One Should Not Presume Atheism

I thank Mestari for the opportunity to debate this interesting topic. I also note that this topic is part of MIG’s ongoing debate tournament.The resolution ‘One Should Not Presume Atheism’ is an often discussed issue in religious matters, yet as this debate will show, the issue extends to many other types of claims. In this manner one might draw some parallels to epistemology. The resolution refers to situations where one has no evidence or proof given to them. In this sense the resolution is equivalent to saying ‘Atheists do not need proof’.IntroductionThe first question the resolution raises is ‘what position should one take given no evidence?’ There are basically 3 positions we can take – affirmative, neutral or negative, with varying degrees in between. To put in religious terms, we can presume theism, agnosticism or atheism. Some basic definitions:Theism – The belief in a God (or Gods)Agnosticism – An undecided position on the existence of a God or GodsAtheism – The belief that no Gods or Deities existI’d prefer this not get dragged down into a debate over semantics. If Con could address any concerns before posting his 1st round that would be appreciated.What this debate is really driving at is what should be the default position? Determining a default positionIf one is going to presume atheism one considers it the default position. This is called the presumption of atheism [1]. A similar presumption is the presumption of innocence. The idea is that it should take good reason to move from atheist to theist as it does from innocent to guilty.This seems all fine and good until you ask yourself why atheism gets the presumptive status. Surely there is some principle that one can derive the presumption of atheism from? Let’s go through some common ideas.The default position is the negative onePut simply, the person making a positive claim has proof. This might sound reasonable at first glance – we don’t believe that a mountain will materialise in mid air and then proceed to crush a house for example. Indeed, many people do adopt this principle.The issue is that this principle leads to unnecessary scepticism. Think about the following positions (these are real, serious positions readers should know) :Beliefs don’t exist [2]An external, mind-independent world doesn’t exist (solipsism) [3]I doubt anybody believes these are the default positions that good sense would have us take. However, these positions are incredibly hard to refute. Take the second position. It’s hard to argue against it, yet it’s understandable to think an external, mind independent world does exist. Because of these examples where the default position is clearly absurd, we can rule this principle out.The default position is the more likely oneDoes that sound fair? I can’t imagine anybody saying that the default position should be an unlikely thing. So is this a good principle?No.Obviously people will differ on what is more likely! Your theist thinks theism is the more likely position, your atheist the reverse. Furthermore, assigning probabilities to many positions is highly subjective. [4] Indeed, with many metaphysical issues it’s hard to state the likelihood of a given position. We tend to have insufficient evidence or the inability to accurately interpret any evidence we do have. Furthermore, if one does provide reason to accept a claim through evidence and reason we’d agree that that’s not really a presumption anymore. I feel that readers ought to remember that we’re arguing about what position should be presumed in the absence of evidence. Obviously, if evidence is brought in we’re not in the original situation we started with.The default position is whatever both parties can agree toObviously, theists and atheists disagree about the existence of God. However, they might both agree that there is a universe and that this universe is based on the laws of physics. Our atheist might say that their position is the default because the theist goes and states that a divine reality exists. However, the theist can retort by saying that the atheist makes the claim that there’s nothing more (or over) and above the universe, a rather grand claim.As we can see, atheism isn’t presumed under this principle. The prior principles we discussed tended to be flawed. The first one led to absurd default positions and the second principle didn’t actually establish a default position (at worst, one that people will agree is a default) .What should we presume?I’m sure at this point that somebody must be thinking ‘it’s all well and good to not presume atheism, but surely you have to have some presumption?’. Somebody else might be cleverly realising that I can’t really assert theism as the default position given the way the principles above were brought down. So what should we presume? I state that one should presume agnosticism. The theist and the atheist both have a shared burden of proof in the sense that they must both try and convince the agnostic. They may succeed in proving their case, but the question at hand is what should one first believe? What should one presume? I state that one should presume agnosticism, not atheism.I think that I’ve given good reason to presume agnosticism, or at the very least provided good reason not to presume atheism. It should be interesting to see Con’s counter arguments.1 - http://www.philosophyofreligion.info......2 – http://plato.stanford.edu......3 - http://en.wikipedia.org...... 4- http://plato.stanford.edu......