Are you sure there's no god?

In today’s entry, I address the third question from Michael Brown’s 7 honest questions for atheists.

Earlier installments in this series can be found here:

1. Why are you an atheist? 

2. Can an atheist have purpose?

Brown’s third question has to do with certainty, and whether or not an atheist can be certain that there is no god. I will address this from my own standpoint – I do not presume to speak for all atheists. Readers are invited to share their own thoughts in the comments, either in reply to Brown’s question or in response to my own efforts to address it. 

Brown asks:

3. Would you say that you are 100% sure there is no such being as God? By "God" I mean an eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing being? Or would you say that for all practical purposes you have concluded that this God does not exist, although it is impossible to prove such a negative with absolute certainty?

It is important to keep in mind that knowledge is primarily positive in nature – i.e., we know that X is the case or that Y happened. We begin by observing and identifying what we directly observe, which means we do not begin by negating or denying. Only once we have some knowledge, positively so acquired, can we then discriminate between truthful and non-truthful claims, including drawing conclusions that X is not the case or Y did not happen. If I come to a lot and find a house situated on it, then I can be certain that a gas station or T-Mobile outlet is not situated on it. If I watch Billy hit a homerun in the third inning of his little league game, then I can be certain that he didn’t strike out.

The claim that “an eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing being” exists is a positive claim. The question is: on what basis could one reasonably accept it as knowledge? Knowledge is acquired and validated by means of reason – by observing things that are accessible to our senses and identifying them by means of concepts and drawing inferences from this basis. Nothing that has ever been accessible to me by means of my senses comes close to qualifying as “an eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing being,” and the many people whom I have encountered throughout my life who insist that such a being exists, have not either. The vast majority, from what I have been able to determine, accepted the claim that such a being exists early in their life, long before their rational faculties were developed sufficiently to probe such claims critically, and by the time that they had developed their rational faculties, their acceptance of this claim had become such a fixture in their psychology that to question it would be practically unthinkable. 

“But we can infer the existence of things from things that we do observe all the time,” the theist might interject. And yes, that’s true. We can, for instance, infer the recent visit of some animal when we discover its tracks in the mud. But an inference of this kind does not give us knowledge of anything outside of nature, outside the realm of existence in which we move and have our being. We already knew that animals exist and can make tracks in moist soil when walking over it. “Scientists have discovered the existence of distant stars and planets by inference from the peculiar motion of extrasolar objects that they can observe!” the theist might say. And yes, this too is possible. But again, we already know that many celestial bodies exist in the universe – some might say “billions and billions” – and as with other things we observe in the world, it should not be difficult to recognize that we do not observe all of them. And such inferences are not infallible – scientists and naturalists can make mistakes.

We know that things exist in spatial relation to other things. My house is down the street from a shish kabob restaurant, and next to the shish kabob restaurant is a jewelry shop. Billy’s desk is in the third row second from the front, and his classroom is closest to the cafeteria. Denver is east of Reno, and New York City is north of Atlanta. When we get to the claim that “an eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing being” exists, we are told that it does not exist in the same kind of spatial relations to other things that we find in the case of other existents we know. This being is said to not be part of the universe, that it is non-physical, non-natural, non-spatial, non-concrete. So again we must ask: By what means could we discover the existence of such a being? Believers tell us that it has ‘revealed’ itself to us, and we learn this from writings which other human beings have produced. So we have a series of self-affirming claims, but a wild-goose hunt when it comes to actual observational evidence supporting those claims. We are told on the one hand that this being exists, but then we are told that it exists in a fashion completely like any other existent we discover and identify in the world around us.

