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2007-05-03 20:58:15

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Supposing He Doesn't Exist

Should we believe in God even if there is no evidence of him?

Suppose that God doesn’t exist.
It is possible: there is no unquestionable evidence that God does exist. We’ll get into arguments for Theism and Atheism later, but for now, let’s assume that the Theists are wrong, and there is no evidence of God, or there is no God. Should we still believe in God? There are two answers to this question: yes or no.

The Pragmatist’s answer to this question is yes: there is reason to believe in God, even if he doesn’t exist, for prudential reasons: it’s in our benefit to believe despite the evidence. We’ll start by considering Pascal and Freud’s arguments for Pragmatism. As I come across more arguments for Pragmatism, I’ll add them on. If anyone has their own argument for Pragmatism, please feel free to add it as well.

The Evidentialist’s answer is no: our belief should reflect the evidence that we have. Thus if we were to rank the evidence for God as 3 out of 10, the rank of our belief should also be 3 out of 10. We’ll start by looking at Clifford’s argument for Evidentialism. Again, as I find more I’ll put them up, and anyone is more than welcome to contribute their arguments for Evidentialism here.

Let me point out that the questions, “is there evidence for God’s existence?” and “should we believe in God irrespective of the evidence” are quite independent of each other. You may feel, like Freud or Pascal, that the answers to the questions are no and yes respectively: there isn’t sufficient evidence in God, but we should believe anyways. You may believe that there is sufficient evidence for God, but one should believe in God even if there wasn’t.
Likewise, one could be Evidentialist and say that we shouldn’t believe in God if there isn’t evidence, but believe that there is evidence. Or one could believe that there isn’t evidence for God, and that one shouldn’t believe without evidence.

For these, and all the philosophical questions that I pose, I will refer to Elliott Sober’s Core Questions in Philosophy (4th edition), 2005, Prentice Hall.

arguments for Pragmatism

Pascal's Pragmatism

2007-05-18 [DanClark]: A religious person would say that the proof is staring at you in the mirror. Philosophy can debate the existance of God, but they can't explain why everything exists.

2007-05-20 [thoughtfox]: Actually, it can - big bang theory, evolution, etc. As Laplace commented about God, "I have no need for that hypothesis." I'm quite aware of what religious people say - I've seen a number of religious people struggle in my Philosophy class because they're unable to challenge their own beliefs. I tried to present this question to one of them to help them with a test, and she answered, "but he does exist." She couldn't conceive a world without God, but she had little justification for her belief. I'll present more arguments as I go through my Philosophy material, I'm just caught up with my other subjects right now.

2007-05-21 [iippo]: Has anyone actually ever explained in a non-religious way where matter came from? *not to debate but asking out of curiosity* Sure, you can say "big bang" but there had to be something to "bang" first, right (if I understand correctly, the big bang explains that everything in the universe was condensed into one place and then exploded outwards)?

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