Comments by Dianelos Georgoudis
901. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #49010 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 10, 2007 at 2:00 am
Alovrin (341):
Well its all rather obscurely convenient isnt it.
You and several other posters objected to the very last paragraph of my post 333, but I don't understand why. In that last paragraph, after a rather long justification of theism, I explained why I didn't wish to justify Christianity too. Is there something in these explanations you object to? After all, Christianity is a particular version of theism and it is rather obvious that if two people do not agree about the reasonableness of theism it does make no sense for them to argue about Christianity. But if somebody here wishes me to justify my specifically Christian beliefs concerning the ethics of Jesus Christ, the Trinitarian nature of God, the nature and meaning of Jesus's life, life after death and the consequences of our actions in this life, and so on – I will gladly do so.
Others seem to want to engage in debate with you, me I just would like to know what brand of obscurantism you subscribe to so I stay out of your way in the future
Well not wanting to engage in debate is obscurantism. As is Dawkins's ridiculing the study of serious books about God as being equivalent to the study of serious books about fairies. After all obscurantism is defined as "opposition to the spread of knowledge" and as "the intention to make something obscure".
902. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #49000 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 10, 2007 at 1:01 am
Dr Benway (339):
your posts are long. Boil it down, mate.
Ok, let me try to produce a shorter version of the argument:
We say that something exists when it explains part of our experience (so, for example, we say that gravity exists because it helps explain our seeing apples fall, ripples spreading out in a pond, the movement of the planets in the night sky, and so on). Science has been very successful in explaining a particular part of our experience, namely the part related to physical phenomena, based only on materialist/naturalist principles. Therefore many people adopted a materialist/naturalist worldview of reality according to which nothing supernatural exists.
The naturalistic worldview though is plagued by some very deep problems (which people who have adopted it often ignore). For one, even though science is very successful in modeling physical phenomena, it has proven very difficult to describe how the physical reality which (according to naturalism) produces these phenomena actually is. Scientists disagree very strongly about this, and that disagreement appears to be growing and at the same time the various descriptions of reality suggested are becoming increasingly fantastic and credulity straining. Second it appears impossible to explain naturalistically how come we are conscious in he first place, and then to explain why our conscious experience is like it is (why does red look like it does, etc). Thirdly the naturalistic worldview entails some deep problems related to the objective reality of ethics.
The problems noted above are real. One reaction can be: Well, let's not abandon naturalism just yet; in the past apparently insurmountable problems were solved and naturalism's problems will be solved in good time; some problems such as the objectivity of ethics may be illusory anyway. Another entirely reasonable reaction though can be: These problems appear insurmountable, so let's search for a better worldview by hypothesizing that there is more to reality than natural things, i.e. by hypothesizing the existence of a larger supernatural realm which causes all our experience including the natural phenomena that science studies. In order to avoid naturalism's problems we need to further hypothesize that the basic constituent of the supernatural realm is consciousness, that the supernatural realm is structured and ordered, and that it is objectively good. All the abovementioned properties can be integrated in an elegant and natural manner into one hypothesis, namely that the supernatural realm consists of one conscious being of great intelligence and goodness who causes the whole of our experience. We call such a worldview "theistic" and for consistency with the traditional theistic religions we call that conscious being "God". This worldview in no way contradicts (or can possibly contradict) scientific knowledge, and it avoids all the problems of naturalism (including many other problems not mentioned here such as the apparent fine-tuning of the universe, philosophical problems related to how structured and ordered material existence can be produced from nothing, and others). Moreover theism opens the way to understanding the very structure of our experience (i.e. how it is to be a human being in this life) including the nasty bits related to our experience of pain and evil, which can be explained as a necessary consequence of God's will to give us an experiential environment in which we attain virtue on merit. For all these reasons I judge that the theistic worldview works much better than any naturalistic worldview on the intellectual level.
But it turns out that the theistic worldview works much better on the practical or empirical level too: By adopting a theistic worldview one understands reality as a much more beautiful, meaningful, and hope filled place, and therefore helps one enjoy life more. Further the theistic worldview is morally empowering and therefore helps me live closer to the way I wish to live, namely as a good person.
--
Well, at 600 words the above is about as short a justification of theism as I can make :-)
903. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #48992 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 9, 2007 at 11:51 pm
Logicel (337):
I certainly regard human consciousness as a wonderful boon resulting from evolution
One problem here is that nobody has explained what evolutionary advantage consciousness provides. If there were some advantage that consciousness provided then this advantage would be objectively measurable and by measuring it one would be able to objectively detect the presence of consciousness in some physical system. But nobody knows how to objectively detect whether a physical system has consciousness or not, that's why nobody knows whether cockroaches, for example, are conscious or not. Of course a naturalist can hope that in the future such an objective test will be forthcoming - but consciousness is such a huge thing and it strains credubility to believe that it would evolve through natural evolution without apparently causing any clear objective difference.
Why do then so many naturalists believe that consciousness has resulted from evolution? Because if one assumes naturalism as a given then it's natural to assume that our consciousness was produced through evolutionary pressures (the same way our eye or our intelligent brain were produced). Other naturalists though prefer the hypothesis that consciousness is an "epiphenomenon", i.e. something that simply happens when particularly complex information processing processes take place, but has no causal agency of its own. The advantage of the latter hypothesis is that it explains how come consciousness appears not to be objectively observable (it not objectively observable because it does not have causal agency; it's something that just happens).
does personal revelation play a role in your belief in God?
If by "revelation" one understands some very special and rare intervention by God in one's experiential life in order to impart spiritual truth (e.g. St Paul seeing that blinding light and hearing words that people around him didn't) then my answer is "No". Also observe that revelation of this kind does not play any role at all in the justification for theism I gave in post 333.
But if by "revelation" one understands any act where God directly affects one's experiential life then my answer is an obvious "Yes". You see, according to my worldview we live in an environment of continuous revelation: Every single thing we experience, including our experience of physical phenomena, is caused by God. Maybe I was not clear enough on this point in post 333: It's not like God causes the existence of the material world, which in turn causes the existence of consciousness by which we experience it. If that were so then the theistic worldview would suffer from the same problem that naturalistic worldviews suffer, namely the impossibility to explain how something material could become conscious. Rather an important point is that God directly causes our conscious experiences, part of which, namely the part concerning our observation of physical phenomena, is structured in such a way that it can be explained naturalistically (i.e. without recourse to the existence of the supernatural). Why God would want part of our experience to by amenable to naturalistic understanding is another question.
904. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #48786 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 9, 2007 at 3:43 am
Steve99 (335):
Your reasoning doesn't work here. All you are doing is simply defining naturalism as being incompatible with consciousness.
It's an objective fact that people find it very difficult to understand how a material thing could be conscious. (If you google "problem of consciousness" you'll get 99,000 hits). In the context of my argument in post 333 of why it is reasonable to adopt a theistic worldview I don't need to argue convincingly or beyond reasonable doubt that consciousness cannot be explained naturalistically. I only have to point out that it is plausible to believe that consciousness can't be explained naturalistically. And anybody who has even superficially studied the problem of consciousness will know that it is reasonable to believe that.
What matters is for you to present evidence that these ethical beliefs are objective.
No, I only need to assert that some ethical precepts are objective. Indeed I assert that to torture children is objectively wrong, no matter peoples' opinions or social convention. Don't you agree? And if you agree then it's up to you to explain how a naturalistic worldview can account for the objectivity of ethics. I fact there is a basic agreement between philosophers that naturalism cannot account for objective ethics (see "naturalistic fallacy"), and that's why some atheist philosophers bite to bullet and argue that no matter how distasteful it may seem there are no objective ethical concepts (see: "Ethics: Inventing right and wrong" by J. L. Mackie).
[That naturalists strongly disagree about how reality is] is not an argument against them. There is no reason why reality should be understandable.
But there is: Theistic worldviews do give us that understanding.
Incidentally it seems to me that some atheists (I am not implying you) respond to theistic arguments thus: "God is an illusion, therefore all your arguments are false because they are based on an illusory concept". But the very question under discussion is the existence of God, so you cannot assume that God is illusion to counter a theistic argument; to do so is a gross case of begging the question.
I wrote:
This incidentally makes it impossible for any piece of scientific knowledge to contradict or be used as evidence against any of the non-fundamentalist religious worldviews.to which you responded:
This is easily shown to be wrong. If there is a God who has intervened in the Universe, then that is a measurable phenomenon, so it is subject to science.
This is a common atheist argument and I am glad you give me the opportunity to discuss it. Consider that your experience of life does not only consist of your experience of objective phenomena (say of apples), but also of subjective experiences (such as how it is to see the color of an apple). Now science only studies objective phenomena because only such phenomena are amenable to the scientific method. A famous problem in the philosophy of consciousness is the so-called inverted spectrum. Suppose somebody claimed that compared to the way men see colors all women see the colors red and green inverted. That's a huge claim but there is no possible scientific experiment one could device to check whether this claim is true or false. Suppose now one claims that God intervenes in any of the subjective parts of our consciousness (which indeed is by far the most important part), or even that God causes our entire subjective experience. Again there is no way to scientifically show that this claim is false. Therefore the theistic claim that God does intervene might very well be true.