“But other non-physical things exist as well!” says the theist. He will cite things such as consciousness, the number five, moral norms, the laws of logic, etc. Of these, one is a biological function – consciousness – and the others are conceptual in nature. They are not actually existents in the sense that a rock or house are existents. Consciousness is in essence a kind of biological activity, dependent on physical organs – including the sense organs and nervous system, and is not per se an independently existing entity. The entity in question is the organism which performs conscious activity, and the conscious activity it performs is one of many activities that it performs. Numbers are the conceptual means by which we identify quantities, and principles of logic and morality are conceptual integrations which we form by means of abstracting from general truths about knowledge and human life needs. Numbers, moral norms and laws of logic are essentially psychological, and to affirm an analogy between these and “an eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing being” suggests that it too belongs in the category of the psychological, while the claim that such a thing exists means that it is supposed to be an independently existing metaphysical entity.

Now consider some of the things I am certain about, but which the theist will probably not contest. For example, I am certain that there is a reality; that I exist; that I am conscious; that I am a biological organism; that I am capable of discovering and validating knowledge; that I am right to be critical of what I accept as knowledge; that some claims simply are not true. And there are a number of negatives in which I am entirely certain. For example, I am certain that Star Wars is not factual, that Harry Potter is not real, that Alice in Wonderland is not actual history, that the storyline to Being John Malkovich is not based on actual events. I would suppose that theists who are familiar with these fictions would not object to the certainty I express here about them. So why can I not be certain about theistic fictions as well?

A non-believer’s certainty is a standard target of attack. The non-believer may not even express certainty in his non-theism, but if he expresses certainty in anything, this represents a threat to religious indoctrination, for it is the non-believer’s very capacity to be certain which needs to be unseated for religion to take hold. On the religious view of the world, certainty can only be allowed if it is couched in the approved context – namely in a context which affirms theistic tenets. To get his apologetic moving forward, the religionist needs to destabilize the non-believer’s mind, and the surest way to do this is to surface any certainty that the non-believer has in his convictions (assuming he has any) and to undermine it, typically by means of incessant interrogation. This not only puts the non-believer on the defensive, it also ensures that the believer’s theism is not the object of attention. Apologists will therefore frequently attempt to attack the non-believer in his epistemology, peppering him with questions of the “How do you know?” and “How can you be sure?” sort.

A non-believer’s uncertainty in any area of knowledge is to the apologist what the smell of blood in water is to a shark. Any whiff of uncertainty on the non-believer’s part is an invitation to keep chiseling away at any affirmation he makes in order to open a hole wide enough to accommodate apologetic propaganda. Topics in cosmology are easy prey for this, for who can be certain on the specifics of what might have happened billions of years ago? If the non-believer indicates that he’s not certain that the universe is eternal, for example, this might be sufficient to insert the idea of a supernatural consciousness which wished all the stars, planets, asteroids, comets and galactic dust into being. After all, “it all had to come into being somehow,” right? And while certainty that the universe is eternal is verboten, certainty in the assumption that at some point in the distant past none of the matter which constitutes the universe existed at all is encouraged, welcome, unquestioned. No actual argument is presented to prove this universal negative.

What’s ironic is that there is no objective basis for certainty in the beliefs which the apologist pushes on non-believers, but the question of certainty on the part of theism is kept safely out of view. Theism is given a pass on all the burdens that non-believers must clear to maintain their non-theism, which the theist will never allow. The epistemological basis (or what passes as such) for the believer’s position only comes up if and when the non-believer probes it: “How can you be so certain that there’s a god?” he might ask. “Well, He saved me,” might be the reply channeling Greg Bahnsen’s reply to Gordon Stein, apparently unaware that such an answer assumes the truth of what’s in question.

Which leads us back to Brown’s questions above. Brown is expressly concerned with the non-believer’s certainty in regard to his non-belief. But questions about god-belief are hardly fundamental. Believers like to suppose they are fundamental, but there are in fact matters of much more fundamental provenance when it comes to knowledge generally than whether or not some eternal mind exists in a supernatural realm. Indeed, I would argue that on an objective basis, such notions are ruled out in principle to begin with. Here I have in mind the certainties denoted by the axioms of existence, consciousness and identity. Brown does not ask about these, which is noteworthy in itself, even though the act of posing the questions he asks implicitly assumes their truth.

