An Inductive Argument from Faith that God does not exist....

        That's right folks, I want to argue that the prevalence of "faith-based arguments" for the existence of God is strong inductive evidence that She does not exist. How? Good question. For the purposes of the argument, I am going to consider God to be of the Christian variety and "faith-based arguments" to be a family of claims from "belief in God does not require evidence" to "Credo quia absurdum."  Here's how I think it might go:

1. In real life, the existence of an object is argued for with evidence. This might be scientific evidence, perceptual evidence, or other kind of experiential evidence. But the point is that when an object's existence is asserted in a particular area (there's a polar bear in the other room!) generally we use some kind of evidence to ascertain whether it actually does exist (that is, we look around for white fur or listen for roars).
2. If you lack such evidence, you are generally justified in believing that the object in question does not exist. We have no evidence for unicorns, wizards, ether, or phlogiston. And we usually don't say we are agnostic about the existence of those objects despite the fact that they are logically possible. We say they don't exist.
3. Ergo, it is generally better to prove an object exists by appeal to evidence rather than...not.
4. From this we can conclude that if theists had good evidence for God's existence, they would deploy it.
5. But faith based arguments are needed precisely because such evidence is hard to come by. If the theists had such evidence, they wouldn't be appealing to faith.
6. We can conclude, inductively, that the prevalence of such arguments means that there is no evidence that God exists.
7. Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that God does not exist.

Comments

[ty]

Again, the last thing I want to do is defend religion, especially these varieties of monotheism...yet again I find myself doing something like the last thing I want to do. Believe me, I'm with #7 all the way. I just want to make sure we're getting our intellectual opposition's stance right before we blast it to smithereens. I think your attack is well-crafted and in the right ballpark, but perhaps missing the target, like a Brad Lidge slider of late.

Here's the problem: I think people who advance these 'faith-based arguments' would say that they ARE using evidence to reason for the existence of god; it's just not the sort of evidence that is as publicly available as white fur and roar-sounds. If a sane, sober someone says, "All the evidence I need for my belief in god is quite present and clear to me, in the form of [emotional stirrings/mystical visions/private 'aesthetic' considerations/whatever], well...who am I to say that that isn't evidence? It seems as likely as not that god might want to reveal godself in that way to certain individuals.

So the flaw in a faith-based argument is often not a bald lack of evidence--rather, it's the lack of a certain kind of evidence. Faith-based arguers may well have evidence, but because it is so personal and ineffable, it's awfully hard to make public.

Now, it happens that you and I agree that our kind of publicly available evidence is the only evidence worth its title. So where do we go from here? The question seems to refocus itself as, "Since we all agree evidence is a good thing, what kind of evidence are we going to allow in the game?" And it's our job to show that "faith evidence" somehow doesn't measure up, yeah? Or am I the one missing the point?

[Patrick]

I considered that position, Ty, and you are correct to point out that a claim would not fit my paradigm.

I think that once you start playing the "evidence game" then all hope is lost for theism.

But there are a non-trivial number of theists who purport to believe without any evidence whatsoever.

My discussion is for those people.

[Patrick]

To be crystal clear: I think your discussion is important, but the post-Kierkergaard/William James theological world is full of theists who do not fit your paradigm well.

[ty]

You're absolutely right, and that makes me sad. Not the mere fact that you're right. The content.

[greyreptilian]

"If you lack such evidence, you are generally justified in believing that the object in question does not exist. We have no evidence for unicorns, wizards, ether, or phlogiston. And we usually don't say we are agnostic about the existence of those objects despite the fact that they are logically possible. We say they don't exist."

I really disagree with this, I am agnostic about these things (as well as about god). How can you be justified in saying "Wizards don't exist" without having any evidence that it is somehow impossible for wizards to exist? You argue that theists are wrong for asserting that god exists because they don't give any evidence, yet you say that we can assert that things like wizards don't exist when we have no evidence that shows that they can't exist. The key words are "no evidence", if there is no evidence for something then we should be agnostic about it. For example, (up until a few years ago) we had no evidence that microscopic life on other planets exists, but nasa found that chunk of mars rock that had evidence of microscopic life in it. I think rather than saying "wizards, god, etc.." don't exist, we should say that "As far as we know, wizards, god, etc... don't exist".
You could say that it's unfair to assert that we should have to prove a negative, but I'm not saying that these things do exist, I'm just saying it's not right to say that they don't exist.
hmmm, you probably think i'm crazy now.

[Caligula]

That would be a fair characterization.When
are you going to tell us about your alien
abduction?