Incidentally it is possible that God intervenes strongly in the objective part of our experience too in a way that science cannot detect. In fact, as I argued in a previous post, there is no scientific evidence against the claim that God directed the evolution of homo sapiens by interfering on the quantum level with the random mutations that natural selection requires. On the quantum level science would only be able to detect divine interference on statistical grounds, and God could have directed evolution without interfering with the relevant statistical properties. Or take the case of the single child that did not die in a natural calamity that Dawkins and McGrath discussed. Statistically it's expected that a few people will not perish in such a calamity and science cannot disprove the claim that God chose that particular child for survival. Having said that I would like once again to make clear that I dislike the arguments in this paragraph very much, because in the way I understand reality they are very misleading. But these arguments do show how fallacious the atheist argument is about the contradiction between scientific knowledge and an active God.
So I stand by my claim that no piece of scientific knowledge can possibly contradict or be used as evidence against any religious worldview, except for the case of the most naive ones such as "literal scripturism".
There is no reason to define conciousness, even if it exists as separate from what we currently understand, as supernatural. That is just arbitrary.
It's not so much a question of "defining" consciousness as supernatural. The idea is that as long as it is reasonable to believe that a) consciousness cannot be explained on naturalistic grounds and b) consciousness is not at all similar to any of the other natural things, it is also reasonable to consider that consciousness exists in a realm beyond nature, the supernatural realm. (The word "supernatural" has of course some negative connotations; after all you and I agree that most supernatural things – fairies and so on - do not exist. But I find that I cannot understand reality without assuming the existence of a supernatural realm. And let's not forget that the premise that supernatural X, Y and X do not exist does not of course imply that nothing supernatural exists.)
I wrote:
the supernatural (beyond the natural world) part of reality must […] contain structure and order, because after all it causes our experience of the very intricately structured and ordered physical phenomena we observe.This is just bad physics. We know that structure and order can arise spontaneously. There is no reason at all to suggest it has a supernatural origin.
I understand what you are saying. This is a point Dawkins often makes too. I agree it is valid argument on some domains (for example it the case of the origin of the species). But let's investigate it further:
Darwinism (in short the premise that the structure and order present in the species can arise by natural means only) does not imply that no structure or order are needed at all. Indeed natural evolution requires the existence of the first self-replicating cell (which is already a very complex system) and also of a very specific kind of sufficiently structured and ordered environment for evolution to work at all. Now suppose science solves the problem of the origin of the first cell (I think that's entirely within science's power and that the answer will be some kind of evolutionary process too). Even then the problem will be moved only a few steps back. Ultimately one would have to argue that some positive order and structure can arise or evolve in an environment of absolutely zero order and structure. I don't see how one can argue for that. But if it's very implausible at face value and there are no good arguments to justify such a belief, I see no reason to adopt it.
In any case, again, I don't have to show beyond reasonable doubt that the supernatural realm that causes my structured and ordered experience must itself be structured and ordered. My theistic argument only requires that it is reasonable to think so, and indeed that's clearly an eminently plausible belief.
In general the argument "You claim that X explains your experience, but you have not proved that Y can't explain it even better" is an invalid argument against X. It would only be valid if you showed that Y exists and is more plausible than X. I mean, to turn the tables, to argue that "Sure, Darwinism explains the origin of the species but you have not shown that God directly creating the species using mainly clay does not explain the species even better" is clearly an invalid argument. Similarly in our context, my argument that God explains the whole of my experience is not invalidated by the fact that I have not conclusively shown that my experience cannot also be explained on purely naturalistic terms. In other words as long as no naturalistic hypothesis is forthcoming that explains the whole of my experience better than the God hypothesis reason requires that I choose theism.
905. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #48743 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 9, 2007 at 12:04 am
BAEOZ (334):
You refuse even to consider explanations [about the existence of consciousness] that the naturalistic world has put up. They work very well, and while they are still being extended are better than inventing a deity. Why do you reject them?
On the contrary I read everything I can get my hands on about this issue. (The book I am reading right now is "conversations on consciousness".) My judgment though is that naturalism cannot explain consciousness, and, incidentally, it's an objective fact that some specialists in the field think the same. The problem of consciousness interests me very much and I will be glad to discuss with you the reasons why I think it's an impossible task (it's like trying to produce colors mixing in a very complicated manner black and white pigments). The critical point though is this: For my justification of theism in post 333 it's not necessary to show beyond reasonable doubt that naturalism cannot explain consciousness. It suffices to claim that it is reasonable to believe that naturalism cannot explain consciousness, and therefore it is reasonable to adopt competing supernatural worldviews that can.
Perhaps because you want consciousness to transcend the natural world. You want to be more than a collection of stardust that obeys the laws of chemistry and physics.
Sure, I want that – who wouldn't? But I think it is also true that I am that. Take for example the related problem of free will. Free will as we live it is not compatible with a naturalistic understanding of reality, because according to science all events in the physical world are either causally deterministic or else random, and both are incompatible with our experience of free will. Some naturalists therefore claim that free will "is an illusion". Apart from the fact that this is a logical fallacy (direct experience cannot be illusory, only knowledge one justifies on direct experience can be illusory), it strikes me as rather weak to explain away as "illusions" anything one is incapable of explaining. The implicit argument made here is I think as follows:
1. Naturalism is true. (premise)
2. Anything not compatible with something that is true is an illusion. (premise)
3. X is not compatible with naturalism. (premise)
4. Therefore X is not compatible with something that is true. (from 1 and 3)
5. Therefore X is an illusion. (from 2 and 4)
where X="consciousness", or X="free will", or X="objective ethical concepts", or X="the existence of God", etc
A more intelligent reaction is to think thus: Consciousness is not a supernatural thing, and as it is impossible to explain how matter produces consciousness, consciousness must be an additional fundamental constituent of the natural world. That's the path that David Chalmers chose, but he was criticized for asserting a dualist understanding of reality. I sympathize which Chalmers: if one if not prepared to abandon naturalism then dualism is the only solution.
Actually not the only one. Colin McGinn's solution is that no explanation for consciousness can be found within the naturalistic worldview not because such a solution does not in fact exist but because human intelligence is fundamentally incapable of finding that explanation. There are many other pieces of knowledge that are in principle unreachable (for example in the general case it's impossible to know whether a computer program will stop), so, conceivably, the knowledge of how matter produces consciousness could be just such a case.
I mean there are solutions (albeit defeatist ones). For example, if one's naturalistic worldview cannot account for the existence of objective ethical precepts then ethics too can be added to the mix as a fundamental principle of reality. But then one gets an increasingly complicated potpourri of a worldview that I find rather unappealing. Or maybe, one can hope that even though after decades of intensive thinking no-one has suggested even an idea of how something material can become conscious somehow an explanation for that will be found in the future. In conclusion if one's motto is "anything but God" and would rather believe that our best understanding of reality must consist of a potpourri of independent things and/or asserts fundamental limitations in our intelligence and/or hopes that, no matter the arguments against, naturalistic explanations for consciousness will be found in the future – it's ok with me. Meanwhile I judge that the theistic worldview works much better.
906. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #48459 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 8, 2007 at 3:02 am
My theistic worldview.
Several posters here have asked me to present and justify my own theistic worldview. I think that's entirely fair. Of course to present my worldview in detail would result in a book-length post, so in what follows I try to present it a way that is as short as possible but sufficiently detailed to present its overall structure and to allow people to evaluate and criticize it. Of course I will be glad to elaborate on any part the reader wishes. This is not going to be easy so bear with me.
Before starting I would like to say that one's worldview is basically how one makes sense of one's overall experience. Even pre-linguistic children device a worldview and make sense of their (at first confusing) perceptual environment by interpreting it as the presence of a stable three-dimensional world in which they can (up to a point) freely move around and manipulate using their bodies. So, for example, even very small children quickly learn that walls are hard and that it doesn't pay to try to walk through them.
Here I will argue that a theistic worldview is better than a non-theistic one. This immediately brings up the question of how worldviews are to be compared. I would say that a worldview is better if it gives one more intellectual satisfaction by being more coherent, elegant, economical, free of problems, and so on. But of course the most important criterion is how useful in a practical or empirical sense a worldview turns out to be. For example one who ignores that walls are hard is apt to have many painful experiences of bumping into them. Now virtually everybody believes that walls are hard, but consider another belief that is extremely popular even though it's false: astrology. Having this false belief in one's worldview is apt to negatively influence one's quality of life because one will act on false information. Indeed what worldview one chooses is a fairly important matter not only for one's personal well-being, but also for society's. So this is clearly an important issue, and I would agree in principle with Dawkins that to help others choose a better worldview is a commendable enterprise (within ethical limits – see Ibsen's play "The wild duck").
Now there are as many worldviews as there are people, but we can classify them into groups of similar kind. Even so we are left with a confusing number of kinds of worldviews (just consider how many Christian denominations there are, or how many interpretations of quantum mechanics). Still one can divide all possible worldviews into two major groups: the materialistic/naturalistic worldviews, and the religious/spiritual/supernatural worldviews (which in what follows I will call for short "naturalistic" and "religious" respectively). The difference between the two is clear: A basic issue is what the fundamental constituent (aka substance) of reality is, which explains everything else. According to the naturalistic worldviews what fundamentally exists is a complex configuration of matter following specific natural laws, in short what we call the physical world. According to the religious worldviews what fundamentally exists is a spiritual/supernatural world having its own structure and following its own kind of laws; the physical world forms only a part of reality, indeed a part that is contingent and caused by the larger spiritual/supernatural reality. (In turn religious worldviews can be divided in polytheistic, monotheistic, and atheistic groups).