Consider the fundamental certainties that are available to all thinkers, which in fact thinkers take for granted without realizing they’re certain of these things, such as:

- I am certain that there is a reality; 

- I am certain that I am conscious; 

- I am certain that there are things that I know, just as I am certain that there are things that I do not know; 

- I am certain that knowledge is possible, just as I am certain that certainty is possible; 

- I am certain that knowledge is something I acquire, not something I was born with; 

- I am also certain that there is a distinction between things that are real and things that I imagine, and that the things that I imagine are not real.

Similarly, I am 100% sure that the notion of “an eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing being” has no objective basis because I am 100% sure that existence exists independent of conscious activity. If existence exists independent of conscious activity, then existence is not, and cannot be, the product of conscious activity. Every example of consciousness that we find in nature confirms that consciousness does not create matter into being. Wishing doesn’t make it so.

Notice how any act of identifying an object hinges directly on the implicit recognition that things exist and are what they are independent of conscious activity, including the conscious activity by which we identify objects. When I perceive something, I have the choice to ignore it or to identify it. Certainly my perceiving it does not bring it into existence; it had to exist first before it could stimulate my senses. Existence holds primacy over consciousness. Also, notice that when I perceive an object and say, “That’s a tree,” I am implying that the object is a tree whether or not anyone wants it to be a tree, whether anyone pretends that it is something other than a tree, whether anyone mistakes it for something other than a tree, whether or not anyone imagines that it is something other than a tree, etc. My identifying the object as a tree rests on the implication, which thinkers generally take for granted, that the object’s identity is something consciousness discovers, not creates or conjures into being ex nihilo. In other words, my act of identifying an object rests on and implies that a thing is what it is independent of conscious activity – including such activities as wanting, pretending, mistaking, imagining, etc. 

So the idea that there is this supernatural consciousness which can zap entire planets and solar systems into being by sheer wishing, is already completely contrary to what we take for granted about the nature of consciousness and what we observe in the behavior of those organisms which possess consciousness.

So we must ask: by what means would one have awareness of what the believer calls “God”? The options here are finite. Either he perceives his god directly, as one perceives a mountain, a pebble or a stapler, by looking outward. Or, he infers its existence by reference to other things which he does perceive directly. Typically theists do not claim to perceive their god directly – it’s supposed to be invisible, non-corporeal, beyond the reach of all sensory activity. However, theists often carry on as though they had direct awareness of their god, as though they were in direct contact with it. But when it comes to identifying the means by which they are supposedly aware of their god, believers tend to be rather cagey.

Many Christians point to the starlit night sky as evidence that a god must exist. Some super-powerful consciousness must have wished them all into being – they couldn’t possibly exist naturally, is the going belief. However, when I look up at the stars at night, I see little blinking lights, each emitted from a sun billions of miles away – i.e., completely physical objects. I am not perceiving “an eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing being” so far as I can tell. If I am honest – and what motivation would I have not to be? – I must confess that I have no objective basis to suppose that these little flickering lights were conjured into existence by a magic-wielding consciousness. As I’ve pointed out in earlier writings of mine, I can fetch a pebble from my backyard and examine it for days, months and years, but nothing that I find in that pebble will suggest to me that it was created by an act of consciousness.

So I am 100% sure that wishing doesn’t make it so. Believers talk of “the universe” being a product of a supernatural creative act, but curiously they tend not to frame their belief in terms of existence as such being created. They apparently think of “the universe” as only a subset of existence, as though existence writ large included “the universe” and any number of unspecified other things without specifying all that this may include and without drawing attention to this distinction for fear of giving away the game. In my view, either we start with existence (cf. the axiom of existence), or we start with non-existence. But since we know that existence exists, there’s no good reason whatsoever to start with non-existence. It is because the believer has not grasped the axiom of existence that he implicitly begins with non-existence as his starting point, and then senses a need to explain how existence came into being because it is an undeniable fact that existence in fact exists. What he cannot show is that existence is a product of wishing or any other action of consciousness. But this is the very assumption on which theism hinges to begin with.

