God Exists

Theism: the view that there is exactly one being who is: •omnipotent (all-powerful), •omniscient (all-knowing), •Omni-benevolent (all-good), •transcendent (outside of space and time), •omnipresent (present everywhere), •who created the world, and •who rules the world (that is, the being interacts with the world by desiring to have the people in it behave in certain ways or believe certain things--this is to distinguish this view from deism, for example, which would be the same as theism except for the omission of the last characteristic on this list). Atheism: the view that theism is false. The Presumption of Atheism Argument 1. If a claim is extraordinary, then in the absence of extraordinarily strong evidence in its favor, the claim may be considered false. 2. The claim that a god exists is an extraordinary claim. 3. Therefore, in the absence of extraordinarily strong evidence in its favor, the claim that a god exists may be considered false. 4. There is no extraordinarily strong evidence for the claim that a god exists. 5. Therefore, the claim that a god exists may be considered false. Extraordinary claim: a claim that contradicts accepted physical laws or our common sense, everyday experiences of the world. Extraordinary claims vary in their degree of extraordinariness. For example, the claim that I have eaten lunch is does not contradict accepted physical laws or our commonsense, everyday experience, so little or no evidence other than my word on it would be required for one to accept that claim and be epistemically responsible. Let’s say that I claim that I won the multi-million dollar lottery. It does not violate the physical laws, but it would contradict our commonsense, everyday experience, since most people do not win the lottery. In this case, it is logical to require proof. Let us now say that rode through the woods on a pink/purple unicorn. This would require the most amount of evidence; because, to accept this, you need to change your views about: a. The reporting of history b. The study of zoology c. How we explore the world. It would be most rational to disbelieve the account about the unicorn until quite a bit of evidence was presented. The claim that god exists is an extraordinary claim of the highest degree of extraordinariness. This claim is about a being who is not only different from humans and animals with regard to power or intelligence, but this being exists in a much different way than anything else we have ever encountered in our everyday experience. God is alleged to be a being that exists outside of space and time. In this way god is far different from a unicorn or any other kind of thing we have encountered in our experience. We should, then, demand extraordinarily strong evidence before believing that theism is true. In the absence of such evidence, one is justified in holding that theism is false. This attitude regarding gods is common. If it did turn out that there is no evidence for the claim that god exists, it is then reasonable to deny their existence. Example, the Christians do not believe in: A. Allah (the Islamic god) B. Osiris (the Egyptian god) C. Titlacahuan, the omnipotent Aztec god. And so forth. No one has ever been able to prove that these gods do not exist, yet no Christian believes that such gods exist now or that they have existed in the past. Thus, it seems that most believers in the Judeo-Xian god disbelieve in claims about other gods even though the nonexistence of such beings has not been shown. They disbelieve in such gods because there is absolutely no evidence that such beings exist. They use a presumption of atheism. It would certainly be insufficient as a response to simply rebut that the Xian does not believe in such gods because such a belief would be incompatible with his or her presently held Xian beliefs. That would not be a sufficient justification to disbelieve in non-Xian gods. Surely no Xian reading this on the Xian websites would be satisfied if a Hindu were to claim that his or her belief that Hinduism is true is sufficient grounds for rejecting belief in the Xian god. No, most people disbelieve in the tens of thousands of gods in the past for the same reason I disbelieve in them: the claims that those beings exist is an extraordinary claim and there is no evidence for the claim. Since this is an accepted principle of belief in this case, I can use the same reasoning to reject belief in the Xian god as long as there is no extraordinarily strong evidence to support belief in the existence of the Xian god. And is there strong evidence for the existence of god? I hope to show there is not. It is important to note that some Philosophers did not think so (i.e. Pascal, the one who invented the famous “Pascal’s wager.”) Thus, in the absence of extraordinarily strong evidence for the existence of god, one would be justified in believing that such a being does not exist. Despite years of searching, I have encountered no evidence that even rises to the level of plausibility, let alone to the level of being extraordinarily strong evidence. Had there been extraordinarily strong evidence for the existence of god, I am certain that I would have been presented with it by now. I think the best explanation as to why this evidence is not forthcoming is that it does not exist. I conclude that, unless shown otherwise by evidence yet disclosed, we are justified in rejecting belief in a god. By the way, this approach not only justifies me in rejecting the god of theism, as defined above, but also in rejecting all other gods that may be proposed by other religions until such time as extraordinarily strong evidence is presented in favor of the existence of such beings. Thus, I can conclude that there are no gods at all, and this would include the god of theism and the Xian god in particular. I feel I should have re-phrased the resoltuion, "There are good reasons to believe in God"