Now when comparing these two basic types of worldviews I find that the naturalistic worldviews entail three fundamental types of problems which decrease its reasonableness:
1. I judge that naturalistic worldviews are incompatible with consciousness (including the related issue of free will), in other words that naturalistic worldviews cannot explain the existence of consciousness. I am not prepared to entertain the possibility that consciousness does not exist (actually I couldn't believe that it doesn't exist if I tried; consciousness is the one thing whose reality is beyond question). Some naturalistic thinkers believe that in the future this problem will somehow be solved, but I judge that this is a fundamentally impossible problem for naturalism. (Incidentally consciousness is not just some "gap", but represents the single most important fact there is. Indeed, strictly speaking, we live in an environment of conscious experience and not in a physical environment; the existence of the physical world is something we deduce from our experiential environment.) So, here I have one reason that speaks against the entire class of naturalistic worldviews.
2. Similarly I judge that naturalistic worldviews are incompatible with the existence of at least some objectively true ethical precepts (there is ongoing discussion about this matter in this thread). In other words I am not prepared to entertain the idea that ethical precepts, such as "you should not torture a child", are true only because of personal opinion or convention. So, here I have a second reason that speaks against the entire class of naturalistic worldviews.
3. The third problem is extrinsic and refers to my study of the actual materialistic/naturalistic worldviews. If this class of worldviews were the one closest to reality one would expect to find general agreement or at least some general tendency towards agreement about how reality actually is. What I on the contrary observe is that, compared to the disagreements that also exist between religious worldviews, the disagreements on the naturalistic side are a) deeper, b) tend to grow both in number and in kind, and c) tend to produce increasingly fantastic (credulity straining) descriptions of reality.
In comparison I do not detect similar problems with the religious kind of worldviews. The reason is that religious worldviews assert that fundamental reality is spiritual so do not have to explain the reality of consciousness, in the same way that the naturalistic worldviews that assert that fundamental reality is material do not have to explain the reality of matter. (Theistic worldviews are especially elegant in this respect, see bellow). Also spiritual reality is hypothesized as being objectively good thus accounting for the existence of objectively true ethical precepts (they are objectively true because they reflect that objective goodness of reality). Finally, even though many naturalists rightly find problematic the differences and disagreements that exist between religious worldviews, I judge that the differences and disagreements in their camp are much worse.
The case of science. Many naturalists point out the overwhelming success of science as evidence for the superiority of their worldview. But apart from the most primitive religious worldviews (read: the cases of fundamentalism or "literal scripturism" if you like), all other religious worldviews seamlessly and naturally absorb scientific knowledge by hypothesizing that the physical world that science studies is caused and sustained by the larger spiritual reality. This incidentally makes it impossible for any piece of scientific knowledge to contradict or be used as evidence against any of the non-fundamentalist religious worldviews. So a person who adopts any of the non-fundamentalist religious worldview loses nothing of the usefulness and relevance of the scientific and technological project.
Another common argument that naturalists use is that they don't see any reason to assume a religious worldview in the first place. But I see such a reason, namely that in comparison the alternative materialistic worldviews are problematic in the three senses described above and therefore inferior.
So in conclusion, as I find that all the naturalistic worldviews entail serious problems and all (except the most naive) religious worldviews don't, I judge that by default the former worldviews work better than the latter.
The second stand I would like to make refers to my choice of monotheism over all the other religious worldviews. One basic reason is this: As I noted above I judge that all naturalistic worldviews are incompatible with consciousness because they cannot explain how matter brings forth consciousness. Well, similarly, one could ask how spirit brings forth matter, and claim that the religious worldviews suffer from a similar problem. The answer is straightforward: The religious worldviews need not account for matter itself but only for our conscious experience of physical phenomena, so there it is not an issue of spirit causing something of an entirely different kind (namely matter), but of spirit causing consciousness which is not problematic. But observe that the above solution works best if we identify the fundamental constituent (or substance) of reality with consciousness, i.e. equate the concept of spirit with the concept of consciousness (indeed observe that these two concepts can be used interchangeably in virtually all contexts). Conversely if we don't identify the fundamental constituent (or substance) of reality with consciousness, religious worldviews suffer at least to some degree from the equivalent #1 problem of the naturalist worldviews. So, to resume, the supernatural (beyond the natural world) part of reality must a) have consciousness as its fundamental constituent, b) be objectively good, and c) must contain structure and order, because after all it causes our experience of the very intricately structured and ordered physical phenomena we observe. Economy (or Occam's razor) requires that I make the simplest hypothesis in order to account for all three properties, and the simplest hypothesis I can find is the presence of one single and objectively good, intelligent, and powerful conscious being: a divine person on whom all bucks stop, a person whom, in order to be consistent with the three great monotheistic religions, I call "God". In short, the best hypothesis I can device for avoiding the problems that plague the naturalistic worldviews in a clean and economical manner is to hypothesize that there exists a supernatural realm which consists of a personal being of objective goodness, and great intelligence and power - sufficient to cause and sustain our experience of life.
Now up to here I have argued in favor of monotheistic worldviews in a negative manner, i.e. by excluding alternative worldviews I judge inferior. But it turns out that by adopting a monotheistic worldview I have experienced in my own life several concrete gains that represent additional and positive reasons that justify it: First, I experienced the whole of my experiential environment as increasingly more beautiful, a state of affairs which I consider extremely valuable. Second, and this too is a very precious thing, I experienced that the monotheistic worldview is morally empowering and thus helps me live closer to how I aspire to live, namely as a good person. Thirdly, and this will come as a surprise, that worldview helps me understand the presence of evil and pain in my experiential environment – evidence that is traditionally used against theism. Here is how:
As we saw my worldview is based in the reality of God, a person who instantiates all that is objectively good as well as all the structure (or intelligence if you will) of the supernatural reality that causes and sustains our experiential environment. Our current experiential environment though clearly includes many evil things. How can that be? Well what helps answer this question is that we, the same as God, are persons, i.e. conscious beings. So we are able in some fundamental (albeit limited) sense to put ourselves in God's shoes as it were, and to ponder the question "What would I do if I were God?" If the answer to that question would ultimately lead to the creation of people experiencing the kind of imperfect and partially evil environment we do – then the God hypothesis would indeed explain why our environment is imperfect. So what would I do if I were God? Well I would create other persons to share in the objective goodness that I instantiate. And here is a key point (a point I see clearly myself but have had trouble explaining in the past): The personal goodness (in short "virtue") that God instantiates is not something that can be given directly to others. Why not? Because personal goodness is valuable in that it reflects personal merit. Thus value resides primarily in the way a person attains a particular state and not only in that state. For example we all agree that somebody who climbs to the summit of Everest has more personal merit and increased personal value than somebody who is flown to the same summit by helicopter. So the greatest good that God could give to other sentient beings is to create for them the most efficient experiential environment possible in which they can attain virtue on personal merit. And the experiential environment I live in (the physical world I experience but also the qualitative/internal/subjective parts of my experience, e.g. how it is to love, how it is to fail, how it is to fear, how it is to hurt, how it is to trust, how it is to perceive beauty, how it is to understand, how it is to self-transcend, and so on – in short how it is to be a human being), the whole of it appears to me to be perfectly proportioned for attaining virtue. Or at least I see nothing in my experience of life as a human being that would make me suspect that it is not perfectly proportioned for attaining virtue. In short, the God hypothesis explains to my satisfaction the whole of my conscious experience, including the nasty bits.
Now I am not just a theist but a Christian, and this would correspond to my third stand. But this is a stand I don't wish to make here, for various reasons: First it is irrelevant in the context of the atheist/theist debate and the justification of my belief in God. Second I don't consider Christianity to be objectively superior to other religious worldviews, just to be superior for me for various reasons and especially because of my upbringing. Third my understanding of Christianity differs from traditional dogma in several points, including the dogma of humankind's fall, the dogma of divine judgment and hell, the dogma of salvation by faith alone, and the dogma of God's immutability; so obviously I can only meaningfully discuss my Christian worldview with other Christians versed in these obscure concepts ;-)
907. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #48446 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 8, 2007 at 1:58 am
steve99 (323):
Why does that matter? Surely it is appropriate for those defined by a term to be the ones who can change what that term means.
Hmm, I disagree; here is a counterexample: Even if all Americans insisted that it is appropriate to change the definition to "Americans are the people destined by God to spread democracy around the world by force of arms if necessary", I would definitely not accept it as appropriate ;-)
I believe that in order to avoid confusion the definition of popular terms (such as "atheism") should reflect the meaning of the term as popularly used. If somebody thinks that a concept with a different meaning is needed then they should coin a new word. The definition of technical or specialized terms (such as "quantum string") should of course be left to the relevant specialists.
I wrote:
To know that you lack belief in gods entails that you have some notion about what "gods" means.to which you responded:
This is obviously false. I have just invented an imaginary being. I am not going to tell you anything about it. It may be a god; it may not be. But I can be certain you have no belief in it, and to say you have a lack of belief in it is anything but incoherent - it is a simple statement of fact.
Ok, so let's investigate your idea. Suppose you define some imaginary being, call it "dumkud", and define as "adumkudist" all people who lack belief in dumkud(s). Suppose further that you exactly know what my beliefs are (after all by sheer chance I may have beliefs about the beings you call dumkuds even though I may call them something else). Then you are justified in calling me an adumkudist. But I am not justified in calling myself an adumkudist, because I cannot know whether I in fact lack beliefs about dumkuds, simply because I have no idea what "dumkud" means. But should you explain to me what "dumkud" means then I can't help thinking about whether such beings exist and hence form *some* belief about them. In all cases then I am not justified to call myself an adumkudist, either because I cannot know that or because it's false. And for the same reason neither are you justified in calling yourself an adumkudist. So I stand by my claim that the "lack of belief in god(s)" definition of atheism is incoherent, as it makes it impossible for people to call themselves "atheist".
