The Rationality of A-Deism

A-Deism: the certainty that supernatural beings or forces neither exist nor could interfere with the physical realm without becoming part of the physical. Although concepts of supernatural beings or forces exist, neither these conceptualizations themselves nor personal belief in the conceptualizations constitutes evidence for ascribed existence of a supernatural agency. (This definition is mine, 8/16/07).

A-Deism is based on logical analysis of relevant physical and psychological evidence and does not itself constitute a religion. Critical A-Deistic analysis holds that it is neither necessary nor rational to evoke supernatural pseudo-explanations for the origin of the universe (cosmology), the origin of life on Earth (abiogenesis), or biological complexity (evolution). Further, death marks the end of conscious life, so adeists have neither the expectation of eternal life nor any fear of eternal damnation.

Obviously, this definition is very much like that for atheism:

Atheism is the state either of being without theistic beliefs, or of actively disbelieving in the existence of deities. In antiquity, Epicureanism incorporated aspects of atheism, but it disappeared from the philosophy of the Greek and Roman traditions as Christianity gained influence. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism)

Adeism excludes agnosticism, deism, and theism.

Agnosticism: the belief that the existence of God is not knowable. The word is derived from the negative ‘a’ combined with the Greek word ‘gnosis’ which means ‘knowledge.’ Hence, agnosticism is the belief that God cannot be known. (google agnosticism definitions)

Existence: despite religionist assertions to the contrary, the only existence of which humans can be certain is that which we each experience during this life on Earth combined with the physical entities and forces that can be empirically detected or deduced through the detectable.
(http://mimble-wimble.blogspot.com/2005/12/reality-truth.html)

Deism: The belief that God exists but is not involved in the world. It maintains that God created all things and set the universe in motion and is no longer involved in its operation. (www.carm.org/dictionary/dic_c-d.htm)

Deity, divinity, god, immortal: any supernatural being worshipped as controlling some part of the world or some aspect of life or who is the personification of a force. (wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn)

Theism: the doctrine or belief in the existence of a God or gods.
(wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn)

Religion—sometimes used interchangeably with faith or belief system—is commonly defined as belief concerning the supernatural, sacred, or divine, and the moral codes, practices and institutions associated with such belief. In its broadest sense some have defined it as the sum total of answers given to explain humankind's relationship with the universe. In the course of the development of religion, it has taken a huge number of forms in various cultures and individuals. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion)

Superstition is a set of behaviors that are related to magical thinking, whereby the practitioner believes that the future, or the outcome of certain events, can be influenced by certain specified behaviors. The idea of "good luck" and "bad luck" gives rise to many superstitions, such as the belief that it is bad luck to wear gold and silver together. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstition)

Magic or sorcery are terms referring to the influence of events and physical phenomenon through supernatural, mystical, or paranormal means. The term magic in its various translations has been used in a number of ways. From the point of view of an established religion, it has often been used as a pejorative term for the pagan rituals of competing ethnic groups, as belonging to an inferior (hence blasphemous or idolatrous) culture. The magic and religion article deals largely with this aspect. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic)

Miracle: according to many religions, a miracle is an intervention by God in the universe. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle).

A Biblical definition of miracle is, "an event in the external world brought about by the immediate agency or the simple volition of God, operating without the use of means capable of being discerned by the senses, and designed to authenticate the divine commission of a religious teacher and the truth of his message (John 2:18; Matt. 12:38)".(www.calvarychapel.com/redbarn/terms.htm)

This blog will employ the definition used by Leibniz, "something that goes against the natural and predictable order of things.” (www.innvista.com/culture/religion/diction.htm)

Sites Elsewhere : Why Complete Materialist? :

Bible Bumping

Bible Thumping combined with Bible Bashing ... get it? Corny, corny, corny.

The Bible is filled with internal consistencies that are critiqued on other sites. It is the position of the authors that the Bible is an allegory with minimal historical accuracy. It cannot be the word of God, since it is the only "evidence" for the existence of a God for which their is no incontrovertible evidence.

All opinions expressed here are those of the authors – all Devout Atheists.

ɷ In God, Distrust
ɷ Agnostic vs Atheist
ɷ Agnosticism is NOT more rational than Atheism
ɷ Apologists make Apologies for God
ɷ Besottism
ɷ Canadians Can be Stupid Too
ɷ Dei Non Existent
ɷ Dawkins refutes Behe
ɷ Furor over Stupidity
ɷ Inverse Correlations
ɷ Moral Absolutism
ɷ One Evolution, Many Creationisms
ɷ Spirituality, Religiosity, and Madness
ɷ Statistics on Stupidity
ɷ un-designed intelligences = intelligent [sick] design
ɷ YEC yack

Silly religiously-motivated ideas:
ɷ Creationism only flourishes amidst Ignorance
ɷ Myths Revered and Myths Exposed
ɷ Judge Jones Rules
ɷ The Wedge Document

Quo Vadis?
...section index...

Agnostic vs Atheist

"It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence”
~ W. K. Clifford (1879)

Those of religious bent and the fantasy prone choose to believe what they choose to believe. Such individuals seem to select whatever opinion provides most emotional appeal without regard to logic or empirical evidence.

