On deism: does god exist?

I have observed, indeed, generally, that while in protestant countries the defections from the Platonic Christianity of the priests is to Deism, in catholic countries they are to Atheism. Diderot, D’Alembert, D’Holbach,Condorcet, are known to have been among the most virtuous of men. Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.

Thomas Jefferson

Deists are goddites except they don’t believe in revealed religion.

The author of does god exist? tells us yes.

The author tells us we commit a category error when compare Santa, fairies and god. He writes

fairies and Santa Claus demonstrably belong in the realm of childhood and most people, adults and children, know what they are and look like.

and I say that gods belong to our more childlike origins, that is, they belong to the ignorant ages. That adults believe in gods or that today god is conceived as anything from being personal to a vague ground of being doesn’t negate the fact that belief in god is similar to belief in gremlins. The only difference being some people grow up and stop believing in gremlins.

So when he writes

This is not true of God. Islam rejects any possibility of representing Allah and Judaism used Yahweh to signify God, originally not a name, rather an unpronounceable collection of letters. Christianity has given God a human face in Christ, but even then that is only an aspect of God who is ineffably greater.

it is only to say that human beings have created, in their imagination, a being whose name they fear to mention, a monster. I remember as we were growing up, we would not mention leopards by name at night. They told us, if we mentioned its name, we  would be its meal for the night. I never found out the reason behind this prohibition. Fear was enough to prevent us from trying. The church uses the same mechanism to get its adherents to toe the line.

One wonders why most people think of atheism as a belief system just like theism. How is it difficult to comprehend atheism is a lack of belief. The author tells us

it is as much a belief system as theism, both being faiths profoundly held. It often seems the God atheists vehemently do not believe in is not a God theists do.

I want to count those atheists of faith. And if you missed it, atheists lack belief in all gods.

Agnostics, like the ones I interact with, and Bob comes to mind, is in practice an atheist. His position of agnosticism is one of knowledge. He says, as an empiricist, the nature of god is unknowable one way or the other. From this point, I only go a step further and say, if the nature of god is unknowable it is not for us to know and for all purposes, non-existent. I only differ with my friend Bob in the fact that I believe to know the origins of god belief, we must look at the savage state, and we will find in all cases, god belief was born out of ignorance and the rationalizations are later developments.

One can see even in this statement

This leads some to posit a Prime Mover or Grand Designer, which is not to suggest some human-like being on a grander scale. Both phrases can be picked apart if they’re taken literally, but accepting the limitations of language to describe what may always lie beyond human comprehension, they can be used indicatively.

that it is ignorance that is the mother of all gods. The author instead of admitting his ignorance of why the universe is, imagines there is a grand designer and very quickly tries to defeat accusations of anthropomorphism by declaring this designer as something other than human like.

Deists like Voltaire were those who could no longer believe in the god of revelation. They imagines a god who didn’t give a fuck, but still believed in a god. It is easy to understand then why Voltaire is accused of trying to suppress the Testament of Jean Meslier, a priest turned atheist.

I will conclude in the words of Ingersoll

A few years ago the Deists denied the inspiration of the bible on account of its cruelty. At the same time, they worshiped what they were pleased to call the God of Nature. Now we are convinced that Nature is as cruel as the bible; so that if the God of Nature did not write the bible, this god at least has caused earthquakes and pestilence and famine, and this god has allowed millions of his children to destroy one another. So that now we have arrived at the question- not as whether the bible is inspired and not as to whether Jehovah is the real God but whether there is a god or not. The intelligence of christendom today does not believe in an inspired art or an inspired literature. If there be an infinite god, inspiration in some particular regard would be a patch-it would be the puttying of a crack, the hiding of a defect, in other words, it would show that the general plan was defective.

 

Robert G Ingersoll on the Deist God

A few years ago the Deists denied the inspiration of the bible on account of its cruelty. At the same time, they worshiped what they were pleased to call the God of Nature. Now we are convinced that Nature is as cruel as the bible; so that if the God of Nature did not write the bible, this god at least has caused earthquakes and pestilence and famine, and this god has allowed millions of his children to destroy one another. So that now we have arrived at the question- not as whether the bible is inspired and not as to whether Jehovah is the real God but whether there is a god or not. The intelligence of christendom today does not believe in an inspired art or an inspired literature. If there be an infinite god, inspiration in some particular regard would be a patch-it would be the puttying of a crack, the hiding of a defect, in other words, it would show that the general plan was defective.

On the Deist god

The deist exclaims, “Be careful not to worship the ferocious and strange God of theology; mine is much wiser and better; He is the Father of men; He is the mildest of Sovereigns; it is He who fills the universe with His benefactions!” But I will tell him, do you not see that everything in this world contradicts the good qualities which you attribute to your God? In the numerous family of this mild Father I see but unfortunate ones. Under the empire of this just Sovereign I see crime victorious and virtue in distress. Among these benefactions, which you boast of, and which your enthusiasm alone sees, I see a multitude of evils of all kinds, upon which you obstinately close your eyes.

