How does atheism account for logic

I realize I am skipping over a veritable wonderland of skepticism and rationalism which I have no desire to deal with here. If someone honestly doubts the existence of external reality, I would submit that his problem is not philosophical but psychological and he needs to seek medical treatment immediately. This is why the presuppositional argument for the existence of God from logic fails.

A common argument from them is that atheists cannot account for logic. This is because atheists can account for logic, because logic is grounded in reality and being. God is God, God cannot be non-God, etc. That is, in a sense they are antecedently grounded in God because they would be the case even if the physical realm did not exist. Another important note is that the laws of logic are not really immaterial.

But if logic is not merely a rational enterprise and is a second order based on the first order of physical reality, then the basis for logic is not immaterial. Our abstractions of the principles are mental, such as numbers, but many, if not most, philosophers do not think that numbers are real.

They like logical principles are abstracted from the real world. The number 2 does not exist. But I can say there are two trees. The two-ness is simply the addition of one more tree than the first. Math then is like logic in that the numbers are abstracted from the material world and then one can perform mental operations. Source physicalists, whether they are ontological physicalists or ontological dualists, believe that the physical world existed before the mental world and caused the mental world to come into existence, which implies that all mental entities are causally dependent on physical entities.

Further, even if they are ontological dualists, source physicalists need not claim that mental entities never cause physical entities or other mental entities, but they must claim that there would be no mental entities were it not for the prior existence and causal powers of one or more physical entities. The argument proceeds as follows:. The other steps in the argument all clearly follow from previous steps.

A thorough examination of the arguments for and against premise 1 is obviously impossible here, but it is worth mentioning that a defense of this premise need not claim that the known facts typically thought by natural theologians to favor omni-theism over competing hypotheses like source physicalism have no force. Instead, it could be claimed that whatever force they have is offset at least to some significant degree by more specific facts favoring source physicalism over omni-theism. More precisely, the point is this.

Even when natural theologians successfully identify some general fact about a topic that is more probable given omni-theism than given source physicalism, they ignore other more specific facts about that same topic, facts that, given the general fact , appear to be significantly more probable given source physicalism than given omni-theism.

For example, even if omni-theism is supported by the general fact that the universe is complex, one should not ignore the more specific fact, discovered by scientists, that underlying this complexity at the level at which we experience the universe, is a much simpler early universe from which this complexity arose, and also a much simpler contemporary universe at the micro-level, one consisting of a relatively small number of different kinds of particles all of which exist in one of a relatively small number of different states.

In short, it is important to take into account, not just the general fact that the universe that we directly experience with our senses is extremely complex, but also the more specific fact that two sorts of hidden simplicity within the universe can explain that complexity. Given that a complex universe exists, this more specific fact is exactly what one would expect on source physicalism, because, as the best natural theologians e. There is, however, no reason at all to expect this more specific fact on omni-theism since, if those same natural theologians are correct, then a simple God provides a simple explanation for the observed complexity of the universe whether or not that complexity is also explained by any simpler mediate physical causes.

Another example concerns consciousness. Its existence really does seem to be more likely given omni-theism than given source physicalism and thus to raise the ratio of the probability of omni-theism to the probability of source physicalism. But we know a lot more about consciousness than just that it exists. We also know, thanks in part to the relatively new discipline of neuroscience, that conscious states in general and even the very integrity of our personalities, not to mention the apparent unity of the self, are dependent to a very high degree on physical events occurring in the brain.

Given the general fact that consciousness exists, we have reason on source physicalism that we do not have on theism to expect these more specific facts. Given theism, it would not be surprising at all if our minds were more independent of the brain than they in fact are. Thus, when the available evidence about consciousness is fully stated, it is far from clear that it significantly favors omni-theism. Arguably, given that fine-tuning is required for intelligent life and that an omni-God has reason to create intelligent life, we have more reason to expect fine-tuning on omni-theism than on source physicalism.

Given such fine-tuning, however, it is far more surprising on omni-theism than on source physicalism that our universe is not teeming with intelligent life and that the most impressive intelligent organisms we know to exist are merely human: self-centered and aggressive primates who far too often kill, rape, and torture each other.