There’s another factor to consider as well. And that is the very human capacity to imagine. Human beings from very early ages have demonstrated this wondrous cognitive ability – the ability to re-arrange things they have perceived and observed into ways that have never been perceived or observed. Whether it’s Godzilla tormenting the residents of Tokyo, Salvador Dali’s melting clockfaces, or Oral Roberts describing his conversation with a 900-foot-tall Jesus, the human mind can be quite inventive! The Christian bible has numerous references to “visions” (cf. Gen. 15:1, 46:2; 2 Chron. 26:5; Ez. 1:1; Dan. 2:19; Acts 2:17, 9:10, 12, 10:3, 18:9; 2 Cor. 12:1, and numerous others). It is unclear what if anything distinguishes a “vision” purportedly bestowed by “the Lord” and just someone’s imagination. And the teachings that can be found in the Christian bible do not in any clear way help us distinguish the former from the latter. And yet we know that believers have the ability to imagine just like everyone else.

We’ve all heard the adage “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” (Ps. 14:1). This is cult propaganda, and as such it comforts the converted, terrifies the fence-sitters, and gives wise people something to chuckle about. What’s ironic is that this statement is used in service of defending a worldview which not only encourages, but in fact requires its adherents to ignore the fundamental distinction between what is real and what they imagine. What can be more foolish than ignoring the distinction between the real and the imaginary? But even when this concern is raised in discussions with believers, they either dismiss the concern outright or just try to change the subject. 

This underscores yet another certainty of mine: I am certain that the things that I imagine are not real. I can imagine a five-headed dog breaking into my car and driving off with it just as I can imagine an accident involving a rikshaw in 19th-century Shanghai. But what I have imagined is not real and has not actually happened. Even when I read a news story of a bank robbery in some nearby town, what I imagine from the descriptions is not real – I’m only piecing together in my mind various tidbits of imagery suggested by the descriptions I read in the article. Similarly, when I read of Jesus turning the water in the waterpots into wine at the marriage of Cana (John chapter 2), I find myself imagining what the story describes, just as when I read a news article or short story by Tolstoy. And I have trained myself to be aware of when I’m imagining, and to beware of the fact that what I am imagining is not real. And no doubt the particular images that I concoct in my imagination as I read about the marriage of Cana will be different from those that another reader will concoct in his imagination as he reads the same story.

So while I am certain that I do not perceive anything that resembles “an eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing being” when I look outward at the world, I acknowledge that I can imagine such a thing. In fact, I am entirely certain that when I am imagining, I am imagining, just as A is A, just as 2+2=4. And when I imagine something, my awareness of what I am imagining is indeed very intimate – it is wholly private, and I can control it, for imagination is a volitional faculty. So if I imagine hard enough, it can almost seem real, especially if I invest in what I imagine with personal attributes, like a mind, thoughts, opinions, emotions, etc. I am certain that when I am imagining such a being, what I am imagining is not real. And quite frankly, I do not think that believers are substantially different from me metaphysically: like me, they are human beings capable of imagining things and, as was the case in my life for many years, prone to overlooking the fact that I was imagining when I was imagining, maybe even mistaking what they’re imagining for something real when in fact it is not real.

How can we rule out the very real possibility that the believer is merely imagining his god and pretending that it is real? Maybe he’s imagining and does not realize that he is imagining. Maybe he is pretending that what he imagines is real but is suppressing this truth in his own vanity, the vanity of pretending to know things that he really does not know? Perhaps religious confabulation is a type of intoxication, one to which the believer may become addicted, such that faith in a deity, be it Christian or otherwise, is in essence a type of substance abuse. Pastors and ministers may in fact be feeding off an oxytocin high when parishioners come to them for “spiritual guidance,” and the pretense to having direct contact with a supernatural source of knowledge only intensifies this experience. Yes, this is conjecture, but perhaps there’s something to it.