 

Compelled to acknowledge that your good God, in contradiction with Himself, distributes with the same hand good and evil, you will find yourself obliged, in order to justify Him, to send me, as the priests would, to the other life. Invent, then, another God than the one of theology, because your God is as contradictory as its God is. A good God who does evil or who permits it to be done, a God full of equity and in an empire where innocence is so often oppressed; a perfect God who produces but imperfect and wretched works; such a God and His conduct, are they not as great mysteries as that of the incarnation? You blush, you say, for your fellow beings who are persuaded that the God of the universe could change Himself into a man and die upon a cross in a corner of Asia. You consider the ineffable mystery of the Trinity very absurd Nothing appears more ridiculous to you than a God who changes Himself into bread and who is eaten every day in a thousand different places.

Well! are all these mysteries any more shocking to reason than a God who punishes and rewards men’s actions? Man, according to your views, is he free or not? In either case your God, if He has the shadow of justice, can neither punish him nor reward him. If man is free, it is God who made him free to act or not to act; it is God, then, who is the primitive cause of all his actions; in punishing man for his faults, He would punish him for having done that which He gave him the liberty to do. If man is not free to act otherwise than he does, would not God be the most unjust of beings to punish him for the faults which he could not help committing? Many persons are struck with the detail of absurdities with which all religions of the world are filled; but they have not the courage to seek for the source whence these absurdities necessarily sprung. They do not see that a God full of contradictions, of oddities, of incompatible qualities, either inflaming or nursing the imagination of men, could create but a long line of idle fancies.

Jean Meslier

An apology for atheism

My theistic friends are all nice people albeit with beliefs that I think are ridiculous and have no basis other than that they have been indoctrinated to hold such beliefs as true. It is no fault of their own. Maybe some of them think I need help and worry for my soul-whether we have a soul is question of another day- and silently pray that I would come to believe in something even if it is Hare Krishna just as long as I have a belief.

The biggest problem why atheism is misunderstood is not because atheists do a poor job at apologetics, on the contrary, atheists do a very splendid job in justifying their belief but believers it appears to me listen to fellow believers who have no clue on what atheism is. Atheism is misrepresented and often times A straw man who doesn’t stand a chance in a sunny day.

It is my intention in this post to deal with some of this issues as I understand them. Any errors or misrepresentations are therefore my own. A friend of the type I have talked about in the introductory paragraph sent me a link  conservapedia.com to read through just in case am not sure why am an atheist. I want to look at some of the claims made in the page, so excuse the length of this post should it be longer than they usually are since the article is a book long.

The article starts with looking at types of atheism by postulating these questions

There are different types of atheism, based on different answers to the following questions:

What God or gods does the atheist deny?
Why does the atheist deny?
How does the atheist’s denial manifest itself?

The atheist lacks a belief in the existence of god[s] just the same way the christian lacks a belief in the existence of fairies-I hope this is true of christians- and here the atheist makes no distinction whether it is the sun-god of the Egyptians of old or Jehovah -a misnomer- of the Jews and Christians or Allah or whatever god you know of. The atheist makes the above claim since there is no evidence-verifiable evidence- of a god. Subjective experiences of believers of the said gods can’t be treated as evidence. The god of revelation, that is of the Judeo -Christian religions or rather of the three Abrahamic religions are so incoherent in their internal definitions that they/it just can’t exist. Any person who has a belief in some god, such as the God of Spinoza is referred to as a Deist. This God for all we know could have create the universe and left it to run as it so pleases and is not a personal god, doesn’t plan to burn us in hell for not believing in him and more so doesn’t interfere in human affairs. It is therefore important to make this distinction.

• Militant atheism which continues to suppress and oppress religious believers today .
• Philosophical atheism – Atheist philosophers assert that God does not exist.
• Practical atheism: atheism of the life – that is, living as though God does not exist

As I had said earlier, atheism is a lack of belief in gods. If writing that belief in god is not supported by evidence is militant, by all means am a militant atheist. Here my friend writes about militant atheism, I hope you like it.  No atheist that I know of, suppress or oppress religious believers. It is simply not possible, there are more believers than atheists and most believers proselytize everywhere, why they are not called militant I don’t know. The second and third statements don’t make sense,  atheism is a lack of belief in gods, then anyone who is an atheist will live as though god does not exist and will assert there are no gods.

It is false to claim that there has been attempts to dilute the definition of atheism. There is a difference between agnosticism which deals with the question of knowledge -when applied to god is to say we can’t know the nature of god and whether one exists- while atheism is a question of belief or lack thereof in the existence of gods. Neither are atheists shifting the burden proof. This is and must remain the case, if I make a claim of a celestial tea pot aka Russells tea pot, the person making the positive claim provides the evidence not the other way round!

To call atheism a religion, which appears to be widespread among believers is not far from calling not collecting stamps a hobby and a bald head a hair colour. Enough said!