In fairness to omni-theism, however, most of those humans are moral agents and many have religious experiences apparently of God. And while religious experiences apparently of God are no doubt more to be expected if an omni-God exists than if human beings are the product of blind physical forces, it is also true that, given that such experiences do occur, various facts about their distribution that should be surprising to theists are exactly what one would expect on source physicalism, such as the fact that many people never have them and the fact that those who do have them almost always have either a prior belief in God or extensive exposure to a theistic religion.

It seems, then, that when it comes to evidence favoring omni-theism over source physicalism, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Further, when combined with the fact that what we know about the level of well-being of sentient beings and the extent of their suffering is arguably vastly more probable on source physicalism than on theism, a very strong though admittedly controversial case for premise 1 can be made.

What about premise 2? Again, a serious case can be made for its truth. Such a case first compares source physicalism, not to omni-theism, but to its opposite, source idealism.

Source idealists believe that the mental world existed before the physical world and caused the physical world to come into existence. This view is consistent with both ontological idealism and ontological dualism, and also with physical entities having both physical and mental effects.

It entails, however, that all physical entities are, ultimately, causally dependent on one or more mental entities, and so is not consistent with ontological physicalism. The symmetry of source physicalism and source idealism is a good pro tanto reason to believe they are equally probable intrinsically.

They are equally specific, they have the same ontological commitments, neither can be formulated more elegantly than the other, and each appears to be equally coherent and equally intelligible. For example, it adds the claim that a single mind created the physical universe and that this mind is not just powerful but specifically omnipotent and not just knowledgeable but specifically omniscient.

In addition, it presupposes a number of controversial metaphysical and meta-ethical claims by asserting in addition that this being is both eternal and objectively morally perfect.

If any of these specific claims and presuppositions is false, then omni-theism is false. Thus, omni-theism is a very specific and thus intrinsically very risky form of source idealism, and thus is many times less probable intrinsically than source idealism.

Therefore, if, as argued above, source physicalism and source idealism are equally probable intrinsically, then it follows that premise 2 is true: source physicalism is many times more probable intrinsically than omni-theism. Notice that the general strategy of the particular version of the low priors argument discussed above is to find an alternative to omni-theism that is much less specific than omni-theism and partly for that reason much more probable intrinsically , while at the same time having enough content of the right sort to fit the totality of the relevant data at least as well as theism does.

In other words, the goal is to find a runner like source physicalism that begins the race with a large head start and thus wins by a large margin because it runs the race for supporting evidence and thus for probability at roughly the same speed as omni-theism does. An alternative strategy is to find a runner that begins the race tied with omni-theism, but runs the race for evidential support much faster than omni-theism does, thus once again winning the race by a margin that is sufficiently large for the rest of the argument to go through.

The choice of alternative hypothesis is crucial here just as it was in the low priors argument. Another would be a more detailed version of source physicalism that, unlike source physicalism in general, makes the relevant data antecedently much more probable than theism does. Thus, it may be stipulated that, like omni-theism, aesthetic deism implies that an eternal, non-physical, omnipotent, and omniscient being created the physical world.

The only difference, then, between the God of omni-theism and the deity of aesthetic deism is what motivates them. An omni-theistic God would be morally perfect and so strongly motivated by considerations of the well-being of sentient creatures.

An aesthetic deistic God, on the other hand, would prioritize aesthetic goods over moral ones. While such a being would want a beautiful universe, perhaps the best metaphor here is not that of a cosmic artist, but instead that of a cosmic playwright: an author of nature who wants above all to write an interesting story. Further, containing such a line is hardly necessary for a story to be good.

After all, what makes a good story good is often some intense struggle between good and evil, and all good stories contain some mixture of benefit and harm. This suggests that the observed mixture of good and evil in our world decisively favors aesthetic deism over omni-theism.

This makes no difference as far as the inference from step 4 to step 5 is concerned. That inference, like the inferences from steps 1 — 3 to step 4 and from step 5 to step 6 , is clearly correct. The key question, then, is whether premises 1 , 2 , and 3 are all true.

In spite of the nearly complete overlap between omni-theism and aesthetic deism, Richard Swinburne 96— would challenge premise 1 on the grounds that aesthetic deism, unlike omni-theism, must posit a bad desire to account for why the deity does not do what is morally best.

