Hey Jason,
I finally got a few minutes. Let me see if I can get into this. I'll quote heavily since we've got some distance between the two posts.
Jason wrote:I’m going to go ahead and address the first two items (the idea of an invisible god requiring belief in him, and the issue of equity) since they both address the issue of fairness. When listening to arguments against the existence of god I can’t help but notice that, once the wrapping paper is removed, at the root of these challenges is the concept of fairness. As in -- I can never be sure that there isn’t a god, but I can be sure that a certain type of god doesn’t exist. We would expect that if god does exist, then he’d at least be internally consistent. And an invisible god who is fair but only shows himself to some people, yet requires belief from all people, does not sound internally consistent. So this is a solid challenge.
I agree
Jason wrote:
It’s also important to point out that actually proving the existence of god satisfies neither the religious crowd nor the secular crowd. If we somehow prove that god exists, the religious person will say, “Big deal, even the demons believe god exists. They’re no more saved than my shoe.” And the secular person will say, “Big deal, you’ve proven that god exists. Now I only have to sort through a billion different religions to find out what kind of god this is!” I make this point because some feel that the question of god’s existence is the main concern, but this clearly isn’t the case. I’m not aware of any religious tradition that claims salvation hinges upon one simply acknowledging that god exists. What an utterly shallow qualification!
I'm not sure proof is possible. Ignoring the idea of proof as 100% certainty. Any evidence for "god" would be indistinguishable from evidence for another powerful thing which wasn't quite god, or could be evidence that the observer were delusional. An idea as fantastic as good requires extraordinary evidence, as it is an extraordinary claim. This is one of the reasons I ask for a good reason, some line of argument or compelling justification short of empirical evidence. I can't imagine any empirical evidence that would be sufficient.
Jason wrote:
Given this, it may seem like we can’t know anything for sure so why even bother? But actually, there are things we can know for certain if we give this a little thought.
1) If god does exist, he is invisible. We’re certain of this because we can’t see him.
Invisible or elsewhere or everywhere and indistinguishable. It amounts to the same thing I suppose.
Jason wrote:
2) If god created this universe, his vastness would surely stretch far beyond our ability to comprehend (given the size and immense complexity of creation). So the mental image of god being a bearded man of some sort is not even remotely in the same category of the kind of imagery that would be accurate of such a being. There is simply no analog.
I'm with you on the bearded guy, but I don't think it follows that a creator has to be bigger and more impressive than their creations. We as humans have many examples of people building something greater than themselves.
Jason wrote:
3) If god exists and made everything, he must have done so for a purpose. No one creates without a purpose. Even if that purpose is the artist’s own entertainment.
What if it creates universes as a byproduct of existence? Something it eats becomes universes once it finishes digesting... as a semi-vulgar example. Another idea I liked was that god is horridly lonely and dissatisfied when whole and shatters itself into a universe to avoid the unified state. The universe is chaotic and disharmonious to prevent recombination. I don't believe it, but it is an interesting thought experiment. If such was the case then adding to chaos and disharmony would be a good act and detracting from it would be bad.
Jason wrote:
4) If god exists, then he’s allowed us the freedom to believe that he isn’t real. He’s also allowed us a measure of moral autonomy because we can seemingly decide how to act in any given moment. This freedom also extends to engaging with alternative ideas about him which may or may not be at all accurate (religious liberty).
Or at least the perception of the same. I think this is mostly fair though.
Jason wrote:
5) If god exists, then what he made should give us information about himself. You can tell a lot about an artist by his painting. Certainly not everything, but some things (like his favorite brush strokes or colors). Even if the painting got damaged by its handlers and we’re only observing it a long time after it had been painted.
Analogies like this bother me. We can't learn much about a person by their painting, look at one of Monet's haystacks and tell me what you know about him. We can garner some better information by looking at the body of their work, but even then we need cultural context to make sense of where they were likely to be. We don't have cultural context or a body of work to look at with reality. Also, this analogy suggests that the creation can be damaged by it's handlers. In the case of humans, sure, we can break stuff, but if the universe is created by a perfect all powerful, all knowing god, we should have no more chance of damaging it than a rat in a mettle cage can damage it's environment. Less actually.
Jason wrote:
6) If god exists, he is surely more intelligent than the best of us. This would mean that, in order to communicate with us, it would be necessary for him to condescend. My wife speaks Filipino fluently whereas I only have a basic grasp of the language. So when she’s speaking to me in her native tongue, she has to speak to me as if I were a child. This is necessary for me to gain anything from the communication.
There are two things here, the first is the idea that he must be smarter than us. This assumes you need to be smart to create a universe. There is no evidence for that, so it isn't something I can simply accept. Going back to my previous digestion analogy I don't need to be smart to make highly complex excretions..
The second part I also disagree with. My wife speaks English as a third language. However I do not condescend to her. I have helped her learn to speak English, and I did so by educating, not condescending. Remember back to school, I performed far better for the teachers who led and motivated than I did for the ones who condescended and preached.
Jason wrote:
So off the top of my head, those are six things we’d rationally expect to be true about a god who created our world (given what we can observe). We can’t know that these things are true, but that’s hardly the point. We’re looking to see if reason and observation can tell us anything about what this god would be like and whether an invisible, fair, yet demanding god is internally consistent. If so, then we might have to take the idea of his existence a little more seriously than we otherwise would. It’s easy to disprove a claim that isn’t internally consistent. But a claim that is internally consistent and has great explanatory power is something we ought to take seriously.
