Does God Exist? Reflections
on Disbelief
Kai Nielsen
Introduction to Philosophy
Professor Douglas Olena
Fall 2003
Introduction
Statements from a religious culture:
All mighty God we have sinned against you
The Lord will comfort us
We will be happy with God in heaven
To God our lives lie open
God is our All Mighty and Eternal Father
whose realm extends beyond the bounds of
space and time, etc. 126
Introduction
Are statements like this true or even probably
true or can they be reasonably believed by
properly informed people?
Moreover, some of us wonder whether such
utterances are sufficiently intelligible to make
their acceptance a coherent object of faith.
Can we reasonably believe that such claims and
indeed the central claims of Judaism and
Christianity as well—make statements which
are either true or false? 126
Introduction
Kai Nielsen believes all these questions should
be answered in the negative.
…[I]f we have a scientific education and
philosophical sophistication, along with a
willingness to reflect on such matters, these
things, taken together, should undermine
religious belief.
Introduction
Part I. Argue against:
Attempts to prove God exists
That revelation is reliable
That morality requires religious belief
That God can be known directly in religious
experience.
Introduction
Part I. Method:
First, show that none of these apologetic
appeals work. This is an approximation of the
truth. 126
Second, deal with the skeptical perplexities
that turn principally on questions concerning
how we might establish the truth or probable
truth of the claims of Judaism or Christianity
and whether we could reasonably accept
them as articles of faith. 127
Introduction
Part II.
Kai will turn to the vexed question of whether
such religious beliefs could even count as
genuine truth-claims.
concludes: Belief in God is an ideological belief
that distorts our understanding of reality. This
is not just an innocent distortion. For often,
where we have such beliefs or are affected by
such beliefs, they distort our lives. They are
not… humanly desirable saving myths. 127
Introduction
Part III.
Consider what interests religion answers to,
and what, under certain societal conditions,
socially necessary illusions religion secures.
Part 1: Refute Apologetics
In the middle ages it was thought that we could
prove the existence of God.
With the industrial revolution and the
enlightenment the intellectual attitude shifted.
David Hume–skeptic, empiricist
Immanuel Kant–rationalist
together destroyed the accepted proofs for
the existence of God 127
Part 1: Refute Apologetics
David Hume:
His skepticism disallowed making any
inference from observed realities to
unobserved speculation count as truth.
If the inference was strong it was nevertheless
not counted as truth, only probability.
No proof for the existence of God is strong
enough to be counted even as probable on
Hume’s account.
Part 1: Refute Apologetics
Immanuel Kant:
Systematically, by sound reason and logically
valid arguments argued that none of the
proofs of God’s existence would work for
someone who did not already believe that
God existed. All the standard proofs are
circular.
Nielsen is incorrect to assert that Kant
disproved the existence of God on that
account.
Part 1: Refute Apologetics
Immanuel Kant:
Kant’s proof for the existence of God rested
on the necessity of having a lawgiver and a
seat for moral truth, none of which can be
derived from the observations or theories of
science. (Also C.S. Lewis)
Kant was a major force in scientific theory in
his age, though he is not known for that. He
was not unacquainted with science.
Part 1: Refute Apologetics
Kai is correct in stating that the Zeitgeist shifted
because of these and other philosophers and
scientists in the 17th through 20th century. 127
Zeitgeist - World-view or underlying metaphor
for an age.
Just as the Zeitgeist cut against the skeptic in the
middle ages, so now the Zeitgeist in our age
favors skepticism about proofs.
Part 1: Refute Apologetics
Refute the ontological argument:
[I]t should be noted that while an eternal
being could not come to exist or just cease to
exist, it still could eternally be the case that
there are no eternal beings.
Thus to conceive of an eternal being is not to
establish that there actually is one.
What our conceptualization tells us is that if
there is one, he or it exists timelessly.
Part 1: Refute Apologetics
Refute the cosmological argument:
These arguments suggest that there is no
better explanation for the existence of the
universe than to postulate that God exists.
God is an uncaused cause of all that there is.
129
Part 1: Refute Apologetics
Refute the cosmological argument:
Kai responds: And while there will be no
ultimate explanation of why there is anything
at all , there is not good reason to believe that
we can, let alone must have explanations of
that type.
That is to say, there are no good grounds for
believing that there are, let alone that there
must be, such ultimate explanations. 129
Part 1: Refute Apologetics
Refute the cosmological argument:
Kai continues: In that special sense it need not
be the case that there is a reason for
everything.
Argument from design.
The observed order in the universe does not
even lend any probability to the claim that the
universe is designed. An observed pattern, no
matter how intricate does not show that
there was or is an orderer or designer. 129
Part 1: Refute Apologetics
Refute the direct awareness of God argument:
OK, there are no compelling rational proofs,
so there is still the fact that I have a
relationship with God that is undeniable.