[eripsa]

In "real life", people don't argue for the existence of objects. People merely assert or deny their existence, and argue over the characterizational details.

This is quite possibly one of the worst arguments I've seen presented here, which makes me think you are actually trying.

[ty]

What in sweet holy fuck is that supposed to mean? People argue all the time over the existence of objects. If two people are arguing over whether a speck in the sky is an airplane or a star, naturally they both agree that SOMEthing is there. But one person believes that object A (a plane) exists, and the other believes that object A doesn't exist. When the discussion is over a specific sort of thing having existence, arguing over the 'characterizational details' just IS arguing for or against its existence; I don't see any distinction to be made between 'asserting and hashing out the details of the existence of X' and 'arguing for the existence of X.' Or are you talking about the characterizational details of the evidence people cite to support their assertions about objects' existence? It's hard to tell.

[doctor(logic)]

The verb "to exist" means "to have actual empirical properties".

When I say that a cup of hot coffee exists in the next room, I'm making a statement about the outcome of certain empirical tests.

Proposing that unicorns exist somewhere on Earth is perfectly sensible, even if it's not likely to be true. However, to propose the existence of something which has no empirical signature is utterly nonsensical because it is a misuse of the verb "to exist." A thing with no actual empirical attributes cannot exist by definition.

Either God is a naturalistic phenomena with a definitive empirical signature, or else the concept is meaningless (as in nonsensical).

[KhanMan]

Hmmm....

There's also no evidence of multicellular life outside the solar system, but does that mean it doesn't exist?
Yes, it's very unlikely, but probability means absolutely nothing when we consider that the universe is infinite (actually there's no definite proof of that either, but it's scientifically accepted)

I'm not saying that God "exists", but it is a fairly weak argument to say that He doesn't.

Now, God by definition is far beyond our capacity of understanding, that His existence would not be validated by evidence anyways. Thinking about it like this, we can see that anything outside the realm of human understanding does not exist...

What I'm really getting at, is just telling you to watch out for that polar bear, OK?

[Patrick]

Last night at a bar Eripsa, a friend of mine said that God exists. I said that God doesn't exist.

How is that not, putting Davidson aside, an argument about whether God exists?

That's just dumb.

[eripsa]

Two philosophers at a bar is about as far from 'real life' as you can get.

But my complaint isn't about ordinary conceptions of existence so much as people saying "assuming empiricist principles, and assuming God has no empirical manifestation, then God does not exist". My hat's off to you for cracking that nut.

[MacBearTwo]

In law there is a concept called res ipso loquitur, loosely, the thing speaks for itself. Sometimes there are things that occur which cannot be proven but which are so obvious that no proof is required. I think that most people on the other side of your argument would say this is the type of proof that can be offered for the presence of a god.

Note that I use presence instead of existence. The very term "existence" implies that something can either exist or not exist. I believe that most Christian apologists would say that god does not exist but rather god just is.

Even attempting to prove or disprove the concept of god is futile. Neither can be done. That is the definition of faith. To prove, or disprove, god, one would have to be in possession of all facts. That is something mankind has not yet achieved.

The more worthy, and accomplishable, endeavor is to refute the silly stories and fables that humans have come up with throughout the ages in order to convince other humans that they know the secret handshake that can get them into god's good graces. Most of the rants you have scriven in this forum relate much more to the fallibility of men than to the fallibility of god.

And by the way, what kind of upbringing would lead you to believe that wizards don't exist?

[Medium Rari]

I don't know if it is possible to be a 'sanctimonious aetheist,' but if so, you are it!

[greyreptilian]

Caligula- Anyone with a remidial knowledge of ufology knows that the ailens erase your memory after they abduct you, so I couldn't tell you anything about my abduction; unless I underwent hypnosis, which I can't afford.

[Jevon Ulis]

my major problem with people that try to logically prove god exists is that they say that God is Infallible, Incomprehensible, immutable, etc. These are all saying what god is not instead of what god is.

Continuing with the Polar bear example. i would never warn you by saying,"Don't go in that room. There is something in there that is not black, not smaller than a bread box,not cold blooded, etc" i'm going to tell you what it is,"a hungry, white, big assed Polar bear!"

so i say to anyone that describes God with all negatives: infinite, incomprehensible, infallible, limitless etc. I say they are describing "Nothing"

Nothing is a completely foreighn term to the human mind because to even think about the concept you are giving it something and there fore it is no longer nothing. Nothing is not finite, is not comprehensible, is without limit, unending etc. nothing is the adbsence of anything and everything including its conceptual self.

SO in all their discriptions they are saying that God=Nothing, which makes him another negative: Unbelievable.