Surely We Can Disprove Certain Gods

Many atheists like Bill Nye the Science Guy also identify as agnostics (video)--as atheists because they see no reason or evidence for belief in God, and as agnostics because it cannot be proven that God does not exist. This last point provides a favorite comeback for Christian apologists--“Sure, we can’t prove God exists, but you can’t prove He doesn’t!”--and atheists usually grant this, but I’m not sure they should.

Many of a scientific bent allow the apologists this point for empirical reasons: We haven’t observed everything in the universe, so God could be out there somewhere, in a distant galaxy, in the space between the smallest of subatomic particles, perhaps racing along the strings that bind us. If God is a thing to be discovered, then we really won’t be sure until every last nook and cranny of the great unknown has been known.

On rational grounds, however, the arguments against the existence of God are much tighter. One of the most well-known examples is David Hume’s formulation of theodicy based on the supposed attributes of God:

"Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?" (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)

In other words, because evil exists, we know that God, if such a being exists, cannot be what people say God is: omnipotent and good. To build upon that, if there is a being out there who is extremely powerful but falls shy of omnipotent and isn't benevolent, then we would not call that being God. Therefore, God as we think of such a being, does not exist.

God is fraught with other paradoxes as well. If God is out there in the universe somewhere and involved with the world--walking his dog behind the Ring Nebula, curing a loved one’s sickness, or opening up a slot at the local daycare when you really need it--then God would be subject to the limitations of space-time. Even to break the rules of nature--like by stopping the sun as in Joshua 10:13--God would have to do something to break the rules, have to exert a certain kind and degree of effort to get the job done, have to put him/herself out. And none of this is coherent with the idea of God as limitless and subject to nothing but divine will.

It solves nothing to posit a God outside the universe, because then God would have absolutely nothing to do with us--and that doesn’t fit our idea of God either. But what about a God outside the universe, but one who reaches in to fiddle around? No, then you are back to a God subject to the laws of reality, at least to some degree.

Ontological arguments for the existence of God, abandoned by serious theologians centuries ago but still popular among charlatans on the speaking circuit, attempted to prove the existence of God by his very definition. They said the definition of God, the idea of God, includes his actual existence, so the very fact that we have an idea of God must mean he exists.

The case I’m making is sometimes called the Reverse Ontological Argument, because it seeks to disprove God’s existence by the very definition of the word. In defining God as omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, benevolent, limitless, absolute, absolute other, and so forth, we give rise to logical contradictions.

Such a being cannot exist if we take reason seriously.

I suspect that the reason Nye and other prominent atheists don’t often bring up such ontological objections is they aren’t primarily philosophers. Their books mostly stick to their respective areas of expertise. Also, public debate isn’t encouraging of dense, abstract arguments.

Not being the world’s greatest philosopher, I have probably missed weaknesses in such rational arguments. A formula like Descartes’ cogito ergo sum seems about as watertight as a first principle could be, but great minds have found holes in it. At the very least, rational arguments make a strong case for ruling out the existence of certain kinds of gods--any gods worth the name anyway--and it's a point I wish atheists were more willing to press.

 

The Devil May Very Well Have Put Dinosaurs Here

One of my favorite musical comebacks in recent years was made by Alice in Chains, with Black Gives Way to Blue in 2009. I was sufficiently moved to blog about it at the time (on a MySpace page I can no longer access), and my enjoyment of the album has only grown in the years since. Thus, I have been eagerly awaiting a new release, and The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here does not disappoint.

Musically, The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here grinds along to almost 70 minutes in inimitable AIC style: plenty of dissonance, sludgy guitars, thoughtful lyrics and healthy doses of acoustic chill and melancholy. The new AIC never comes screaming and kicking at you the way early releases like Facelift and Dirt did, but the band has mastered a polish that was inchoate before. Much more could be said about that, but it’s the album title I want to focus on.

The first thing I thought when I heard the title The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here was that according to the logic of common Christian apologetics, the Devil might very well have done just that. I’m referring to the cosmological argument for the existence of God, according to which everything is cause and effect, and since the chain could not go back to infinity, there must have been a First Cause, a Prime Mover, that got the whole shebang going.

Theologians have known for some time now that the argument doesn’t bear scrutiny, but that doesn’t stop Christian, Muslim and Jewish apologists from purveying its poor logic anyway. One of the biggest problems is that even if it proved the existence of a First Cause--and it doesn’t by a long shot, for reasons I won’t go into here--it would not tell us anything at all about what that First Cause was like. It wouldn’t tell us that the First Cause was good, still engaging with the world, or did things like send his son to earth to suffer and die for our sins. In other words, the First Cause could just as well be the Devil--and as Creator, put dinosaurs here.

The songwriters more likely had in mind the belief to which some fundamentalist types of Christian subscribe according to which the Devil put dinosaur fossils in the soil in order to deceive people about the true nature of God’s creation. They believe, according to a literalist interpretation of certain passages in the Bible, that God created the Earth less than 10,000 years ago. Since dinosaur fossils date many millions of years back, the Devil, the great Deceiver, must have put them there and made them look older than the Earth really is.

Obviously, not all Christians feel the need for such mental gymnastics to preserve their faith. I would guess that AIC count themselves atheists, but it doesn’t take an atheist to deplore the ignorance, money, hate and fear that come with some religious strains such as those of Westboro Baptist Church, which AIC clearly takes aim at in the song after which the album is named:

“The devil put dinosaurs here

Jesus don’t like a queer

The devil put dinosaurs here

No problem with faith, just fear.”

Okay, they’re just rock-and-roll lyrics, but I’ll take a voice raised for the side of Good anywhere I can find it, and I’ll add mine to it.