To quote two atheists as expressing doubt over their disbelief and then draw a conclusion that atheism is not true is first and foremost intellectual laziness and to be dishonest to say the least. More importantly, it assumes that atheists are some sort of supermen not subject to frivolities that beset our human existence. Would a believer expressing doubt once in a while make him less of a believer? I don’t think so.

To make anecdotal statements without proof is also poor reporting. To mention one person who became a believer though raised by an atheist parent is a poor correlation. What about the thousands raised in believing families and become atheists? This does not give evidence for anything except to show that human beings are capable of holding opinions different to those held by their parents or teachers or whatever authority you care to mention.

Unless the administrators of these page live in a cave somewhere or have a different source of statistical data on belief or lack thereof, I don’t see how they can make the claim that atheism is losing numbers.

In 2012, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary reported that globally every day there are 800 less atheists per day, 1,100 less non-religious (agnostic) people per day and 83,000 more people professing to be Christians per day

I want you to take in those numbers. Then look at this report here and tell me who are being [dis]honest in their reporting. In any case if there are so many people professing christianity, the reason can be easily explained that believers- like Catholics who follow the Vatican ban on birth control- are likely to have more children than the average atheist.

Till I read this article, it hadn’t occurred to me atheism was a business. All along I have always known Churches to be in the business of alms collection and tithe and would be concerned with market share. This is news to me!

The question of evolution is a scientific question. It has however been noted that those who deny the evidence for evolution haven’t read it and are most likely religious. What I can draw from this conclusion is believers like to take things on faith and prefer when a miracle is included in the works, well science presents evidence and excludes miracles. This to me explains the difficulty religious believers have with evidence for evolution, we are asking them to do something they aren’t accustomed to doing.

I don’t know whether there can be infighting in not having a belief in god. If the writers of these article refer to Atheism+ then all that can be said is they miss the whole point by a million miles. There is no contention between atheists on the existence of god, where there is a small disagreement or misunderstanding is whether atheism can mean more. At the very least that is how I understand it and am open for correction. Why we need a leader still baffles me. I haven’t heard of any complaints among atheists or rather there has been no vote for a pope. The atheist says, and rightly so, that every man can think for and lead himself! No pope or guide-book is required. Our collective experience as sentient beings is enough guide on this matter.

To argue against atheism using communism is again intellectual dishonesty. Russia under Stalin protected the Orthodox Church, so I don’t know where this argument holds any water against atheism.

The logical arguments for the existence of god have not been arguments against atheism but rather attempts by religious apologists to argue for the existence of god and all have been refuted by atheists to be fallacious and weak. So the theist need to spend time reading the various refutations to these arguments.

No atheist in recorded history has killed masses for believing in god. Atheism has never been the reason for the murders! The murderers like Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin could have been atheists but they never killed to promote atheism, no it was always a struggle for state power and control. There is no where I have seen where atheists condoned slave trade and for this I think evidence need to provided.

On charity, I have to wait for data that confirms this, so I will suspend judgement until this data is available then I will add it here.

There is a whole question of morals. Am shocked at what the posters claim about atheism and morality. I know of no atheist who advocates bestiality. Homosexuality is only evil in the eyes of a believer. No atheist condones rape and every other immoral act that we can agree on. To say atheists are immoral just because they don’t believe your god commanded moral laws is absurd to say the least.

Any one making a claim of a miracle has to provide evidence for the same.

I wake up, go for a run, I read during my free time, I eat well and am atheist. I know of christians who are obese. What does this prove, nothing, except that some people will take care of their health some will not and has nothing to do with religious belief or lack thereof.

I have written two articles here and here on suicide and I read a lot of assisted dying here and whereas am saying any one who wants to commit suicide has every right to do so. I don’t think there is anyone atheist who calls for mass suicide. By the way there are more suicides in Japan than in Scandinavian Europe which is mainly atheistic.

I didn’t know there was a link between religion and sportsmanship until this moment. What a discovery 🙂

The atheist has a choice to debate or not to debate whoever he chooses. If you have listened to one William Craig debate, you have listened to all of them. They don’t present anything new except trying to improve on Anselm of Canterbury circa 1056 and add in the new discoveries science has made to their god’s cv. Even I would refuse to debate such people. I think most of the atheists named refuse to debate the creationists because it is rather a waste of time to start such a debate if at the end you are not going to change your position and especially when one has shown they are not interested in considering the evidence for a certain position.

We live in a materialistic and natural world. Any one who has evidence to the contrary must provide it and have it reviewed by their peers in that field. To accuse atheists of deception is malicious. To draw such an inference from Darwin’s letters is also a failure to be honest. At no time did Darwin indicate a god was responsible for evolution, in fact evolution theory does away with the need for a god.

I have attempted to respond to some of the issues raised in that page regarding atheism, those I haven’t covered I hope you my good readers can weigh in on and where am wrong or have misrepresented atheists or theists I welcome correction and I proffer apologies in advance.