Londoner wrote:It would be asking them what they mean by 'know', or what conditions are necessary for them to say they 'believe'. Are they applying their own criteria consistently?
If they aren't, then their claim to 'know' or 'believe' wouldn't have any meaning. We could point this out without putting up any criteria of our own, or even thinking that such criteria are possible.
Oh, quite right. Nicely put.
Yes, does the way they "know" what they "know" amount to something firmer than what they claim a Theist cannot "know," that's the question they have to answer for themselves. It's the Atheist's
own epistemological standard the Atheist must meet: not something that has to be imposed by someone else. And can he really say he's more sure -- more "knowing" -- of his (or her) "disbelief" than the Theist is of his or her belief?
Moreover, how would he/she even "know" if that were the case?
As you rightly say,
...We cannot be certain about experience, induction and so on, but we take them to be true in that they are useful.
Or more often, I would say, because they seem "probable" to us. And on occasion, for no other reason than that they seem "attractive" to us. How many Theists believe in a God because they
want there to be one? We can only guess. But how many Atheists disbelieve simply because they
don't want there to be a God?
In neither case will the wisher necessarily get what he/she wishes for. Certainly the
attractiveness of the proposition has nothing to do with its truthfulness, either way.
But we do not claim certainty; regarding experience we are well aware that we can be deceived.
Indeed. That is true of even the most "scientific" facts. When I was in school, I was told that the model of the atom was a sort of collection of spinning globes in a compact, tidy arrangement. When I was older and science knew more, I found out that the nucleus and the protons are separated by vastly more "space" than I imagined.
So the model had changed; does that mean science had lied to me? I suppose in a sense it had: for it had "changed its mind." But what it had really been doing all along -- what it was still doing -- was simply offering me the most plausible explanation to which it had access at the moment. And that's reasonable.
Science is also
probabilistic knowing, not
ultimate knowing. Yet how often do the "New Atheist" set claim that belief in God is "unscientific" because it is less than ultimately "certain"? Faith is bad, they tell us; faith means believing what you don't "know" in an ultimate way. Yet on that basis or epistemological standard, they couldn't even do science themselves, it would seem.
Regarding 'deduction from premises previously held to be true' we only say that is 'valid', to indicate that any claim of truth is only formal.
Right. Just because something is "held to be true" doesn't guarantee to us that it IS true. The many previous models of the atom were all "held to be true" at times. But what we do is to use our probable knowledge as a basis for the premises we need; we are then rational IF we produce valid syllogisms therefrom.
This is why people can be "reasoning" and yet "reasoning" differently; everything depends on the accuracy of that first premise. After that, a valid syllogism can still be generated, and yet not yield truth.
A belief in God might also be something we 'take to be true'; a possibility, something we have chosen to assume for a purpose.
Well, yes...but again, I'd not overlook the possibility of believing because it's
highly plausible to us, not merely because we find it "useful." The "usefulness" explanation implies we're being a bit manipulative -- presuming a legitimate "use" of our own, then forcing our assumptions toward it. If we say "highly plausible," then at least we're willing to accept truths that may not suit our "use" purposes. After all, the truth doesn't revolve around us, and it doesn't promise us it will always be "useful" for projects we conceive. It just promises to be the truth.
...If I was then asked 'Do you know he exists, in the same sense you know objects of experience exist?' my answer would be 'No'.
Mine would be
partly 'no'; but I would add the
caveat that in some ways I know Him more certainly than I actually know many other things people are happy to concede as existing.
In that case, I do not think an atheist would have any problem with my idea of God. I think the atheists objection is where claims about God cannot be clarified in that way. Where claims to 'knowledge' appear to be unconditional. In that case the atheist objection is that no claims to knowledge, about anything, can be unconditional.
I'd agree with that. But then, the claim of Hard Atheism (i.e. "no Gods") is also far too strong to be justifiable. So we'd have to be talking about a very "soft" kind of Atheist, maybe someone who was content simply to say, "I feel I have to admit to myself that I have no evidence that I know of for God."
Now, if that were all Atheism was content to do, I would find it quite honest and take no exception with it; unfortunately, many Atheists have a tendency to go much stronger, and yet still not to feel they have to justify their skepticism. They want to say, "I don't believe in God, and
nobody else ought to either -- at least, nobody
reasonable ought to."
And that's just far, far too epistemologically demanding a task for them -- which they have set to themselves. They cannot justify that.