In any case even though this discussion is kind of fun I agree that this is not a particularly important issue and don't mind dropping it.
908. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #48341 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 7, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Steve99 (311): I agree that definitions change, but in our case it's clearly those who proposed the "lack of belief" definition who are changing them. And I find this new "lack of belief" definition clearly inferior than the traditional one, for the same reasons that Drange explains in his article.
Dr Benway (314): Well, let's take at face value the new definition that atheism is the lack of belief in god(s), and remove the uninteresting cases of babies, severely mentally retarded people, brain-dead people, dogs, cats, etc – who admittedly all lack belief in gods – and concentrate on human adults with normal cognitive abilities. So suppose the following encounter between two normal adults:
A: I am an atheist:
B: What does "atheist" mean?
A: Well, it means I lack any beliefs about god(s).
B: How do you know that you lack any beliefs about god(s)?
Now how might A answer that question? To know that you lack belief in gods entails that you have some notion about what "gods" means. But if you have some notion of what "gods" means it's really not plausible that you have never wondered whether such beings exist. But if you have wondered about whether such beings exist then you have formed some belief about them, so you do not really lack belief about them.
Let me turn the tables on myself. I cannot claim that I lack belief in the existence of Santa Claus. Why? Because I have some notion of what "Santa Claus" means, therefore couldn't help thinking about whether Santa Claus exist, and therefore have formed some belief about him, namely he probably doesn't exist. In short I find the "lack of belief" definition not only inferior than the traditional one, but actually incoherent.
Steve99 (317): I agree, this is a distraction, and after all definitions are not important as long as everyone clarifies their terms. I have already prepared a justification of my worldview but want to ponder the text before posting it tomorrow.
Janus (318): I think it's clear that the more knowledgeable atheists tend to be more assertive. I find the "lack of belief" definition to be really terrible and in my eyes it trivializes, diminishes and potentially ridicules atheism. I don't like that. Why shouldn't an atheist clearly and unequivocally say that they do not believe in the existence of god(s)?
909. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #48178 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 7, 2007 at 1:07 am
bouwe (284):
In comment #47911 (post 254) I wrote:
I have argued elsewhere (in post 148 in this forum) that the "lack of belief" definition of atheism is a bad one because it implies strangely sounding propositions such as that all newborn babies are atheists, that all severely mentally retarded people are atheists, and so on.to which you respond in post (284):
But not as strange a proposition as changing the simple definition of a word so you can somehow alter the playing field to your favour. Atheism is, simply, a lack of a belief in a god or gods. Newborn babies are, by definition atheist.
With all due respect I think that by defining atheism as "lack of belief in a god or gods" it's you who is changing the definition. After all here is how dictionaries and encyclopedias define "atheism/atheist":
Cambidge advanced learner's dictionary: someone who believes that God or gods do not exist
Wordsmyth dictionary: the belief that there is no God.
American Heritage dictionary: 1. Disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods. 2. The doctrine that there is no God or gods.
Random House unabridged dictionary: the doctrine or belief that there is no God. 2. Disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings.
The new dictionary of cultural literacy: Denial that there is a God.
Websters dictionary: 1: disbelief in the existence of deity. 2: the doctrine that there is no deity
Encarta: unbeliever in God or deities: somebody who does not believe in God or deities
Yahoo: One who disbelieves or denies the existence of God or gods.
Oxford pocket dictionary of current English: the theory or belief that God does not exist.
Oxford English dictionary: Disbelief in, or denial of, the existence of God.
Compact Oxford English dictionary: the belief that God does not exist.
Columbia encyclopedia: denial of the existence of God or gods and of any supernatural existence
Encyclopedia Britannica: literally a system of belief which denies the existence of God.
But somebody might suggest that all these dictionary and encyclopedia definitions were written by Christians who try to confuse people about the true nature of atheism. So let's see how knowledgeable atheists define atheism:
1. The article about atheism in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states that "Atheism means the negation of theism, the denial of the existence of God." (See http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/) This article is written by John Jamieson Carswell Smart, professor of philosophy in Australia. He is also the author who takes the atheist side in the 2002 book "Atheism and Theism (Great Debates in Philosophy)".
2. A very good article that discusses which definitions should be used is "Atheism, Agnosticism, Noncognitivism (1998)" (See http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theodore_drange/definition.html) by Theodore M. Drange. Its definition of atheism is: "An atheist is someone who allows that 'God exists' expresses a proposition and who classifies the proposition as false or probably false". The article expressively discusses why the "lack of belief" definition of atheism is a bad one. Drange is a professor of philosophy at West Virginia University and has published two books including the 1998 "Nonbelief and Evil: Two Arguments for the Nonexistence of God", which I think is the most detailed exposition in print of these two strongest arguments for atheism.
3. Another published author is Julian Baggini. On page 3 of his 2003 book "Atheism: A very short introduction" he plainly states that atheism is "the belief that there is not God or gods". You can find some personal information about this British author here: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/wwwtoolkit/baggini.asp
4. Often the definition of atheism is taken to be so obvious that it is not explicitly given, but the author's opinion can be derived easily enough from the text. For example in the 2004 book "God? A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist" here is the title that Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (an atheist professor of philosophy at Dartmouth) gives to his first chapter: "Some Reasons to Believe that There Is No God".
5. Michael Martin, professor of philosophy at Boston University, and well-known author of several books on atheism writes in the introduction of his 1990 "Atheism: A Philosophical Justification" the following: "The aim of this book is not to make atheism a popular belief ... My object is to show that atheism is a rational position and that belief in God is not." So for Martin atheism is a rational belief in contraposition to theistic belief.
Now I have not read all the books about atheism written by atheists, and I wonder if you know of any other published authors who defend the "lack of belief" definition of atheism. The only published authors I know who do this are George H. Smith in the 1980 book "Atheism: The Case Against God" (and it seems to me this title contradicts the "lack of belief" definition anyway), and Gordon Stein (for personal information see: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/gordon_stein/stein-bio.html), the editor of the 1989 book "Anthology of atheism and rationalism" (you can read his reasoning in the introductory chapter of that book; you be the judge how his arguments compare to Drange's). I hate to bring this up but the latter two authors don't have a bio as impressive as the previous bunch.
In any case definitions are not arguments. Feel free to define atheism as "lack of belief in a god or gods" if you feel like it, as long as you clarify that that's your meaning. As for me I use the term in the sense that most dictionaries and most published atheist authors use it. For the record for me an atheist is a person of normal mental faculties who has pondered the question of the existence of divine beings and has concluded that such beings probably do not exist.
Actually vis-a-vis any existential claim "X exists" (e.g. "God exists", "M-theory strings exist", "astrological influences exist", "parallel universes exist", "the largest prime number exists", etc) there are four cognitive positions one can take:
1. I don't understand what X means and therefore can offer no opinion about its existence.
2. I believe that X exists (at some level of confidence from probable up to certainly).
3. I believe that X does not exist (at some level of confidence from probable up to certainly).
4. I can't make up my mind whether X probably exists or probably doesn't.
In the case of God, position 2, 3 and 4 correspond to theism, atheism, and agnosticism respectively.
Incidentally, I am curious about your claim that the definition of atheism I use (the belief that god(s) do not exist) "alters the playing field to my favour". How is it that this definition alters the playing field?
910. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #48093 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 6, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Flagellant (262), you write:
your 255 post to Logicel, the first part in particular, was terrible.
Unfortunately you don't explain why you found post 255 terrible. I thought it was quite positive and uncontroversial. It basically says that even though there are implicit contradictions between fundamentalist theism and science, there need not be such contradictions between theism in general and science. And that in fact one of the basic tenets of theism, namely that God created the physical world that science studies, makes it literally impossible for science to contradict theism. I think that's a very good realization, and that if people from all sides understood that it would help dissipate the high level of tension and anger that clouds much of the theist/atheist discourse.
911. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #48089 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 6, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Krogercomplete (223):
Most theists I have heard argue from objective morality say something like the following: "all humans intuitively understand that certain things are morally wrong." They move from this intuitive observation to the conclusion that objective morality is axiomatically true (a blatantly unjustified leap in my estimation) and the argument proceeds from there.
Well, to say that certain things are morally wrong independently of the opinion of people and of social convention is the same as saying that certain things are objectively morally wrong.
Now maybe you think that the force of the argument from morality hinges on whether its premise about the existence of objective ethical precepts is in fact true or not. But an argument is useful even if one is unsure about whether its premises are true or not. Here is why:
First of all, please note that the conclusion of an argument may be correct even if some of its premises are false. Here is an example:
1. Yesterday morning torrential rains fell in my hometown. (premise)
2. When torrential rains fall in my hometown the sidewalk in front of my house gets slippery. (premise)
3. Therefore yesterday morning the sidewalk in front of my house got slippery. (from 1 and 2)
Now consider that even if it turns out that premise 1 is false its conclusion 3 may still be true. For example maybe even though it did not rain yesterday my sidewalk got slippery for some other reason.
In general arguments (in propositional logic) have the form P -> C where "P" stands for the premises, "->" stands for implies, and "C" stands for conclusion. As one further example consider the following theorem over numbers:
(X=Y) -> ( X*X = Y*Y )
It says that for all numbers X and Y the premise X=Y implies the conclusion that X*X = Y*Y. Now let's substitute X and Y with 2 and -2 respectively. We get: (2 = -2) -> (4 = 4)
Observe that the conclusion is correct even though the premise is false. If we choose the values 1 and 2 for X and Y we get: (1 = 2) -> (1 = 4). Here both the premise and the conclusions are false, even though the theorem is correct.