Omni-theism need not do this, according to Swinburne, because what is morally best just is what is overall best, and thus an omniscient being will of necessity do what is morally best so long as it has no desires other than the desires it has simply by virtue of knowing what the best thing to do is in any given situation.

This challenge depends, however, on a highly questionable motivational intellectualism: it succeeds only if merely believing that an action is good entails a desire to do it. On most theories of motivation, there is a logical gap between the intellect and desire.

If such a gap exists, then it would seem that omni-theism is no more probable intrinsically than aesthetic deism. For example, a deity interested in good narrative would want a world that is complex and yet ordered, that contains beauty, consciousness, intelligence, and moral agency.

Perhaps there is more reason to expect the existence of libertarian free will on omni-theism than on aesthetic deism; but unless one starts from the truth of omni-theism, there seems to be little reason to believe that we have such freedom. For example, if open theists are right that not even an omniscient being can know with certainty what libertarian free choices will be made in the future, then aesthetic deism could account for libertarian free will and other sorts of indeterminacy by claiming that a story with genuine surprises is better than one that is completely predictable.

Alternatively, what might be important for the story is only that the characters think they have free will, not that they really have it. Finally, there is premise 3 , which asserts that the data of good and evil decisively favors aesthetic deism over theism. A full discussion of this premise is not possible here, but recognition of its plausibility appears to be as old as the problem of evil itself.

Consider, for example, the Book of Job, whose protagonist, a righteous man who suffers horrifically, accuses God of lacking sufficient commitment to the moral value of justice. Flew, Antony. Flew, Antony, Buffalo, N. Freddoso, ed. Notre Dame, Ind. Gives an account of omnipotence in terms of possible worlds logic and with the notion of two world sharing histories.

It attempts to avoid a number of paradoxes. Gale, Richard, On the Nature and Existence of God. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gale gives a careful, advanced analysis of several important deductive atheological arguments as well as the ontological and cosmological arguments, and concludes that none for theism are successful.

Grim, Patrick, God cannot be omniscient because it is not possible for him to have indexical knowledge such as what I know when I know that I am making a mess. Grim outlines several recent attempts to salvage a workable definition of omnipotence from Flint and Freddoso, Wierenga, and Hoffman and Rosenkrantz. Indexical problems with omniscience and a Cantorian problem render it impossible too. Gutting, Gary, Religious Belief and Religious Skepticism. Useful for addressing important 20 th century linguistic and epistemological turns in theism discussions.

Harris, Sam, The End of Faith. Another influential New Atheist work, although it does not contend with the best philosophical arguments for God. Harris argues that faith is not an acceptable justification for religious belief, particularly given the dangerousness of religious agendas worldwide.

A popular, non-scholarly book that has had a broad impact on the discussion. Hoffman, Joshua and Rosenkrantz, A good overview of the various attempts to construct a philosophically viable account of omnipotence. Howard-Snyder, Daniel and Moser, Paul, eds. Divine Hiddenness: New Essays. Cambridge University Press. If there is a God, then why is his existence not more obvious? Howard-Snyder, Daniel, Howard-Snyder argues that there is a prima facie good reason for God to refrain from entering into a personal relationship with inculpable nonbelievers, so there are good reasons for God to permit inculpable nonbelief.

Therefore, inculpable nonbelief does not imply atheism. Hume, David, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. Hume offers his famous dialogues between Philo, Demea, and Cleanthes in which he explores the empirical evidence for the existence of God. No work in the philosophy of religion except perhaps Anselm or Aquinas has received more attention or had more influence.

Kitcher, Philip, Abusing Science Cambridge, Mass. A useful, but somewhat dated and non-scholarly, presentation of the theory of evolution and critique of creationist arguments against it. Kretzmann, Norman, A perfect being is not subject to change. A perfect being knows everything. A being that knows everything always knows what time it is. A being that always knows what time it is subject to change.

Therefore, a perfect being is subject to change. Therefore, a perfect being is not a perfect being. Therefore, there is no perfect being. Mackie, J. The Miracle of Theism. An influential and comprehensive work. He rejects many classic and contemporary ontological, cosmological, moral, teleological, evil, and pragmatic arguments. Madden, Edward and Peter Hare, eds. Evil and the Concept of God. Springfield, IL: Charles C.