Religious types come in various levels of dogmatism and subscribe to different human-invented creeds. Most are theists, whereas others believe in equally nutty nonsense like the so-called "Science of Mind" that has zip to do with science.

Creationists of various ilks deny our close relationship (more than 98% shared DNA) with the chimpanzee in order to protect their illusion of Special Creation.

Technically, an agnostic holds that the existence or nonexistence of a supernatural deity is unknowable. While this is philosophically rigorous, what is the point of copping out by leaving room for the indeterminable supernatural?

As soon as a supposed supernatural entity has interacted with the physical, then that purported supernatural agent has entered the realm of the physical and has abandoned supernatural status. Those religions that include creation myths necessarily make a claim that the formerly-supernatural has interfered with the physical. This creation-interaction must, by definition, reduce, or elevate, the supernatural to the physical. Goodbye special supernatural status.

Agnosticism can take the position that the possibility that whatever claimed teapot or deity actually exists is vanishingly small, but agnosticism allows some wiggle room for the vanishingly remote possibility that any particular candidate-claim has validity.

Whereas agnosticism carefully perches on the fence, atheism expresses more certainty than to say, "we just can't know". The small "a" atheist simply says, "I don't believe that God exists", wheras a capital "A" Atheist is certain that, "God does not exist." Philosophical purism aside, all the evidence indicates that the God of the Bible does not exist.

Christians, my prime targets in this expose-stupidity campaign, hold that their supposed Creator did indeed interfere in the physical up until 2,000 years ago, since which time God appears to have understandably grown bored with Christians. Of course, Christians keep this conditionally-loving God on hand for their supposed afterlife, aka death.

Bertrand Russell was a famous debunker of religious nonsense and said in Is There a God?, “If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.”

Russell, as ever, makes a good point. Any fantasist can concoct any fanciful story, padded with a layer of non-falsifiable protection, and can insist that the story is accurate by virtue of the glitch that it cannot be disproven. Such a claim, of course, commits the logical error of argumentum ad ignorantiam. If the claim was first made in antiquity, it is imbued with an undeserved veneer of credibility.

The invention of supposed prophecies did not, of course, end with Jesus. Supposed prophets have been popping up with dismaying regularity since Jesus' preachings.

The problem for creationists, particularly for YECs, is that Genesis does make falsifiable physical claims that do stand disproven by science. Somewhere along the way, some creationist has comprehended enough science to realize this major problem and the era of Misleading Pseudoscience for Dummies was ushered in. The fact is, creationists promulgate ignorance and falsehoods in support of what they mistakenly call "Truth". YECs lie about the actual age of the Earth, while believers in pseudointellectual intelligent [sick] design theory accept the actual age of the Earth, but lie about the identity of the supposed-designer, and distort science ranging from cosmology to evolutionary biology.

Considering the ubiquity of invented religions, evolution clearly has not expanded our intellectual capacities to a sufficient degree for humans to justifiably designate our species as "sapiens" and certainly not as "sapiens sapiens".

___

"An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support."

Quo Vadis?
...section index...

Adeism

Sad is the person whose existence feels empty without belief in some invented Authoritarian Parent in the Sky.

Adeism, atheism, and agnosticism are not so much antireligious as rational.

Apologists, deists, theists, creationists, and intelligent [sick] design creationists think fuzzily from the inculcated-a-priori assumption that there must be a deity, so their thinking and arguments include fallacies of logic and, often, falsehoods.

Religionists** and Fistians, as distinct from the merely religious, misrepresent atheism as being merely another "religion" because religionists cannot think outside the dictated-opinions-box. Their beliefs and thoughts are so dominated by religious dogma that they view almost all cognitive systems as being part of a some religion or other. Of course, religious dogmatists believe that their religion is the only correct religion, conveniently ignoring the fact that their religion too could be false. Besots are too in love with religion to question their beliefs.

Creationists are blissfully unaware that in a rational world the argument concerning "creation versus evolution" is already lost to them. They cannot comprehend that the determination of knowledge about the physical world is not a matter of opinion and is not to be decided by popularity polls. Beliefs may be swayed by emotional rhetoric and illogical arguments, but belief is not necessarily equivalent to knowledge. Belief is equivalent to knowledge only when based on facts, on logical arguments based upon true premises and upon logical induction from empirical evidence. Knowledge certainly cannot be realistically claimed to result from misrepresentation and lies.

Despite the fact that deities are the product of fantasy, most creationists lack the imagination and education required to fully grasp the concepts that make the physical world comprehensible, so they miss part of the wonder of the natural world. They have been fooled into believing that science is fraught with uncertainty and inaccuracy simply because it is open to refinement. They believe that the pseudoscientific falsehoods that have been foisted onto them have equivalent truth value to scientific knowledge. Creationists have been taught to distrust experts and yet to believe religiously-biased sources without question. Intelligent design creationists have swallowed a pseudointellectual sweeping generalization and refuse to see that attacking science is not equivalent to doing science. YECs have been taught to believe blatant falsifications and to dismiss experimentally verified facts so as to maintain the delusion that a moral allegory authored by Homo religioso is the "Word of God".