The "implies" operator is similar to other logical operators such as "and", "or", etc. and is defined by the following so-called truth table:
P | C | P->C
--------------
0 | 0 | 1
0 | 1 | 1
1 | 0 | 0
1 | 1 | 1
(here "0" stands for false, and "1" stands for true). Observe that all combinations of truth values for P and C are allowed except for the case that P is true and C is false. In other words (P implies C) only disallows that P is true and C is false.
Now the argument from morality has the following form:
(some ethical precepts are objectively true) implies (materialism is false)
But we do not a-priori know whether some ethical precepts are objectively true or not, nor do we a-priori know whether materialism is true or false. So what exactly does this argument say? It says that it's not logically possible that both some ethical precepts are objectively true and that materialism is true.
What's the relevance of this result? Well it turns out that many people (for whatever reason) find it utterly unpalatable to accept that no ethical precepts are objectively true, or, in other words, to accept that all ethical precepts are true only in the sense that they reflect subjective opinion or social convention. Logic requires then that they recognize that materialism is false.
Now in what sense is the argument from morality an argument for the existence of God? It is an argument for the existence of God only for those who consider that the only plausible worldviews are materialism and theism; for them if materialism is false then theism must be true. For those who are prepared to entertain some third alternative of a non-materialistic and non-theistic worldview, such as Buddhism, the argument from morality fails as an argument for the existence of God. It still works though as an argument for religion because I cannot conceive a worldview that is both non-materialistic and non-religious.
912. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #48086 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 6, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Quetzalcoatl (267):
You raise an interesting point and one I hadn't thought. You are saying that God cannot really (i.e. irretrievably) forget something because at any time in the future God has the power to recall it back. Well, I suppose that God will not want to really forget something unless God also knows that S/He will never want to recall it back. Anyway my main point is that the proper understanding of God is that His/Her various abilities are contingent on God's will, which in turn is contingent on God's goodness.
Further you write that a deity that has deliberately forgotten things cannot be called omniscient. Why not? If omniscience is God's limitless ability to have knowledge provided S/He wants to have that knowledge, I see no problem at all.
913. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #48072 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 6, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Logicel (212):
As I wrote before I cannot evaluate whether Plantinga's review of "the God delusion" makes justice to the argument against the existence of God in it, because I haven't yet read that book. Plantinga is a first rate analytical philosopher and I find it very unlikely that he has misunderstood Dawkins's argument. Anyway I see that the relevant chapter 4 "Why there almost certainly is no God" is only about 50 pages long, so I shall have a go at it and come back to you.
914. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #48025 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 6, 2007 at 10:31 am
Logicel (259):
Yes that's me and I am a "he".
Logicel (261):
You wrote:
As you have pointed out that it is naive or silly to look for evidence for a being which exists out of the range of human perception--
Actually no. Many existents exist out of the range of human perception. (By human perception I take it you mean the five senses: seeing, touching, smelling, hearing, tasting). But we cannot see, touch or smell gravity, and even though we believe it exists. Similarly we cannot see, touch or smell electrons.
If by perception you mean any kind of experience (from toothache to beauty) the above still applies. As I argued in post 215 in this thread what in general justifies the existence of X is that X explains part of our experience. So we are justified in believing that mass bends spacetime (again something that we cannot directly perceive) because it explains something we do perceive, namely a particular class of gravitational phenomena (say the shifting of the apparent position of stars near a solar eclipse). Now as individual existents explain specific parts of our experience, God (the foundational existent) is posited as the explanation of the whole of our experience. It is true that the God hypothesis is not necessary for explaining physical phenomena, but the theistic thesis is that the God hypothesis is necessary for explaining the whole of our experience - starting from the fact that we experience at all, i.e. that we are conscious beings.
915. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #48018 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 6, 2007 at 9:56 am
Steve99 (218):
I wrote in (215):
So we discover that to hypothesize that mass bends spacetime helps explain these phenomena. This is then what justifies our belief that mass bends spacetime.
To which you now respond:
No, that isn't the way this worked at all. The bending of spacetime actually came from special relativity(*), and was connected to gravity indirectly via thought experiments about acceleration.
Actually even though the concept of spacetime comes of special relativity the concept of its bending by mass comes from general relativity, which is a theory of gravity, in other words a theory that explains gravitational phenomena.
I wrote
I find that the hypothesis that God exists and is perfectly good works very well.
To which you respond
What I have great difficulty with understanding is why the hypothesis that God exists in any way helps with any of the points you mention. They seem to me (and even to many religious people) to have no logical connection whatsoever. To put in a very flippant way (although to make a serious point), it seems to me equivalent to saying "I am concious. The hypothesis that fairies exist works well to help me with this."
Point taken. Other posters have made similar criticisms, so I owe this forum an explanation of why I think that the God hypothesis works so well.
916. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #47944 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 6, 2007 at 5:07 am
Benjamin Michael (225):
In post (210) I claimed:
[Materialism] is the worldview entertained by the vast majority of actual atheists: that there is nothing beyond the physical world we observe and its natural laws as studied by science.You make clear that you do subscribe to materialism as described, but you and several other posters here have objected to my claim that the "vast majority" of atheists subscribe to materialism.
Now I do not base this claim on some actual study, but only on personal experience discussing with atheists and reading atheistic arguments. And anyway I was not referring to Buddhists or any other class of religious people who might be construed as being atheists, but rather to people who have pondered the question of divine beings and have decided that God or gods of any kind probably or certainly do not exist. I wonder, are there any atheists in this thread who don't subscribe to materialism? Because if all atheists here do subscribe to materialism then this would count as evidence for my claim.
But if there are atheists here who think that there are things beyond the physical world we observe and its natural laws as studied by science, then I would like to ask them what things?
917. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #47923 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 6, 2007 at 3:59 am
BAEOZ (226):
I think the proper understanding of the concept of God's omnipotency is not that God can do anything at all, but rather that God can (and actually does) do whatever God wants. Specifically omnipotency does not imply that God can do anything we might suggest. With this simple clarification we avoid all the usual paradoxes such as whether God can build a stone so heavy that God cannot lift, or whether God can commit suicide, or whether God can commit evil acts, and so on, as it is unreasonable to believe that God would want to do any of these things.
There is a relevant point here, related to the concept of free will. The theistic thesis is that God wants to create (and therefore has created) independent persons who possess genuinely free will and therefore can act in ways that are contrary to God's will.
There is one more relevant point here, related to the concept of omniscience: If God wants to forget something then God certainly can forget it. Which shows that God's omniscience does not mean that God knows everything, but rather that God knows everything that God wants to know.
918. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #47920 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 6, 2007 at 3:42 am
Logicel (250):
You ask why I think it reasonable that natural selection is God's way. Well, if natural selection is what happens in the physical universe (i.e. is the physical universe's way to produce the species), and if God has created the physical universe, then, obviously, it's quite reasonable to consider natural selection God's way.
Many people, theist and atheist alike, believe that there is, or at least might be, some fundamental contradiction between what science finds out about the physical universe and theism. Indeed, it is a fact that science has repeatedly shown that specific religious propositions about the physical universe were false (e.g. that the Earth is only about 6,000 years old). But this does not show that there is some kind of implicit incompatibility between science and religion, but only that science can help religion get rid of some of its false beliefs. The fact that there are some theists (namely the fundamentalists) who resist that is quite irrelevant; indeed many theists consider fundamentalism to represent an extremely naive understanding of religion. In any case for many other theists the issue is rather clear: God has created the physical universe and any knowledge that science produces about the physical universe can only help improve our understanding of the mind of God (to use Einstein's memorable phrase).
919. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #47911 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 6, 2007 at 2:56 am
Steve99 (213):
All atheism means is a lack of belief in a God or Gods.
I have argued elsewhere (in post 148 in this forum) that the "lack of belief" definition of atheism is a bad one because it implies strangely sounding propositions such as that all newborn babies are atheists, that all severely mentally retarded people are atheists, and so on. Now one can easily device a definition of atheism that would render all Buddhists atheists (for example: "atheists do not believe in the existence of a personal supreme being"), but such a definition would imply that most atheists are religious people (because Buddhism is a religion and there is a huge number of Buddhists), which again sounds very strange. I think that good definitions should reflect the way concepts are commonly used, and should tend to help discussion and not confuse it. After all imagine a theist defining theism as the lack of belief in the non-existence of God. We would then get a situation where all newborn babies are both theists and atheists.
There are many, many schools of Buddhism. Some believe in life after death, and supernatural entities, some don't. Some schools of Buddhism (such as Theravadin) don't believe in prayer, survival of the self, or Gods.
My understanding is that all schools of Buddhist believe that people after death reincarnate into some other form: people, animals or gods; in other words that there is life after death. Also I dispute your claim that Theravadin Buddhism does not believe in the existence of gods, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/buddhism/subdivisions/theravada_1.shtml . JSTOR states "Theravada kings were often considered incarnations of gods" Reading a little more about this I find that for Theravada Buddhism gods are not particularly important, but this does not change the fact that it believes in their existence.
No, you are factually wrong, as the majority of atheists (even if you stick with just the more basic forms) are Buddhists.
Again this implies that the majority of atheists are religious people – I doubt that typical person who calls himself or herself an atheist would agree with that.
But here we hit a problem, don't we? You can't speak of an objective existence in any useful sense unless you have solid evidence that the supposedly objective thing you talk about actually exists.