Madden and Hare argue against a full range of theodicies suggesting that the problem of evil cannot be adequately answered by philosophical theology.

Manson, Neil A. The best recent academic collection of discussions of the design argument. Martin, Michael, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, One of the very best attempts to give a comprehensive argument for atheism.

Martin, Michael and Ricki Monnier, eds. The Impossibility of God. An important collection of deductive atheological arguments—the only one of its kind. A significant body of articles arguing for the conclusion that God not only does not exist, but is impossible. The Improbability of God. The companion to The Impossibility of God. An important collection of inductive atheological arguments distinct from the problem of evil.

Matson, Wallace I. The Existence of God. Ithaca, N. Matson critically scrutinizes the important arguments of the day for the existence of God. He concludes that none of them is conclusive and that the problem of evil tips the balance against.

Mavrodes, George, Mavrodes defends limiting omnipotence to exclude logically impossible acts. McCormick, Matthew, McCormick argues, on Kantian grounds, that being in all places and all times precludes being conscious because omnipresence would make it impossible for God to make an essential conceptual distinction between the self and not-self. God is traditionally conceived of as an agent, capable of setting goals, willing and performing actions. God can never act, however, because no state of affairs that deviates from the dictates of his power, knowledge, and perfection can arise.

Therefore, God is impossible. Morris, Thomas, ed. A valuable set of discussions about the logical viability of different properties of God and their compatibility. Nielsen, Kai, Philosophy and Atheism. New York: Prometheus. A useful collection of essays from Nielsen that addresses various, particularly epistemological, aspects of atheism. Naturalism and Religion. Defends naturalism as atheistic and adequate to answer a number of larger philosophical questions.

Considers some famous objections to naturalism including fideism and Wittgenstein. Oppy, Graham Ontological Arguments and Belief in God , N. Perhaps the best and most thorough analysis of the important versions of the ontological argument. Oppy, Graham, Arguing About Gods. There are no successful arguments for the existence of orthodoxly conceived monotheistic gods. He sees these all as fitting into a larger argument for agnosticism.

Papineau, David, A good general discussion of philosophical naturalism. Rowe, William, A watershed work giving an inductive argument from evil for the non-existence of God.

This article has been anthologized and responded as much or more than any other single work in atheism. Rowe, William L. Craig Ed. A good but brief survey of philosophical atheism. The Cosmological Argument. Can God Be Free? Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rowe argues against their compatibility with this principle: If an omniscient being creates a world when there is a better world that it could have created instead, then it is possible that there exist a being better than it—a being whose degree of goodness is such that it could not create that world when there is a better world it could have created instead.

Salmon, Wesley, In general, since it is exceedingly rare for things to be brought into being by intelligence, and it is common for orderly things to come into existence by non-intelligence, it is more probable that the orderly universe is not the product of intelligent design. Schellenberg, J. Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason. Schellenberg argues that the absence of strong evidence for theism implies that atheism is true. Peterson and VanArragon. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

This state of divine hiddenness itself implies that there is no God, independent of any positive arguments for atheism. Smart, J. An outdated and idiosyncratic survey of the topic. Heavily influenced by positivism from the early 20 th century. Atheism and Theism. Oxford: Blackwell. An influential exchange between Smart atheist and Haldane theist Smith, Quentin, William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. Smith gives a novel argument and considers several objections: God did not create the big bang.

If he had, he would have ensured that it would unfold into a state containing living creatures. But the big bang is inherently lawless and unpredictable and is not ensured to unfold this way. Sobel, Jordan Howard, A broad, conventionally structured work in that it covers ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments, as well as the properties of God, evil, and Pascal.

Notable for its attempts to bring some sophisticated, technical logic tools to the reconstructions and analyses. Religion was like a pain-killer hence Marx's famous reference to it as "the opium of the people" , but what was needed was to cure the sickness, not sedate the patient.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feelings of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of unspiritual conditions. It is the opium of the people. The Marxist analysis of religion was principally aimed at Christianity as Christianity was the dominant faith in the industrial societies which Marx was criticising. There are lots of people who aren't aware of the existence of a loving God. Therefore such a God does not exist.

