readings could be true. But when she is punished and locked into her room, and then she draws a door on the wall with chalk and escapes through that door, this is something which cannot be explained if it is all only happening in her little mind.
Great article, Matthew.
I personally am a reluctant naturalist. I was a christian for most of my life and, unwillingly, i end up losing my faith. The problem i see with most of the arguments for theism is that "theism explains x" is a poorly defined term. Some people, influenced by bayesian epistemology, by "explain" mean just "make it more expected". According to this view, explanatoriness is just expectedness. But then we get in those old problems (The fact that the word displays the features that it does incrementally confirms the hypothesis "the Babylonian god Marduk exists and he created a word with the features our world displays".
If one is allowed to posit whatever one wants as long as it "explains the evidence", no wonder we can find a potential answer for everything. But i doubt it's the best methodology.
Although i currently very far from believing in a personal creator of the universe (not to say a good one), i think we all should exercise intellectual humility by actively putting our views to the test, seriously engaging the best "from the other side". That's why i really enjoyed your text and i found your experience very intriguing. I'll check Dustin's work. I encountered many references to him online, but never took time to read more about his work.
You're a very smart and thoughtful guy. So i'm looking for your next reflections on these subjects.
Btw, i'm a graduate philosophy student (from Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil) and my dissertation is about this very topic: the evidential (ir)relevance of explanatoriness. Maybe we can talk about sometime.
All the best,
Thanks for sharing.
The Temptation of Jack Orkney, by Doris Lessing
I consider myself an (and i'm not sure this is the appropriate order of the words) Agnostic Theistic Naturalist and it took years to get to that point. If there is a religious tradition I feel calling to me, it is Eastern Christianity, for various reasons. I can expand if anyone is interested but what Bentham's Bulldog wrote here resonated with me enough to share.
It sounds like you are on an interesting journey, and much of what you have shared resonates with me. I started off as an atheist who thought that theism was just too stupid to consider. Then I met a Christian who's version of Christianity seemed a lot more logical and reasonable than the others I had encountered. I still didn't believe it to be *true*, but I could see how it held together - rather like comparing a really good episode of Star Trek to some really bad ones. But months later I experienced an unexpected paradigm shift, and suddenly I just couldn't see how I ever found atheism believable. So I can't point to a clever theistic argument and say "that" is what persuaded me to believe. I also never found a fatal flaw in atheism, and I still have a lot of respect for honest open-minded atheists. I've gotten used to being abused by closed minded bigots from both sides who can't bear the thought that there might be any merit in anything said by someone from the other tribe! I wish you all the best on your search for truth, no matter where it eventually leads you.
Intelligent design might explain fine tuning, but it doesn't require a perfect, omnipotent being. The existence of evil could be explained by an imperfect designer. I also think omnipotence and omniscience are probably metaphysically impossible anyway.
So it sounds like: the good stuff about the world is explained by theism; the bad stuff is explained by atheism. And there's plenty of both.
join theist side brother. We have absolute optimism here about the world.
Deity Defeater ---> Deity Avenger