Well, here are some counterexamples: Some physicists speak about the objective existence of parallel universes even though there is no solid evidence for their existence. Other physicists have dedicated their lives to string theory even though there is no solid evidence for the objective existence of strings (in fact some physicists think they don't). Even worse: For centuries scientists believed in the objective existence of gravitational force fields and thought they had solid evidence for their existence, but it turns out they were wrong.
When we say that the proposition X is objectively true, we mean that the truth value of that proposition is independent of personal opinion or convention. So it is meaningful to speak of X's objectivity, even if it turns out that X is in fact false. For example most people believe in the objective existence of the physical universe we observe. But according to idealism the existence of the physical universe is not objective, and, who knows, it may turn out that idealism is correct. If idealism turns out to be correct it will not mean that all those who thought that the physical universe objectively exists were making arbitrary assertions or were confusing terms; it will only mean that their understanding was erroneous.
[Materialistic worldviews] have no problem accounting for consciousness. What they may have a problem with is accounting for what it feels like to be conscious, which is a different matter.
Whatever – materialism has trouble accounting to the existence of what is referred by concepts related to the concept of consciousness; whether you call them conscious experience, qualia, how it is like to be a human being, how it feels like to be conscious, etc.
But even with that, it depends what you mean by 'materialistic'. In the current state of physics, where fields and curved space and quantum mechanics dominate, it means more that just 'made of matter'.
A good definition is that materialism characterizes those worldviews according to which all that exists can be explained on scientific principles, and in particular by using the scientific method.
But you have provided no evidence so far that I can see that the existence or otherwise of God isn't a trival (in terms of logic, not significance) matter.
I think I have presented such evidence: That when knowledgeable theists and atheists debate, neither side is entirely successful and both sides have difficulty countering the other side's arguments.
In the end, there either is some being who interacts with the Universe (even if at only at the beginning), or there isn't. That is the core of things.
That's an interesting statement. I assume that by "Universe" you mean the physical universe we observe and science studies. Now consider that to question whether A and B interact entails that A and B have the same kind of existence. I take it you agree there are different kinds of existence, for example the existence of apples is of a different kind than the existence of numbers, and it would meaningless to ask whether numbers interact with apples or not. Now according to theism God has a radically different kind of existence (and even that God is what sustains existence itself). So to ask whether God interacts with the physical universe is meaningless.
Still, I think I understand what you mean. You are asking whether God interferes with the regularity of the physical phenomena we observe, in short if God performs miracles that violate the physical laws that science has discovered. My answer is that science has shown beyond any reasonable doubt that miracles do not exist, or at least that if they exist they are so rare as to be irrelevant for all practical purposes. Some theists introduce the apparent fine-tuning of the fundamental physical constants as an argument for the existence of God, but I think that this argument does not hold water.
Having said that allow me to introduce an argument for divine interference. I want to make it completely clear that this argument does not work in my worldview, but is an argument that strikes me as being fairly strong in many other worldviews. It's an argument for the compatibility of intelligent design and evolution. Here it is:
According to quantum mechanics (including all its interpretations) quantum events are fundamentally unpredictable. Natural evolution depends on the existence of random mutations, many of which are quantum events (e.g. some gamma ray knocking out some atoms in the genetic material of a cell). God, being omnipotent, could determine such quantum events in order to guide the path that the evolution of species happened to take on Earth, and in this way literally design human beings. And as that interference of God would happen on the quantum level it would be undetectable to objective observation (it would exist within quantum noise and therefore beneath science's radar so to speak.) Here is another way to put the argument: Suppose we write on a long strip of paper all random mutations that have affected the evolution of homo sapiens. Suppose now that God has directly written this sequence taking care not to violate any of the applicable statistical tests for randomness. If so God might have designed homo sapiens (or at the very least guided the evolution of homo sapiens) in a way that is fundamentally undetectable by science.
I had written:
Also right and wrong has nothing to do with survival value. Slavery might have survival value both for the owners and for the slaves, but this cannot be used as an argument for the morality of slavery.
You responded:
Again, your argument fails because you use generalities. Right and wrong certainly are related to survival values. For example, you can even demonstrate with mathematical models how altruism (which we consider 'right') has a major survival value. Just because we don't all do right all the time does not refute the argument.
I think we agree that survival value alone is not sufficient to justify all ethical precepts (as my example of slavery shows). But above I made a much stronger claim, namely that ethics has nothing to do with survival value. You argue that this is wrong and that there is certainly a relation between the two (as shown by mathematical models of altruism, etc).
Let me try to justify my stronger claim. Actually I am having a hard time imagining a bad ethical act that does not improve my own survival value. If we ignore the case of mentally ill people, the rest of us commit bad acts because they increase our own survival value. So for example I might steal money (or not pay my taxes) because I figure that I can use that money to live longer, sire more children etc. At this juncture you may respond that ethics is not related to my own survival value but to everybody else's. But then we should not give antibiotics to ill people because doing so goes against the survival value of the microbes. You may respond that ethics is related to the survival value of people only. But then we should kill the very old people because doing so disproportionally increases the survival value of all people. You may respond that what counts is the number of people alive. But then we should prohibit the use of contraceptives in order to maximize the human population.
What I try to illustrate above is that it is extraordinarily difficult to develop a rational/objective ethical system that works well. No matter how often we turn or qualify the system the goal always appears to be out of reach. Philosophers have tried to device such systems, often patching and re-patching them to respond to criticisms, but to no avail. Even the venerable golden rule is full of holes. And I think that theory evolution has offered zero help for improving this state of affairs. Dawkins has put it fairly well in this debate when he speaks of "a place" where we take our morality from (even though he then clarifies that that place is not religion). I personally think that that place is how we ourselves are, a place not objectively observable (and therefore irrelevant to science), a place that lies at the very center of our condition. That place is how it is to be a human being. In other words I think that ethical knowledge resides in our experiential reality. On these terms one can define the general ethical rule thus: you should do what love inspires you to do; but not any kind of love but the kind of universal and self-transcendent love we all sometimes experience.
I had written:
Rather I gave a specific argument to justify my claim. If you can find some error in this argument I would very much like to know about it. The argument is very simple really:
1. Nothing in the physical universe (as described by scientific realism) is red. (premise)
2. Therefore red is not part of the physical universe. (from 1)
3. Red exists. (premise)
4. Therefore some things exist that are not part of the physical universe. (from 2 and 3)
To which you responded:
This fails at (1) - it is a premise, nothing more; indeed, as you go on...
Of course (1) is a premise, all arguments use premises. The question is do you agree with it? If you don't, why not? Do you know of anything in the physical universe that is red?
920. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #47651 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 5, 2007 at 6:38 am
PrimeNumbers (176):
You ask how I know that "God is perfectly good". Basically by searching for the best explanation, which is a time-tested method of reason. For example how do we know that mass bends spacetime? After all, at its face this sounds like a very strange thing to believe. Well, we start with some physical phenomena we experience (in this case gravitational phenomena) and try to explain them. So we discover that to hypothesize that mass bends spacetime helps explain these phenomena. This is then what justifies our belief that mass bends spacetime.
Now religion is not about explaining some particular class of physical phenomena, or even any part of our conscious experience, but to explain the whole of it: The fact that we are conscious beings to start with, how it is to be a human being in general, and also how it is to love, how it is to perceive beauty, but also how it is to fail, how it is to hurt, how it is to be afraid, and so on. Now when confronted with the task of explaining the whole of my own experience (which I trust is quite similar to anybody else's) I find that the hypothesis that God exists and is perfectly good works very well.
Of course I realize I have responded to your question only in part, for example I have not explained why I find that this hypothesis works so well – but I don't have time to go into much more detail right now. Meanwhile here is an interesting question to ponder independently of me: Suppose, just for discussion's sake, that such a person of perfect goodness and limitless power actually exists. What do *you* think such a person would choose to do? And then compare what you think such a person would do, with your actual experience of life, and check whether you find a contradiction between the two, or maybe an explanation. (But be careful to think about what that person would want to do, not what you would want that person to do.)
Further you ask what I mean by "perfectly good". One way to explain what I mean is this: A person is perfectly good when I would completely trust that person in situations where that person's will can affect me. Another way is this: A person is perfectly good when I wish myself (and everybody else) to become ever more similar to that person.
921. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #47646 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 5, 2007 at 6:16 am
Flagellant (201) and Russell Blackford (123):
Thank you for your kind words when comparing me with Alister McGrath, but I really think that's unfair. McGrath had to respond in real time and in front of a camera. I have the luxury to quietly think, sometimes for hours, before responding.
Flagellant, I think you are asking "where's the beef?" Indeed I have largely abstained from presenting my own worldview in any detail. There are many reasons for that, not least because I hate to sound like sermonizing. On the other hand I find the kind of discussion that we are having here very interesting, and I am willing to keep up with it, try to answer any questions and explain my position to any detail - for as long as you or the other posters here are interested too. My problem is that I have invested an extraordinary amount of time in this forum during the last few days, and even so the number of posts I would like to respond to has grown. I really can't keep up with this pace any longer, and would like to ask you and the other posters here for your understanding if I respond much slower in the future.
922. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #47621 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 5, 2007 at 4:54 am
Steve99 (164):
You touch on a lot of points.
You are right that there are worldviews that are atheistic but not materialistic. So I should have qualified that according to *materialist* atheism the World consists of our physical universe and nothing else. This is the worldview entertained by the vast majority of actual atheists: that there is nothing beyond the physical world we observe and its natural laws as studied by science. So for the vast majority of actual atheistic worldviews my arguments stand.