Search term:. Read more. This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets CSS enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets CSS if you are able to do so. This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Find out more about page archiving. Reasons people choose atheism Last updated On this page Different reasons for being an atheist Reasons focussing on lack of evidence Reasons that treat God as unnecessary Arguments for God aren't convincing The problem of evil Reasons to do with science and the history of thought Reasons that treat God as meaningless Reasons that treat God as a psychological factor Reasons that treat God as a social function Karl Marx's criticisms of religion God is not apparent Page options Print this page.

Different reasons for being an atheist Intellectual Most atheists would offer some of the following arguments as their reason for deciding that God doesn't exist.

Non-Intellectual Many people are atheists because of the way they were brought up or educated, or because they have simply adopted the beliefs of the culture in which they grew up. Other people are atheists because they just feel that atheism is right. Note for philosophers The arguments and counter-arguments are presented in this article in an extremely simplified way and are intended only as a starting point for further reading and exploration. Reasons focussing on lack of evidence Law of probabilities It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence W.

Clifford Reasons that treat God as unnecessary Science explains everything Atheists argue that because everything in the universe can be explained in a satisfactory way without using God as part of the explanation, then there is no point in saying that God exists.

Occam's Razor The argument is based on a philosophical idea called Occam's Razor, popularised by William of Occam in the 14th century. This is usually simplified to say that the simplest answer is the best answer. Therefore God doesn't exist. What would William have said? What William would think if he lived now is another matter Arguments for God aren't convincing Weakness of the proofs that God exists There are a number of traditional arguments used to prove that God exists; however, none of them convinces atheists.

Here they are: The Argument from Design The universe is such a beautiful and orderly thing that it must have been designed. The "Ontological" Argument We think of God as a perfect being. Most atheists think this argument is so feeble they don't bother dealing with it. The First Cause Argument Everything that happens has a cause. The problem of evil The Argument from Evil The existence of evil seems inconsistent with the existence of a God who is wholly good, and can do anything.

The argument goes like this: Most religions say that God is completely good, knows everything, and is all-powerful. God is unwilling to prevent evil, in which case he is not good or God doesn't know about evil, in which case he does not know everything or God can't prevent evil, in which case he is not all powerful or Some combination of the above And so there is no being that is completely good, knows everything, and is all powerful. Reasons to do with science and the history of thought The best explanation For most of human history God was the best explanation for the existence and nature of the physical universe.

Before science In olden times - and still today in some traditional societies - natural phenomena that people didn't understand, such as the weather, sunrise and sunset, and so on, were seen as the work of gods or spirits.

Bible times The Old Testament portrays the world as something controlled by God. Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker. Reasons that treat God as meaningless Relative philosophy Some philosophers think that religious language doesn't mean anything at all, and therefore that there's no point in asking whether God exists.

Logical Positivism, or Verificationism Logical Positivists argued that a sentence was meaningless if it wasn't either true or false, and they said that a sentence would only be true or false if it could be tested by an experiment, or if it was true by definition.

A more accurate version of this idea can be found here: Since you couldn't verify the existence of God by any sort of "sense experience", and it wasn't true by definition eg in the way "a triangle has 3 sides" is true , the logical positivists argued that it was pointless asking the question since it could not be answered true or false.

Note for philosophers This is how one prominent philosopher put it: We say that a sentence is factually significant to any given person, if and only if, he knows how to verify the proposition which it purports to express - that is, if he knows what observations would lead him, under certain conditions, to accept the proposition as being true, or reject is as being false. There can be no way of proving that the existence of a god Reasons that treat God as a psychological factor Psychological explanations of religon Psychologists have long been fascinated by religion as something that exists in all societies.

Such a belief is clearly atheistic. Religion, to the common man, is a: system of doctrines and promises which on the one hand explains to him the riddles of this world with enviable completeness, and, on the other, assures him that a careful Providence will watch over his life and will compensate him in a future existence for any frustrations he suffers here. Freud, Civilization and its Discontents.

Reasons that treat God as a social function Sociological explanations of religion Some people think that religions and belief in God fulfil functions in human society, rather than being the result of God actually existing. Ludwig Feuerbach Ludwig Feuerbach was a 19th century German philosopher who proposed that religion was just a human being's consciousness of the infinite.