Kai responds: Plainly, such experiences can be
explained in natural or secular terms, so there
is no warrant for postulating God to account
for them. 130
Part 1: Refute Apologetics
Refute the direct awareness of God argument:
There is no religious experience which
guarantees that our experience is an
experience of God. This can be asserted
without for a moment doubting that some
people have religious experiences. The
psychological reality of such experience is one
thing, that these experiences are actually
experiences of God is another. 130
Part 1: Refute Apologetics
Refutes the appeal to scripture argument:
[W]e must be thrown back on a straight
appeal to faith. To have religion at all, we must
have religion with foundations: Christianity or
Judaism without rational grounds.
Kai denies the appeal to scripture. All religions
have history and scripture. What makes yours
compellingly different. 131
Part 1: Refute Apologetics
Refutes the appeal to moral foundations
argument:
Looking for a foundation, a Christian or Jew
might claim that only God can make sense of
the tangled lives we lead. If God is dead, he
echoes a Dostoevskian character, nothing
matters. God gives purpose to our lives and
direction.
Part 1: Refute Apologetics
Refutes the appeal to moral foundations
argument:
Kai responds: Without God there may be no
purpose to life, but life can still be purposeful,
be worth living, even if there is no overarching
purpose to life. even if there is no purpose of
my life or purpose to life there can be
purposes in life, e.g., to cure the sick, to
achieve racial equality, etc. These are the
purposes we human beings can have and they
can remain in a Godless world. 131, 132
Part II Truth Claims
We turn to Kai’s answer to the vexed question
of whether such religious beliefs could even
count as genuine truth-claims.
concludes: Belief in God is an ideological belief
that distorts our understanding of reality. This is
not just an innocent distortion. For often,
where we have such beliefs or are affected by
such beliefs, they distort our lives. They are not
… humanly desirable saving myths. 127
Part II Truth Claims
The preceding arguments [contra proofs for
the existence of God] show that “claims to
religious truth are groundless.
There is no reason to think we have any
justified religious truth claims at all or that we
need to make a religious leap in the dark to
give moral endeavor a point or to make sense
out of our tangled lives. 132
Part II Truth Claims
The worry is that God-talk may not come to
anything sufficiently coherent to be capable of
even making false claims.
How are we to understand what is being said
here or indeed do we understand what is being
said?
The words are familiar enough, but do they
make sense? 132
Part II Truth Claims
[W]e have assumed that we have at least a
minimally coherent set of concepts embedded in
our God-talk, but that we just do not know if
the claims of religion are true.
But it is this very assumption which is now
coming under fire. 132
Part II Truth Claims
These phrases (page 133) have a cluster of
varied and complicated resonances and they
are believed to be key elements in Christian
cosmologies, but do they have a sufficiently
unproblematic meaning for us to understand
what we are asserting or denying when we use
them?
Do we have any idea of what we are talking
about or even any understanding what is being
referred to when we use them? 133
Part II Truth Claims
Since such claims purport to assert “grand
cosmological facts,” the claims are thus
unmasked as incoherent conceptions.
It is not true that the naturalist thesis and the
supernaturalist thesis which claim to be equally
compatible with the available evidence actually
are. 133
Part II Truth Claims
Nielsen suggests that the only way to verify the
claims of Christianity is to die to find out
whether Jesus did or did not raise from the
dead.
We thus have shown, this Christian defense
contends, how key strands of God-talk are
verifiable…
Verification as a goal of scientific practice. 134
Part II Truth Claims
Nielsen’s argument about the meaninglessness
of talking about God as “pure spirit” is correct
if and only if you understand the concept of
pure spirit in the same way he does, that is that
the words are to be read in a purely linguistic
sense without any of the rich connections to
the literature and practice of Christianity.
Something that is “pure”; something that is
“spirit”.
The remainder of his argument relies on this.
Part II Truth Claims
Nielsen’s argument about the meaninglessness
of talking about God as “pure spirit” is correct
if and only if you understand the concept of
pure spirit in the same way he does, that is that
the words are to be read in a purely linguistic
sense without any of the rich connections to
the literature and practice of Christianity.
Something that is “pure”; something that is
“spirit”.
The remainder of his argument relies on this.
Part III The Goal of Religion
Consider what interests religion answers to,
and what, under certain societal conditions,
socially necessary illusions religion secures. 127
We should clearly recognize, in this heavenly
swindle, the ideological function of such age-old
religious apologetics. 136
Religion cons them into accepting a
dehumanizing status quo. It sings of man’s
liberation while helping to forge his chains. 136
Part III The Goal of Religion
In asking what is to be done, we should answer that
we must break the spell of this false consciousness
and make the demystified, ideologically unravelled, and
utterly secularized positive side of Christian utopian
hopes the object of our realistic endeavors.
With the ideal of a classless unauthoritarian society
before us, a genuine human flourishing for all can be
obtained and the maxim of egalitarian justice for a
materially enriched society can not only be inscribed
on our banners but conditioned in our hearts. 136