In the mistaken assumption that non-acceptance of the unfounded concept of "Absolute Moral Truths", religionists misrepresent atheists as lacking moral values and mistakenly blame all of the ills of society on secular humanism. This ridiculous prejudice is based on the mistaken assumption that only those who obey weekly sermons can behave morally. In their rigid, intolerant attitudes Fistians routinely act counter to Jesus' compassionate teachings.

** Religionists are those who aggressively make a religion of adherence to rigid religious dogma rather than merely having deistic or theistic beliefs.

ɷ Fistians and Fuzzy Illogic ɷ The Rationality of A-Deism ɷɷ Bible Bumping ɷ Bible Bumping ɷ Agnostic vs Atheist ɷ Agnosticism is NOT more rational than Atheism ɷ Apologists make Apologies for God ɷ Besottism ɷ Canadians Can be Stupid Too ɷ Creationism only flourishes amidst Ignorance ɷɷ Department of Silly Ideas ɷɷ Design Debunked ɷ Dei Non Existent ɷ Dawkins refutes Behe ɷɷ Ex Ducare (Education) ɷ Furor over Stupidity ɷ In God, Distrust ɷ Inverse Correlations ɷ Moral Absolutism ɷ One Evolution, Many Creationisms ɷɷ Scientia ɷɷ Sitia non Grata ɷ Spirituality, Religiosity, and Madness ɷ Statistics on Stupidity ɷɷ Theocracy Aversion ɷ YEC yack

...section index...

Agnosticism is NOT more rational than Atheism

"So your stance, if I understand it correctly, is that yes, indeed, the likelihoods of the existences of a Judeo-Islamo-Christian God, unicorns, and Flying Spaghetti Monsters are all approximately equal. Well, see, I do think this stance is frivolous. Do you really feel that this God that we’re talking about, this God that is the basis of three religions that have profoundly shaped western civilization for around 3,000 years, that this God can be dismissed in the same breath as an intellectual prop fabricated by some graduate student? Now, I’m not saying that 3,000 years of backstory means that you must, lemming-like, go along with 89% of the rest of the population of this country and *believe* in God. But, surely you must recognize the difference here between these two hypotheses?

I guess what I’m saying is that, out of respect for the rather large majority of thinking, reasoning, good human beings who believe, I’m willing to go to greater lengths to keep my mind open about the existence of a personal God than that of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I think the collective belief of millions adds up to evidence that I’m willing to consider despite the fact that it’s not empirical."[s]

Response: Courtesy is fine, but being courteous is not a good argument for agnosticism over atheism. Courtesy is not a particularly good argument for religion either, for the adoption of any one set of religious beliefs is to deny all other beliefs. Even pantheism is discourteous to monotheists.

The fact that the Judeo-Islamo-Christian God has prospered over unicorns and Flying Spaghetti Monsters speaks only to The Clerical Publicity Machine and is not an argument for the existence of the purported deity claimed by that machine. It’s a fallacious “argument to popularity” to hold that the fact that many have been taught to believe in this Judeo-Islamo-Christian conception signifies that the teachings are valid.

If the prevailing publicity structure had instead insisted upon the existence of the Great Unicorn in the Sky, on which we would all Ride to Heaven, then priests (presumably adorned with uni-horned hats) would be extolling the virtues of this Mythical, Supernatural, All-Loving Creator of Humans.

On the basis of logic alone, it could be argued that the agnostic view, which holds that it simply is not knowable whether or not whatever deity exists, is more philosophically rigorous than stating that there is no God.

However, certain *falsified* falsibiable claims are made about the Judeo-Islamo-Christian God, so the *falsification* of these claims renders Atheism the most rational conclusion.

I grow tired of being polite to people merely because they have been brainwashed into collective belief in a non-existent, demanding, invented deity.

Quo Vadis?
...section index...

Scientia

The term science derives from the Latin word for knowledge – scientia. Although laymen tend to confuse science with the areas investigated by scientific method, science strictly refers to a systematic method of attaining knowledge about the physical world.

Scientific 'knowledge' inheres both observed, empirical data and the best possible explanation regarding the mechanisms by which the observed phenomena came about and the prediction, where appropriate, of any future manifestations that can reasonably be expected. Scientific method is most appropriately applied to natural, physical phenomena, and methodology defines the subject areas appropriate to investigation.

Historically, early Western scientists believed that their empirical observations were a cataloguing of God's works. However, science ultimately became religion-neutral. As understanding of the operations of the physical world increased, it became obvious that there is no logical necessity to invoke miraculous explanations for natural phenomena. Much to the chagrin and denial of creationists, God has been squeezed out of the shrinking gaps in scientific knowledge. As a result, scientists, those with higher education, and those with higher IQ are more likely than the general population to accept the fact of biological evolution, and to be agnostic or atheist.

ɷ Behe Retreats
ɷ Complexity Reductio
ɷ God of the Gaps
ɷ Irreducible Illogic
ɷ Through the Microscope Brightly
ɷ We, the Products of Blind Evolution

ɷ biological evolution
ɷ inductive vs deductive
ɷ science