I never claimed that science has produced or can produce all knowledge about the physical universe; only that science has proven very successful in producing knowledge about the physical universe (or to be more exact: about physical phenomena). I agree with you that it is not possible to produce *all* knowledge about the physical universe. Incidentally I think that Godel's theorem is irrelevant in this context. Rather according to the Second Law of thermodynamics information is irretrievably lost at each irreversible physical process, which entails that knowledge about that lost information cannot be gained. For example after an explosion it's impossible to know the exact state of the bomb before exploding.
You say that Buddhism is atheist. Buddhism, as all major religions, believes that the physical universe is only a small part of a much larger spiritual reality and a much deeper order, but denies that this deeper order can be described as the presence of a person. That's why we say that Buddhists do not believe in a personal God. On the other hand Buddhism is a full-fledged religion with monasteries, complex dogmas, temples where religious ceremonies are performed, prayers to Buddha, belief in life after death, and so on, so to call Buddhism atheist is terribly confusing. In fact it's factually wrong because according to Buddhism's understanding of reality many supernatural gods exist (in fact good people may re-incarnate as gods, albeit these gods are considered lower then Buddhas and Bodhittsavas ).
Now I have been criticizing the fact that atheists often attack the more primitive versions of theism, so I take well your criticism that I am attacking the more primitive versions of atheism myself. Indeed the more sophisticated atheists appear to assert the existence of some kind of spiritual or non-material reality. Harris for example says that our consciousness may survive death and only denies the possibility of continuation of personal identity (we lose all our memories and so on, because these are codified in our brain which is destroyed at death). Dawkins himself appears to be making noises that he subscribes to some kind of spiritual religion a la Einstein. Of course I think such views are a step in the right direction.
You write that the majority of atheists use philosophy, not science. I think that's factually wrong, for example Dawkins doesn't. Again, the great majority of atheists believes that science is capable of explaining anything that needs explaining and therefore the God hypothesis is superfluous.
I wrote that God instantiates what is objectively good and you responded "That is demonstrably false, otherwise all theists would have the same objective sense of what is good." The statement that God instantiates what is objectively good is an ontological statement and cannot be construed as an epistemological one. Indeed objective existence does not imply that it is easy or straightforward to reach knowledge about that existent. Here is an example: According to materialism physical reality objectively exists. Even so consider how difficult it is to learn about it and how scientists today radically differ in their description of it (for example they don't agree if physical reality consists of one universe or of a huge and furiously growing number of similar universes; indeed they don't know of any experiment that would help them decide one way or the other).
You point out that I have not demonstrated any connection between "I am a conscious being" and the existence of God or Gods. That's correct; I have not here developed the argument from consciousness. (I can try if you want, but this is going to be very long :-( And anyway my goal here is not to convince anybody of the existence of God, but to argue that the non-existence of God is not a trivial matter as Dawkins apparently believes). On the other hand it is an objective fact that materialistic worldviews (which, again, characterize the vast majority of atheistic worldviews) have a big problem accounting for our consciousness. But consciousness is the single most important fact of our condition, and if a worldview has trouble dealing with it then it's very bad news for the efficacy of that worldview.
The concept of objectivity is not contingent on whether people agree or disagree about something. Rather objectivity characterizes those propositions whose truth is independent of subjective opinion or taste, social convention, etc. So, for example, the meaning of claiming that the ethical precept P is objectively true is that P would still be true even if absolutely everybody thought it was wrong. Also right and wrong has nothing to do with survival value. Slavery might have survival value both for the owners and for the slaves, but this cannot be used as an argument for the morality of slavery. Finally the fact that any ethical precept, or our sense of right and wrong in general, can be explained from a biological and evolutionary basis is irrelevant too. After all, all ethical precepts, even ones that directly contradict each other, have evolved by some natural means, but this says absolutely nothing about which of them is true.
You write "There is a big argument going on about qualia (such as the experience of red), but that does not mean they aren't part of the physical universe". But I did not argue that the color red is not part of the physical universe because there is a lot of discussion going on about qualia. Rather I gave a specific argument to justify my claim. If you can find some error in this argument I would very much like to know about it. The argument is very simple really:
1. Nothing in the physical universe (as described by scientific realism) is red. (premise)
2. Therefore red is not part of the physical universe. (from 1)
3. Red exists. (premise)
4. Therefore some things exist that are not part of the physical universe. (from 2 and 3)
Of course the relevance of this argument goes far beyond the issue of red. It can be extended to show that all qualia (and therefore the whole of our conscious experience) is not part of the physical universe. This is one of the reasons why David Chalmers claims that the problem of consciousness is hard (read: impossible). The solution that Chalmers proposes, indeed the only solution possible in this context, is that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, at par with matter itself.
The problem of consciousness is probably the most hotly contested field in philosophy today. I am right now reading "Conversations on consciousness" by Susan Blackmore, where she interviews some twenty famous people (philosophers but also philosophically inclined scientists including Nobel price winners) who have studied and published on this problem. Incidentally, as far as I know, they are all atheists or agnostics.
You write that "No-one seriously claims that science can help us decide what is good". I wish you were right. In fact many people seriously claim exactly that. I recently saw a video of a public debate between Alister McGrath and fellow Oxford professor Peter Atkins, a biologist (you can see the video here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4687991581017316681). Well Atkins expressively claims that science can answer all significant questions, and that those questions that science cannot answer are made-up questions that theologians invent to make a living.
Finally my understanding is that Dawkins introduces that argument in chapter 3 in his book (the so-called Boeing 747 argument) to show precisely that: that God does not exist, or more precisely that it is enormously improbable that God exists.
923. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #47480 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 4, 2007 at 4:29 pm
James_the_doubter (151):
Let me start by saying that to doubt is I think an excellent state of mind as long as it motivates you to search and check. I make that latter clarification because some people become professional doubters which I think is a cover for intellectual laziness.
You ask what my motive for arguing is. Well, it turns out that I read Dawkins's "The selfish gene" when I was very young and it became one of the seminal books in my life. So I was disappointed when the same Dawkins started writing anti-theistic books, not so much because I think he is wrong (everybody can be wrong, I may be wrong too) but because, in my judgment, Dawkins oversimplified the issues in a very irresponsible manner, became unnecessarily combative, and even started affirming propositions that are trivially wrong, such as that "God is in the same status as fairies", that "We should devote as much time to studying serious theology as we devote to studying serious fairies and serious unicorns", or that "Religious fundamentalists never change their minds". In an interview (available here: http://media.newscientist.com/data/av/podcast/newsci-20061110-science-vs-religion.mp3) Dawkins says that scientists must reject any idea that tends to say that "natural selection is God's way to do it, because it's unscientific". I agree it's unscientific, but I wonder, why should scientists reject it? The idea that natural selection is God's way seems quite reasonable to me. Or does he mean that scientists should reject all unscientific statements? What about the statements "Mozart wrote beautiful music" or "War is a terrible thing" or "There is hard problem of consciousness"? Most of the things we debate about or even think about are unscientific questions - is that bad? Further he said that there is "an important scientific question: Is there as a matter of fact a supernatural designing intelligence in the universe? If it were it would be the most exciting scientific fact of all." Well, by "supernatural designing intelligence" he means God, but God is not supposed to be *in* the universe or a matter of scientific investigation. I am afraid that listening to the "creation science" fundamentalists he has a very primitive idea of what God is supposed to be. But then he is making a lot of noise doing battle with a paper tiger and, even worse, affirming that one does not need study serious theology before rejecting it. Imagine a fundamentalist Christian affirming that one does not need study serious science before rejecting it. Also it seems to me that Dawkins tutoring other scientists about what they should believe about God brings religious talk into the scientific discourse and that's definitely a bad idea.
So, to finally answer your question, I find it alarming how such an excellent mind as Dawkins's can become so confused, and my motivation in this forum is to suggest that the question of the existence of God is a) not trivial, b) a philosophical question, and c) that philosophy in general is a very interesting and important field of study.
As for me writing that what really counts is to be a good person: This forms a central part of my worldview, indeed it explains to my satisfaction the existence of evil (it's not my idea: this is called the Irenaean theodicy and has been developed in modern form by John Hick). But also consider this: All of Christianity turns on Jesus' teaching in the gospels, and I find that all the gospels turn on John 13:34 where Jesus at the Last Supper says: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; according as I did love you, that you also love one another; in this shall all know that you are my disciples, if you may have love one to another". I understand this literally. So as far as Jesus is concerned an atheist who loves others is closer to God than a theist who believes all the right things but does not love others. And observe that to love others is equivalent to being good, because one can't be good without loving others, and one cannot love others and not be good. Finally observe Jesus's clarification that the love that counts is the kind of love that he had for others, namely universal and selfless love.
924. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #47461 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 4, 2007 at 3:07 pm
Miri (139):
If I understand you correctly you see an egg and chicken problem in the argument from morality. Indeed according to theism ethical precepts are objective because they are grounded in the objective reality of God, i.e. in how God objectively is. And it's true that the argument from morality for the existence of God uses as a premise the proposition that at least some ethical precepts are objective. Still I think you are mixing up levels. Here is why:
All arguments are built on some premises, that is propositions that are affirmed to be true without any further justification. For example in mathematical proofs such premises would be the relevant axioms. Now in the case of the argument from morality one premise states that at least some ethical precepts are objectively true, in other words are true independently of any particular person's subjective opinion or of social convention. (Your example that torturing children is wrong would be a good candidate.) The argument from morality does not make any pretence to justify that premise in any way; you are free to reject it and by doing so you reject the validity of the argument from morality too. In other words you are free to reject the argument from morality by simply claiming that no ethical precepts are objectively true. But if you are not prepared to reject that premise but rather (as most people would do) accept it a-priori, then you must deal with the rest of the argument on its merits.
