For as long as humans could reason, we have been attributing unexplained phenomena to deities. The question of “does God exist?” has been debated amongst thinkers for several millennia. Another way to approach this problem is, “is it reasonable to believe that a god exists?”. The distinction may be subtle but plays an important role in what we can consider “correct reasoning”.
Throughout the ages, there have been thousands of gods postulated. Many of these gods were responsible for a specific element of our lives, for example; the God of the seas, the God of the skies, the God of the harvest, the God of the underworld, etc. These gods were all thought to be sat in judgment of the humans who worshipped them and if they were pleased, they would make our lives better in some way.
Looking back, it is easy to understand that these ancient civilisations had no idea how lightning occurred and so believed it to be a result of anger or retribution from the gods.But now that we have more information and a better understanding of how the world works, it becomes apparent why this type god is no longer believed in by the overarching populace. With that in mind, we cannot prove that Zeus does not exist and is sitting in the clouds somewhere, invisible, judging our every move. We may know that lightning can occur naturally but that doesn’t mean lightning must occur naturally.
So if we cannot disprove that Zeus exists, why do most people not believe that he does? This is a question of likelihood. The most common position would be, based on all the evidence we have been able to record, there has not been a single occurrence of lightning that could not be explained without the need for anything supernatural to have intervened. We can take this a step further. Let’s say there was an occurrence of lightning that was recorded on some kind of super slow-motion camera. This lightning came out of nowhere, there were no clouds in the sky, in fact, it was bright sunshine at the time. You were even sitting in the park wearing shorts eating an ice lolly when it struck. Would we then be justified in believing that it was the result of Zeus’s anger?
Let’s use an example from Matt Dillahunty to explore this further. Imagine that you are a detective investigating a murder. You don’t have any evidence yet, but two people stand out to you as suspects. You begin questioning the first one. He immediately provides a solid alibi which you verify and so you disregard him as a suspect. Does this mean that the second suspect is guilty? The answer is no. Before someone can be considered guilty, evidence of their guilt must be presented. The fact that the other suspect turned out to be innocent, does not make this suspect any more guilty than they would have been previously.
The point of this example is to illustrate that even if we have no idea what caused this lightning on a clear sunny day, it does not give any additional credence to the cause being supernatural.
One small caveat to this is that if there were only 100 possible causes and you rule one of them out, there is now a statistical increase in the probability of the others being true (it went from 1/100 to 1/99) but this doesn’t change the actual truth of only one of them. One possibility being proven false does not make any of the other 99 more true than they were previously. One of them is still true and the other 98 remain false.
In our lightning example, we have one explanation of the normal cause of lightning which may have been proven to be false, but we have no other explanations which have been proven to be true. You could come up with an infinite number of supernatural theories for the lightning and each of them should never be believed until there is sufficient evidence to conclude that they are true or at least likely true.
Modern Day Religion
This is the same situation we have in modern-day monotheistic religions. Take Christianity for example. There is a holy book called “The Bible” which contains a number of stories and perspectives of many different people spanning several millennia. Let’s just take the first sentence of the first book, Genesis:
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth“
Holy Bible, King James Version
This is a claim about how the world came about. Today, scientists have all sorts of models of the big bang and how we got to where we are today. Could it be that they are all wrong? Or even that they are right but it was actually God who triggered the big bang to begin with?
It is of course conceivable that it is the case. We have all seen enough science fiction movies to imagine something like this occurring but just like the second suspect, we cannot believe him to be guilty purely because other theories have proven false.
I cannot prove that God did not create the earth, but I can say that there has not yet been any evidence presented to indicate that he did so.
If you doubt why believing this claim is wrong from a rational perspective, you only have to consider another supernatural theory. Imagine that there is a family of elves that live outside of our universe and every time one of them sneezes, a new big bang is triggered which creates a new universe. It fits the same attributes as the Bible’s claim. It is conceivable (you have already imagined it after all) and you cannot prove that this is not the case, yet no-one would have an issue with ignoring this theory as true or likely true. Each of these claims has equal evidence for its truth and yet most of the planet believe some variation of the former.
A common argument for why we should believe what is in the bible is that the bible contains numerous details which can be reasonably evidenced to be true. There are after all stories about real places that actually existed and/or still exist today. The problem is that just because a book depicts an accurate representation of the world we know and even tells stories which we can verify to be true, does not mean that we are warranted in believing everything it has to say.
Claims vs Evidence
Claims and evidence are two terms that are often equivocated when discussing the topic of ancient texts.
Let’s take a fictional book like Harry Potter. This book tells a story set in and around London, about a boy wizard who goes to a magical school. Now we know that London is a real place and they actually visit very specific places in London like King’s Cross Station. So when they say that at this station there is a platform between 9 and 10 called platform 9¾, it may seem quite obvious that this is a claim rather than evidence. So what makes something evidence?
