We know gods are invented. We know that since the dawn of time people invented gods.
The Aztec preists that ripped the hearts out of living sacrifices had as much faith that Huitzilopochtli was real as any theist today. The Muslims that flew planes into buildings believed firmly that Allah would reward them. The Christians that slaughtered Muslims and Jews firmly believed they were doing God's work. We invented gods and goddesses in order to explain the world around us. Every culture has its own creation myths. People worshipped, prayed to, sacrificed to many gods, and thought their actions were judged by their gods, their petitions answered by their gods. We know that the vast number of people who ever lived worshipped false gods. Even most theists agree to this.
So the theists burden is to explain why their particular god is different. Why theirs is real while all the others inventions.
Unfortunately for them, all religions rely on the same evidence, revelation. The gods reveal themselves to someone that writes it down and spreads the word.
Unfortunately, this is obviously a flawed method.
Tales of wonders, miracles, supernatural events, again, unreliable.
The Christian, the Muslim, the Jew, the Hindu all point at each other and say "they are wrong", and the atheist can only agree.
We know of psychological reasons people invent and believe in these gods, the science of false belief is rather detailed. We know why people believe weird things as Shermer puts it.
Science is the most successful way of knowing humans have discovered. All other methods are such failures, that they must be measured by science to test their credibility.
Supernaturalism has been a spectacular failure. Not only has it not given us any information, its completely self contradictory. A naturalistic question can be answered by science, a supernatural question cannot be answered with any reliable method. The Christian, the Hindu, the Muslim, the Janist, the Jew, the Shaman, all point to each other and say they are wrong, and how shall we test their claims? Only by using the same method of "knowing" that they all use, and by which we know is unreliable at best.
Scientific naturalism, the most successful method of knowing, has swept away supernaturalism, has disproved one supernatural claim after another. Methodological naturalism has revealed the universe to be a natural, impersonal, relationship between natural, impersonal forces.
Just as we don't need the gods to explain why it rains, why people get ill, why crops fail, why the stars move in the sky, we also do not need them to explain anything. Why should we? We know people make up gods, worship them, believe that they answer prayers, even the ones we agree do not exist. It's not rational to ignore the fact that people invented the gods to explain reality, to ignore the fact that most people have believed in invented gods, and that naturalism is the only rational position to adopt. All your talk of epistemology and ontology and all your pseudo philosophical nonsense is moot. When your philosophy is shown to be wrong when you actually observe the world, you have to admit your philosophy was simply wrong.
Its strange to see supernaturalists arguing over who wrote what books when and what did they mean. There is no objective answer to those questions, and more importantly, you ignore the fact that you are having these arguments on a platform that religion could never dream of. The shuffling of electrons and electromagnetic waves harnessed by naturalism. Muslims mumble to the floor. Jews mumble to the wall. Christians mumble to the ceiling. And all the while, naturalism delivers answers to questions they couldn't even dream of.
This moment is the best time to be alive in all of history. More people are fed, more people are cured, more people live in comfort, more people have more knowledge than at any time in human history. Despite all our problems, things have always been worse in the past. Thousands of years with nothing but supernaturalism as a guide, and we barely made any progress, a few hundred years of naturalism and civilization has reached heights supernaturalism couldn't even dream of. Every answer we have was answered by naturalism, and has a naturalistic answer. And yet, supernaturalists still claim to have some special knowledge that naturalism just can't explore, the reason naturalism can't address these knowledge claims, is they don't produce anything. Those that want to cling to the gods and spirits now can only say, since naturalism hasn't answered the final questions, they must have a supernatural answer, which of course, we've already seen that they only offer contradictory, intangible answers, as always. They have been so consistently wrong in the past, why should we believe that all of a sudden they are right? It's like a beggar telling a billionaire that he doesn't know anything about making money.
As a last resort, they claim that supernaturalism isn't really about this world, but some other world you only get to see after death. The ultimate con, trade the only life you are sure of for a promise of another one, but you can't get proof until after you're dead. And what record do they stand on? None. Nothing more than contradictory, illogical claims that can't be proven, using methods that have already been proven to be failures.
The gaps where the gods can hide are getting smaller and smaller.
Naturalism has replaced virtually all supernatural answers for how the universe operates, and now that we are down to the last few big questions, religion says, naturalism can't explain this or that, so obviously it must be god. But. They've been spectacularly wrong in the past, and their methods of knowing have been proven flawed and unreliable at best.
In the olden-golden days the saying was: When there was nothing, there was God. When there will be nothing again, there will still be God.
But then came the scientists and changed everything. The above saying also changed to this: When there was nothing, there were quantum laws. When there will be nothing again, there will still be quantum laws.
These quantum laws are spaceless, timeless, changeless, eternal, all-pervading, unborn, uncreated and immaterial.
These quantum laws are spaceless, timeless and immaterial, because when there was no space, no time and no matter, there were still these quantum laws. (Vilenkin’s model)
These quantum laws are all-pervading, because these laws act equally everywhere.
The failure of religion to answer any questions empirically or objectively while clinging to their mutually exclusive beliefs coupled with the discoverys that everything we know of operates without the need of any of the gods should be evidence enough to reject the claims of gods until evidence can be produced that is not used by conflicting religions.