Should you find that argument convincing, or should you for some other reason end up believing in the existence of God, then you have the additional bonus that a theistic worldview is capable of explaining how come ethical precepts are objective, namely by being grounded in the objective reality of God. But this latter insight is irrelevant to the argument from morality, and indeed is not used by it any way.
925. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #47455 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 4, 2007 at 2:42 pm
PrimeNumbers (138):
Well, we are less than perfectly good so we need a place to get our morality from, but God is perfectly good so does not need to do that.
There is a common atheist argument of the form "If God X then what X God?" for example: "If God created the universe then who created God?" or "If God is our base of morality, what is the base of morality of God?" or "If God explains all our experience what explains God?" But this is a fallacious kind of argument, because reason rejects actual infinities. So it's meaningless to keep asking why? why? why? or how? how? how? in any field of knowledge. There is always an end point. Why must there always be such an end point? Because answers (and explanations) tend to be more general than the question, and there comes a point where one reaches maximal generality. For example take the field of mathematics and make some question (say "Why is there no greatest prime number?"), and then keep asking why; there will come a point where the mathematician will answer: because that's how it is. Or take physics, make some question and keep asking why or how. Again there comes a point that no more answering is possible. For example there is no answer to the question of how mass bends spacetime. Similarly you cannot simply keep asking for definitions, because a point comes where concepts allow for no more defining without creating circularity.
You write "Atheist's morality is empirical - we see what works and change and adapt to circumstance." So, let's take a current example of an ethical question: abortion. As you know some people believe that abortion is amoral in all cases, some that it is moral when the mother's health is at risk, some that it is moral when the fetus is shown to have some particular defect, some that it is moral in all cases if performed in the first trimester, some that it is always moral as long as both the father and mother agree, and so on. How do you suggest we empirically test which of these is the correct ethical precept?
926. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #47410 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 4, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Dr Benway (124):
You write:
"Saying 'I've not yet heard a good argument for God's existence' isn't an argument."
Actually I think this is a pretty good argument, and one that many atheists use to explain why they don't believe in God: They simply don't know of any good reason for thinking that God exists.
You write:
"Likewise, lack of belief is not a type of belief. Lack of faith is not 'faith' in non-belief. Firm rejection of dogma is not a form of dogmatism. Off is not a TV channel."
This reminds me of the trick question of whether black is a color. But in general I agree with the above.
On the other hand there is a definition of atheism that states that atheists are characterized by the absence of belief in the existence of any gods. I think that's a bad definition because it contradicts how the term is normally used. For example it implies that all newborn babies and all severely mentally handicapped people are atheists. In reality only really very uneducated people have never heard of the concept of God have never thought about whether such a being might exist. So really only very uneducated people will truly lack belief in the existence of God. The rest have given at least some thought about this question and have decided that God does probably not exist. In any case as a practical matter it only makes sense to discuss theism or atheism with people who have given some thought or at least are interested in given some thought in these matters.
927. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #47406 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 4, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Russell Blackford (123):
I think Plantinga's point in his "The Dawkins confusion" is that Dawkins, as many other atheists do, simply begs the question by assuming as a given that only the physical universe and its parts exist (i.e. so-called naive materialism). If you assume this then it is very easy to construct an argument against the existence of God, for example:
1. Only the physical universe and its parts exist. (premise)
2. God is not the physical universe and is not some part of the physical universe. (premise)
3. Therefore God does not exist. (from 1 and 2)
According to Plantinga, Dawkins's argument for the non-existence of God in chapter 3 of his latest book is:
1. God in enormously complex. (premise)
2. The more complex any thing is the more improbable it is. (premise)
3. Therefore God is enormously improbable. (from 1 and 2)
Plantinga accepts for discussion's sake premise 1. Dawkins himself apparently thinks that somebody capable of creating something as complex as the physical universe must be even more complex (that's a shaky argument but no matter). But Plantinga wonders how one is to justify premise 2, which indeed does not at all sound self-evident. He explains that the only way to justify that premise is to implicitly assume that only physical things exist (i.e. naive materialism). So Dawkins's explicit argument is as follows:
1. The more complex a physical thing is the more improbable it is. (premise)
2. All things are physical things. (premise)
3. Therefore the more complex any thing is the more improbable it is. (from 1 and 2)
4. God is enormously complex. (premise)
5. Therefore God is enormously improbable. (from 3 and 4)
Premise 1 is plausible, but premise 2 asserts naive materialism. But to accept naive materialism as a given is to beg the question of the existence of God because naive materialism entails that God does not exist, as God is not supposed to be a material thing. So I think Plantinga makes a convincing case that Dawkins's argument contains one of the most basic logical errors: to implicitly assume what it intends to show.
Now I haven't yet read "The God delusion" and maybe Plantinga has misrepresented Dawkins's argument in chapter 3. But as far as I can tell Dawkins has not responded to Plantinga's review of his book, and there is the principle that silence gives consent.
As for you asking me to acknowledge that the hypothesis that an additional immaterial world exists is a "pet wild hypothesis", I wonder why you think it reasonable that I should acknowledge that. After all I find that a worldview that includes that hypothesis can work much better than any worldview that omits it. So, far from calling it "pet" or "wild" I judge such a worldview to be far more reasonable than any materialistic worldview, because it explains the whole of my experience much better than any materialistic worldview.
You see, one thing I believe many atheists waste their time with is to focus on the most noisy and in-your-face versions of theism (e.g. religious fundamentalism) or in the most official versions of it (e.g. dogmatic Christianity). I have read books by atheists that exclusively deal with religious fundamentalism, but this is as clear a case of a strawman as you can find. What I think a seeker after truth should do is to search out, study, and engage with the best versions of the opposite side's worldview. Or even an atheist should try to device his or her own best theistic worldview and see how well it works. This might seem to be too difficult a quest; on the other hand if God exists then it's reasonable to expect that God helps those who seriously seek for truth :-)
As for me I don't worry about atheists going to hell or any such nonsense. I believe that what really counts is to be a good person, and belief in God is valuable only in as far as it helps one be a good person.
928. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath
Comment #47385 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 4, 2007 at 9:47 am
Flagellant (120):
I am not saying that this larger World is not open to atheists – after all if such a larger World exists then, obviously, it's open to everybody. What I am saying that that many atheists don't think that such a larger World exists. Which atheists? Well, obviously, those who believe that the physical universe exhausts all reality and that there is nothing more there than the physical universe. So let me suggest something that clearly exists but that does not form part of the physical universe: the color red. To claim that the color red does not form part of the physical universe might sound surprising at first but consider this: According to science (or more precisely: according to scientific realism) there exists electromagnetic radiation of various wavelengths, molecules that absorb or reflect some of these frequencies better than others, cone cells in the human eye that are especially sensitive to some particular electromagnetic frequencies, particular neural networks in the human brain connected to these cones, etc – but no matter how carefully you search in the physical universe as modeled by science you will not in fact find any part that is what we know as red.
You ask whether I think that there is something about the World that is not open to understanding. Well, we can only try to reach understanding about what we consciously experience, which philosophers like to call the "phenomenal world". To answer your question then I believe that there is no limit to our capacity of understanding our experience. Part of our experience is that of physical (i.e. objectively observable) phenomena, and science has done a splendid job explaining them. But there is much more in our experience than physical phenomena and I think it is very worthwhile to try to understand that part too. For example, our experience of the color red is something that is not objectively observable and cannot therefore be a subject of scientific investigation. But it clearly exists and forms part of what it is like to be a human being. Similarly, how it is to love, how it is to perceive beauty, how it is to do the right thing, how it is to reach self-transcendence – these are all parts, even significant parts, of the human condition, but do not form part of the subject matter of science. What I would like is to reach understanding of the whole of the human condition, and not only about the part of physical phenomena. And to go back to the question of theism, I personally find that the best theistic worldview I can devise is much more successful in giving me this kind of overarching understanding than the best atheistic worldview.
You ask if there is a limit to scientific knowledge. Of course there are such limits, and philosophers have written books about this. So what are these limits?
Even though it might seem very surprising science does not and in fact cannot tell us how physical reality objectively is. So, for example, science cannot answer the question of whether electrons really exist or are only useful elements of science's modeling of electromagnetic phenomena. Another example: After Newton's mechanics many physicists (not well versed in philosophy I'm afraid) firmly believed that electromagnetic force fields objectively exist. But in the beginning of the 20th century Einstein developed his general relativity according to which force fields do not exist; rather the curvature of spacetime exists. But does it really? If somebody in the future were to develop an even better model of gravitational phenomena then the bending of spacetime may go the way gravitational force fields went. What is the upshot of all this? That science can only model physical phenomena but cannot say anything about how the physical reality that (supposedly) lies behind physical phenomena really is. In fact when physicists tried to describe what kind of physical reality might produce the quantum mechanical phenomena they discovered that it was possible to device not one but more than half a dozen radically different views of physical reality (the so-called interpretations of quantum mechanics), each contradicting all others, each equally correct in the functional sense, and, I might add, each rather fantastic.
Another example of a very important class of questions that science cannot answer is ethical questions. There is no way to use the scientific method to decide ethical questions about abortion, euthanasia, social justice, war, social justice, the appropriate use of scientific knowledge itself, or an