Google defines evidence as, “the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid.”
So we can look at the Harry Potter example and see that it has not presented any facts or information which indicates the existence of this platform 9¾. All it does is make a statement about its existence which must be considered a claim. It does present data to indicate the location if it does exist and we can investigate this site and see that there is nothing there.
Some Harry Potter enthusiasts will tell you that only wizards can see and interact with it and none of us are wizards therefore we can’t prove it doesn’t exist. Just like we cannot prove that Zeus is not sitting in the clouds, invisible, the same logic can be applied here and therefore these enthusiasts would be correct. As with Zeus in the previous example, the correct position to take is to withhold belief until sufficient evidence is presented – we cannot believe everything is true until it is proven untrue or we would be forced to believe in an infinite number of contradictory things. This position of withholding belief is at the heart of skepticism.
What should be considered sufficient evidence?
Despite what you may think, we cannot choose what we believe in. If belief is the state of being convinced that something is true or not true, it follows that before we believe something to be true, we must first be convinced that it is the case.
This does not mean that we have to be absolutely certain that it is true but to be convinced, we must think it is at least likely to be the case.
“A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence”
David Hume
To illustrate this, let’s imagine a hypothetical scenario. I have a colleague at work called Jack. I know him fairly well but I don’t yet consider him to be a close friend. One day, I get into the office and Jack starts to tell me about his new pet hamster. He describes the hamster and tells me it’s name and all the fun things it does. Now without adding any details about Jack’s trustworthiness or character, I think most people in this situation would believe that Jack did indeed get a new pet hamster. This is despite any evidence other than Jack’s own testimony. This is because the claim is fairly inconsequential to our own lives. We know that hamsters exist and are often kept as pets. We know that they are not expensive and Jack could easily afford one. We do not know for certain that Jack did get a new pet hamster but we are convinced that it is likely the case and importantly if we are wrong, the impact to us is very insignificant.
Now one thing to note here is that although we have accepted the claim that Jack has a new pet hamster, this does not mean that we are 100% sure that it is true. It is important to understand that if evidence came to light which put into question Jack’s ownership of a hamster, we would re-evaluate our beliefs and potentially change our minds. This point is crucial because it is something that we do every day while we collect data about the world.
Let’s change the scenario a little. Instead of Jack getting a new pet, this time when you come into the office, Jack shows up in a brand-new suit and tells you that he just won the lottery jackpot. Before we get any other information, we can evaluate it by the same method as the pet. We know that the lottery exists and is won once or even twice a week by someone, we know that tickets aren’t expensive and that Jack could easily afford one. The difference is that we also know that the odds of winning are extremely low, so we remain unconvinced that he has won, that is to say, that we do not yet believe him. Before we can be convinced that it is the case or is likely the case, we need some more evidence.
Now Jack pulls out a lottery ticket. He shows you the date and the numbers on it and then logs into the lottery website and shows you the winning numbers. They are an exact match. This is where many people’s opinions will be split. Jack has now shown some meaningful evidence. The more skeptical among us may still not be convinced but I imagine many people would be.
If you have ever attended a magic show, you will know that tricks of this nature are done all the time. Something much harder to fake than a lottery ticket would be a live viewing of his online bank account and even that may not convince some people. The line between skepticism and cynicism can be argued here but it is not important for this point.
Despite the lottery claim being something completely normal in our universe albeit rare, we still require a high standard of evidence before we warrant belief. When you compare this to the claim that God created the universe, most people accept it without even the evidence equivalent to the new suit that Jack wore when he told us the news.
What does this mean?
Regardless of your culture, questions about the universe’s existence and purpose are almost always an ancient pursuit. The fact that many cultures have come up with answers that differ highlights the exact issue we face.
If a third of the world believes in the Christian account of how the world began, that means that two-thirds of the world do not. When less than 10% of the global population considers themselves atheist, we can say that not only do two-thirds of the population disagree, more than 56% likely have an alternative and almost always incompatible belief.
So how do you determine which (if any) is correct? This is why withholding belief until evidence is presented is so crucial to our understanding. The second you accept one of these claims as true, you naturally stop trying to answer these fundamental ontological questions. Furthermore, when two people have opposing beliefs that they each cannot rationally justify but hold fervently, it creates segregation, isolation and ultimately conflict. More importantly to me, when someone holds an irrational belief as fundamental as how the world began, it sets a precedent for accepting other propositions on just as little evidence or otherwise fallacious reasoning which can, in turn, lead to the fanatical polarisation we see in things like our politics today.
A special thank you Matt Dillahunty who supplied a number of the examples used throughout this article during his multitude of atheist experience shows.