Let me example it instead; it'll be easier to grasp. Marxist Communism. It was Marx who called the critique of religion "the first of all critiques."
...That critique is against religion. Marx is interested in social institutions, not metaphysics.
He argues that religious institutions are tools through which the ruling classes distract the masses from bettering their condition here on earth, that is why he likens them to opium. He doesn't say 'you must not believe in God'. He may have thought that, but he is not bothered.
Marx was disturbed that the "revolution" was not happening in England. That was where he did his speculating, and where he expected it to break out. When it did not, he looked for a scapegoat. He found one in the religiosity of England -- the masses are 'drugged,' so to speak, by religion, he thought.
But in his metaphysics, Marx himself was a curious mixture. His views are, as has often been noted, quasi-messianic, and dependent on unspecified "material forces" that somehow still aim at a social teleology. The whole thing is suffused with religious fervor, despite his distaste for any real "religion." So he was very metaphysically-preoccupied; he just didn't like Christianity and Judaism in particular, as he accused them of inhibiting his utopian state.
Consider, Marx still thinks we should be good, that is we ought to be concerned about the injustices he points out, that our object ought to be to make people happier. If Marx was an atheist in the sense of only believing in material objects, where would he derive such values? I think Marx would, like Kant, have probably cited 'the moral law within me'. So Marx believes in spiritual values, but he wants us to distinguish them from superstition and political manipulation.
You're very kind to him here. I'm not sure his intentions were so nice. His language is that of violence, and his projected revolution was never intended to be bloodless. Historically, we see that when it came, it never was.
Like so many secular ideologues, once he had decided he was "right" and "on the side of history," as they are fond of saying, there was no barbarism that could not be justified in the process of suppressing dissent and producing the utopia. After all, "those people" (i.e. the religious, the dissenters) are "holding us all back," and thus preventing utopia for "all of us." They must all therefore be retrograde, the detritus of progress, and be pushed aside at any cost and in any way necessary.
But ideologies attract it faster if they are vacuous ones like Atheism: for Atheism has nothing positive to offer, ideologically, and so its deficiencies as an ideological orientation become serious immediately...
As I say, I don't think Atheism is an ideology; it is certainly not the same as Marxism.
No, to clarify, it's a kind of pre-ideology, a "clearing of the landscape" by denying the objective grounds of value. But once it's done, Atheism is dead. Being simplistic, and being pure negation, it can offer no further direction. And it's into that vacuum that Atheism has created that all manner of false ideologies (like Marxism) rush in...but this time, with no objective basis for restraint of their worst impulses.
That's what history shows us happens every time: the human race cannot endure the vacuum Atheism leaves. Having then refused to believe in God, they will believe in something else... a government, a scheme, a promise of Heaven-on-Earth, a totalitarian despot, the myth of progress, or whatever. Inevitably, it will be something more self-willed, humanly corruptible and less morally-inhibited than what went before. And they will believe in it with all the passion of the desperate -- for the residual alternative is the pit of total Nihilism. Then the roundups, the gulags and the killing fields begin.
You will be aware that Christians have differed on that subject. Those on the other side would point to plenty of texts where Jesus advises people to give away their property, and how riches obstruct the path to salvation.
Ah, but in every case the injunction to do so was a matter of
individual conscience, not social arrangement. That's a key difference: Communism is a social program; the sharing of wealth sponsored by Christ and the apostles was always enjoined upon the individual conscience. "The poor," he said, "you will always have among you." Likewise, the apostles instructed "the rich" to be "generous." Both richness and poorness are there recognized as permanent facts; the only caveat being that those who love God among the rich should be quick to share with those who had less.
Communism is the
opposite of individual conscience. In Communism, the State must steal the property of the well-off and redistribute it. No appeal to individual conscience is required there. Force is used, when necessary, and social compulsion is always the chief tool...there is no option for those not willing to share, or whose sense of fair distribution is not the same as that of the State.
... clergy...
I don't believe in those.
So Communism and Christianity seem eminently compatible regarding property. Yet the Church somehow manages to teach the opposite, which would seem to confirm Marx's idea that the role of organized religion is to make sure Christianity serves the interests of those who own the property.
Organized religion is indeed the problem. But it's the "organized," not the "religion" part that is to blame. No sooner do human beings set up an institutional structure, but some begin to exploit it to the detriment of others. That's one lesson history clearly teaches, regardless of whether one is "religious" or not.