[Elegance] goes directly to the question of how the laws of nature are constructed. Nobody knows the answer to that. Nobody! It's a perfectly legitimate hypothesis, in my view, to say that some extremely elegant creator made those laws. But I think if you go down that road, you must have the courage to ask the next question, which is: Where did that creator come from? And where did his, her, or its elegance come from? And if you say it was always there, then why not say that the laws of nature were always there and save a step? -Carl Sagan
Why does the universe appear to be impersonal and not driven by any of the gods?
Most likely because it is.
So the theists burden is to explain why their particular god is different. Why theirs is real while all the others inventions.
Unfortunately for them, all religions rely on the same evidence, revelation. The gods reveal themselves to someone that writes it down and spreads the word.
Unfortunately, this is obviously a flawed method.
Tales of wonders, miracles, supernatural events, again, unreliable.
The Christian, the Muslim, the Jew, the Hindu all point at each other and say "they are wrong", and the atheist can only agree.
We know of psychological reasons people invent and believe in these gods, the science of false belief is rather detailed. We know why people believe weird things as Shermer puts it.
Science is the most successful way of knowing humans have discovered. All other methods are such failures, that they must be measured by science to test their credibility.
Supernaturalism has been a spectacular failure. Not only has it not given us any information, its completely self contradictory. A naturalistic question can be answered by science, a supernatural question cannot be answered with any reliable method. The Christian, the Hindu, the Muslim, the Janist, the Jew, the Shaman, all point to each other and say they are wrong, and how shall we test their claims? Only by using the same method of "knowing" that they all use, and by which we know is unreliable at best.
Scientific naturalism, the most successful method of knowing, has swept away supernaturalism, has disproved one supernatural claim after another. Methodological naturalism has revealed the universe to be a natural, impersonal, relationship between natural, impersonal forces.
Just as we don't need the gods to explain why it rains, why people get ill, why crops fail, why the stars move in the sky, we also do not need them to explain anything. Why should we? We know people make up gods, worship them, believe that they answer prayers, even the ones we agree do not exist. It's not rational to ignore the fact that people invented the gods to explain reality, to ignore the fact that most people have believed in invented gods, and that naturalism is the only rational position to adopt. All your talk of epistemology and ontology and all your pseudo philosophical nonsense is moot. When your philosophy is shown to be wrong when you actually observe the world, you have to admit your philosophy was simply wrong.
Its strange to see supernaturalists arguing over who wrote what books when and what did they mean. There is no objective answer to those questions, and more importantly, you ignore the fact that you are having these arguments on a platform that religion could never dream of. The shuffling of electrons and electromagnetic waves harnessed by naturalism. Muslims mumble to the floor. Jews mumble to the wall. Christians mumble to the ceiling. And all the while, naturalism delivers answers to questions they couldn't even dream of.
This moment is the best time to be alive in all of history. More people are fed, more people are cured, more people live in comfort, more people have more knowledge than at any time in human history. Despite all our problems, things have always been worse in the past. Thousands of years with nothing but supernaturalism as a guide, and we barely made any progress, a few hundred years of naturalism and civilization has reached heights supernaturalism couldn't even dream of. Every answer we have was answered by naturalism, and has a naturalistic answer. And yet, supernaturalists still claim to have some special knowledge that naturalism just can't explore, the reason naturalism can't address these knowledge claims, is they don't produce anything. Those that want to cling to the gods and spirits now can only say, since naturalism hasn't answered the final questions, they must have a supernatural answer, which of course, we've already seen that they only offer contradictory, intangible answers, as always. They have been so consistently wrong in the past, why should we believe that all of a sudden they are right? It's like a beggar telling a billionaire that he doesn't know anything about making money.
As a last resort, they claim that supernaturalism isn't really about this world, but some other world you only get to see after death. The ultimate con, trade the only life you are sure of for a promise of another one, but you can't get proof until after you're dead. And what record do they stand on? None. Nothing more than contradictory, illogical claims that can't be proven, using methods that have already been proven to be failures.
The gaps where the gods can hide are getting smaller and smaller.
Naturalism has replaced virtually all supernatural answers for how the universe operates, and now that we are down to the last few big questions, religion says, naturalism can't explain this or that, so obviously it must be god. But. They've been spectacularly wrong in the past, and their methods of knowing have been proven flawed and unreliable at best.
In the olden-golden days the saying was: When there was nothing, there was God. When there will be nothing again, there will still be God.
But then came the scientists and changed everything. The above saying also changed to this: When there was nothing, there were quantum laws. When there will be nothing again, there will still be quantum laws.
These quantum laws are spaceless, timeless, changeless, eternal, all-pervading, unborn, uncreated and immaterial.
These quantum laws are spaceless, timeless and immaterial, because when there was no space, no time and no matter, there were still these quantum laws. (Vilenkin’s model)
These quantum laws are all-pervading, because these laws act equally everywhere.
The failure of religion to answer any questions empirically or objectively while clinging to their mutually exclusive beliefs coupled with the discoverys that everything we know of operates without the need of any of the gods should be evidence enough to reject the claims of gods until evidence can be produced that is not used by conflicting religions.
[Elegance] goes directly to the question of how the laws of nature are constructed. Nobody knows the answer to that. Nobody! It's a perfectly legitimate hypothesis, in my view, to say that some extremely elegant creator made those laws. But I think if you go down that road, you must have the courage to ask the next question, which is: Where did that creator come from? And where did his, her, or its elegance come from? And if you say it was always there, then why not say that the laws of nature were always there and save a step? -Carl Sagan
Why does the universe appear to be impersonal and not driven by any of the gods?
Most likely because it is.
46-50, M