I agree that if an idea is internally inconsistent, or contradictory, it can be rejected unless strong evidence explains the problems. I also agree we should look to things with explanatory power. I'm note sure where you think the god hypothesis has any explanatory power though. It is true that "god did it" is an explanation, in the strictest sense of it being a response to a question. I don't see how it adds any explanatory power. The classic example is from an old play whose name I can't recall. A physician instructor is talking to a student about a medicine. The instructor asks how we know the medicine will put a patient to sleep. The student responds that the medicine has a lethargic property. (Paraphrase I can't recall the word). It is a tautology, not an explanation. Shortly it makes a patient sleepy because it makes them sleepy. Explanatory power would be if the student stayed that the medicine was an opiate and the chemicals attach to part of the brain cell interrupting the flow of a chemical that prevents dream states. That is explanatory power.
Jason wrote:
So let’s consider why God would require belief in the first place. The obvious answer, I suppose, is because action follows belief. Certainty is actually overrated because we act on a persuasion, not certainty. I’m not certain that I won’t die while driving to work because it happens to people every day, but I’m fairly sure it won’t happen so I still get in my car. This is true of everything I do in a given day. We all live our lives based on what we think is probably true about reality. So I’ll maintain that concepts like proof and certainty have zero practical value. If there’s a human being out there who only does things in accordance with certainty, you’ll probably find them in a padded cell. All of us live by various shades of persuasion.
I agree, certainty should always be conditional upon the evidence and understanding that new evidence may come to light. Absolute certainty is usually called Dogma and I see very few times when a dogmatic response to a problem or question is a good thing.
Jason wrote:
So if belief (another word for persuasion) is so important, then why does God seemingly hide from us? That doesn’t seem very fair at all. And yet, it does seem to me that while God does hide, he hides in plain sight. In other words, those who want to find God will see evidence of him everywhere. And those who would prefer that there is no God can choose their own confirmation bias. We find what we’re looking for (“seek and you will find” goes both ways). This might be the reason that God offers us some evidence of his existence, but not so much that it’s impossible to doubt. If God is concerned with the heart of the individual above all, then one’s motivation toward bias actually speaks to the state of one's heart. This seems entirely fair.
I don't think this is a fair representation of reality, or a fair expectation from god. Essentially you are saying that a believer should cultivate confirmation bias. I don't disagree that believers do cultivate such a bias, to me that seems to be exactly the purpose behind rituals like the reciting of the Apostle's Creed. I don't disbelieve because I want to. I disbelieve because the ideas I've found don't withstand scrutiny. The bible contains internal contradictions, and as such can be rejected on that basis. If I am the product of a designer, that designer included my skepticism in the design, yet according to doctrine, it will also punish me for my non-belief. That isn't good or just.
Jason wrote:
You might say, “It’s not very charitable to say those who don’t believe are merely looking for reasons not to believe.” And while it’s true that not all unbelievers fall into this camp, I think those skeptics who are more open minded will eventually find enough reasons to become persuaded. We’re all on a continuum of belief. It’s a sliding scale, not a transaction. Some would prefer not to believe. Others are inching toward belief. A few are fully persuaded. But I still maintain that we will find whatever it is we’re looking for (be it salvation or oblivion) and psychologists are fond of demonstrating this. What better way to test the heart than to observe which path one is seeking? In this sense, confirmation bias is actually a good barometer of one’s inner motivations.
Again this reads to me like you think we choose our beliefs, and that we are incapable of fighting against or recognizing our biases. I didn't stop believing because I wanted to, I stopped because I was curious and when I looked into my faith I found it to be foundationless. When I examined my experiences, I discovered that I could get exactly the same feelings from praying to pagan gods, and was left ultimately feeling exactly as lonely with them as I felt with the christian idea. That it wasn't until I looked to myself and other people for a source of strength, and emotional comfort that I found peace again.
Jason wrote:
This confirmation bias, or path selection, also speaks to which religious tradition we adopt in many cases. I grew up mostly secular but adopted Christian beliefs. Richard Dawkins grew up in a Christian home but later adopted atheist beliefs. In societies where religion and culture are closely knit together, adherents rarely move away from those inherited beliefs. But sometimes they do. We often forget that the earliest Christians were brought up in a strong religious tradition that was deeply tied to their birth culture. They all defected. So we have a wide range of how and why people potentially move toward or away from certain beliefs. Those who see God as a higher intelligence who chose to condescend, and also like the idea of forgiveness will be inclined to move toward the teachings of Jesus. Those who don't like those things will be inclined to look elsewhere.
I could say more on this, but I don’t wish to intrude on your time more than necessary. I’ll tackle the other items in my next post.
I'm not really sure where to go with this last bit. I can agree with you that we are much more likely to adopt the religion of our parents than another, at least in our youth. Do you think that Hinduism or Buddhism or Islam offer valid paths to god?
I don't know if you want to try responding to everything, or just pick one or two things. We can always work back to whatever. I can get on here pretty regularly with my phone, but only for a few minutes at a time. I'll check back regularly and try not to leave you hanging so long on our next exchange.