We might also inquire on one’s basis for certainty. Believers often portray themselves as being entirely certain that the god they worship is real (in fact, however, they may be concealing decades of salvation doubt; see here). What is his basis for this certainty? I have heard Christians on many occasions hurl the accusation that non-believers “just don’t want God to be real!” or something to this effect. In fact, I take such charges as an admission of sorts, specifically as an instance of projecting. Perhaps it is the believer who wants his god to be real. After all, we do not find evidence for the existence of “an eternal, all-knowing, all-powerful being” in nature. But we can imagine such a thing, and it is possible for an individual who has ignored the distinction between what he imagines and what is real to be so invested in what he imagines that he refuses to let it go, to in effect desire that it be real. Christian apologist Mike Licona admitted precisely this when he declares “I want it to be true” in regard to the story of Jesus’s resurrection. The believer wants his god to be real, but it does not follow from this that every non-believer is a non-believer because he doesn’t want the believer’s god to be real. Some non-believers actually report, for whatever reason, that they would prefer that a god exists, but still do not believe because they do not think, for whatever reasons, that such belief is justified. But believers, especially militant apologists, give the impression that they have something very personal at stake when they stump for their god-beliefs, as though their entire psychology will come crashing down if they admit any doubts whatsoever.

As for proving a negative, I am not persuaded that it is impossible to prove a negative. Consider for example the following hypothetical syllogism:

Premise 1: If Billy was away at camp, he could not have taken the cookies. 

Premise 2: Billy was away at camp. 

Conclusion: Therefore, he could not have taken the cookies.

To inform this with context, let’s suppose that Billy has been away at summer camp for the past two weeks, and three days ago Mom baked a couple dozen cookies. Billy was away at camp during this time, and since the cookies were baked, they’ve gone missing. Maybe Billy’s sister Lisa took the cookies, or maybe the dog ate them. Or, Mom forgot that she burned the cookies and had thrown them out. But since Billy was away, we can categorically rule him out – i.e., prove a negative – as a possible culprit. Forensic investigators apply a similar methodology to eliminate suspects in a crime. For example, if the stabbing took place on June 3rd and Mr. Belkins was on the opposite side of the country on that date, we can be safely assured that Mr. Belkins did not commit the stabbing.

But, one might object, this kind of proof involves ruling out an agent from performing an action which is known to have happened and is thus not relevantly similar in nature to the kind of existential negation which presumably characterizes atheism. Can we prove conclusively that something does not exist? Of course, here I would point out something that even a child should understand (but often adults do not): if something does not exist, there would be no need to prove that it does not exist. There is no onus to prove that the non-existent does not exist. The theistic apologist can be expected to retort, “Surely you can’t be serious with that!” Why can’t I?

Here the onus is squarely on the one who affirms the existence of something to prove its existence, especially if it is not self-evident. There’s no need to prove that a house exists at 1682 SE Minerva Street – one can just go to the address and see it for himself if he disputes it. And if we go to that address and find that it is simply a vacant lot, with no structure at all, then we know that someone is either mistaken or pulling our leg. We must keep in mind that proof is essentially logically tying the truth of a statement which is not self-evidently true to one that is self-evidently true. If I go to 1682 SE Minerva Street and see for myself that there is in fact a house situated at that address, I don’t need a proof – I have the evidence of my senses. If I do not have such direct evidence, then I would need to establish its truth by means of some sort of inference, such as a deductive argument which is validly constructed and whose premises can be shown to be true.

But in the case of the claim that there exists “an eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing being,” what direct evidence do I have? I cannot perceive a being which answers to this description directly. I’m reminded of a famous Soviet poster of a cosmonaut flying around in space and observing “No God.” When I open my eyes and look outward at the world around me, I do not find anything that I could honestly characterize as “an eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing being,” and given Brown’s concern for “honest questions,” I would hope that he could appreciate honest answers. And while I have not trekked into space like a Soviet cosmonaut, I have traveled quite extensively right here on earth and have never come across “an eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing being.” Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz has come a lot closer to such a thing than I have, and that turned out to be a fraud.

by Dawson Bethrick