No supernature = no God

In recent months I've often had cause to consider what it would take for me to believe in God. And each time I consider it, I come closer to the notion that there probably isn't anything that would convince me that God exists.

To be clear on this question, I should explain what I understand by the two particular terms, "God" and "exists".

"God" — for this purpose — must necessarily be defined as the God of Abraham, or something very like it, by which I mean it must have the characteristics usually attributed to the supreme creator of the Universe: omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence, omnipresence, and having an existence somewhere and somewhen at least partially outside of what we understand as time and space. I don't include such woolly definitions as "God is energy" or "God is love", as these are neither specific nor useful.

"Exists" — for this and indeed most purposes — I take to mean having some causal relationship with at least some aspects of physical reality. For something to exist it must be perceivable (preferably measurable) in the same realm of existence in which we, the beings doing the perceiving, perceive it. And it must be physical reality, not some notional concept that "exists" only as an idea in a brain — such existence would be better termed "imagination". (I can imagine lots of things that don't exist in physical reality. The fact that I can imagine them does not confer on them any physical existence other than patterns in my brain.)

That's really as far as I need go. The notion of God described above is clearly incoherent. It's a concept that cannot exist in, or affect, the physical realm in which we reside.

Take omnipotence: can God create a rock so heavy he can't lift it? Can he create a square circle? I've often heard theists maintain that God can do anything that's consistent with the "laws of logic" — which those two actions are not. Fair enough, but then those same theists claim that their God created the laws, so all I need to do is reframe the question: can God create laws which even he can't break? There's no satisfactory answer to this that's consistent with the idea of an omnipotent God, so he fails the coherence test at the very first hurdle.

But never mind that, let's see how he stacks up in omniscience. This is the idea that God knows everything there is to know. All knowable knowledge resides in the mind of God. But that knowledge, to be complete, must also include the knowledge of the knowledge in the mind of God, which if it is itself to be complete, must also include the knowledge of the knowledge of the knowledge in the mind of God, and so proceed ad infinitum. We have here an infinite regress, rather like a subroutine which calls itself, and once more we're well into the realm of incoherence.

Omnibenevolence and omnipresence need hardly get a look-in — they are obviously incoherent. Omnibenevolence is shown to be nonsense by the fact that theologians twist themselves into knots making excuses (theodicies) for a God that (if it exists) clearly isn't all-good. Omnipresence is another nonsensical property, probably invented to reinforce the idea that God watches everything you do. (It's also a superfluous property — what need of omnipresence has an omniscient God?)

It's clear to me, therefore, that God has been defined out of existence. The only way these properties could be true characteristics of a being, would be if that being was entirely imaginary. Such a being would be a supernatural fantasy — it would not, could not, exist. My definition of "existence" above is necessarily restricted to the natural world. Anything supernatural, therefore, cannot  exist.

Is the suffering of Christians evidence for anything?

Bruce A. Little's "Suffering for What?" is the fifth chapter in Dembski & Licona's Evidence for God, but I have no idea why. This first section of the book is titled The Question of Philosophy, and I can see why the cosmological argument is in it, and the moral argument. Less so the argument from near-death experiences, though a valid critique of naturalism should fit right in.

But Little's chapter isn't even an attempt at "making philosophical excuses for God" — otherwise known as theodicy; it's about specifically Christian suffering and is stuffed full of New Testament quotes. In what way is this "evidence for God" — or even an "argument for faith"?

For what it's worth, however, here's Little's thesis (or sermon — which is definitely how it comes over): Christians suffer for three reasons, the first being when they are righteous (it says so in the Bible); the second is that they are in a "fallen" world (it says so in the Bible); and the third is that they will suffer when they are "evildoers" (it says so in the Bible).

So there you have it. No hint of an argument, nor any trace of evidence bar scripture. I assume that some effort will be made later in the book to establish provenance of scripture, in the section titled The Question of the Bible, but what's presented in this chapter seems irrelevant in the extreme.

The theodicy of Haiti doesn't bear thinking about (so let's not)

I get my first news of the day from BBC Radio 4, specifically the Today Programme. Yesterday regular host John Humphrys asked¹ the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, why God allowed such terrible suffering to be inflicted on the innocent people of Haiti. The Archbishop didn't have a coherent answer, though he did at least condemn Pat Robertson's ugly accusation (that the Haitians had it coming because their ancestors made a pact with the devil):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5TE99sAbwM



The Today Programme  audio stream for Thursday, January 14th is available here (scroll down to 0831):
http://news.bbc.co.uk//today/hi/today/newsid_8458000/8458361.stm

Or download an mp3 of the relevant clip from RapidShare here:
http://rapidshare.com/files/335314721/Today_JohnSentamu_Haiti_BBCR4i-20100114.mp3

"Stories of survival are emerging from the rubble in Haiti. Troy Livesay, of the Christian charity World Wide Village, lives with his family in Port au Prince and has written a moving account in the Guardian about his family's survival. He begs people to prey for Haitians. Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, comments on how people turn to God during times of disaster."

( Troy Livesay's Guardian account is here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/13/survivors-tale-haiti-blog-extract )

When disaster strikes the innocent, theodicy is revealed as the empty wailing of those who know they have no excuses for their supposedly omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God, but this morning on Thought for the Day theodicy's guilty vacuity was brought to a new low by Giles Fraser:

"...at a moment like this, I prefer to leave the arguments to others. For me this is a time quietly to light a candle for the people of Haiti, and to offer them up to God in my prayers. May the souls of the departed rest in peace."

Well thanks a bunch Giles! I'm sure your candle and prayers will be so effective in helping the Haitians in their dire plight, and might even convince them that — despite appearances — God loves them after all! (I'm sorry, but when I heard this execrable peroration this morning I uttered an extremely audible profanity.) This isn't the first time the Rev. Dr. Giles Fraser has used Thought for the Day to hide behind verbal obfuscation, and it illustrates precisely why the slot should be opened up to secular humanist viewpoints.

RealMedia audio stream:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/realmedia/thought/t20100115.ram

Podcast audio:
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/thought/thought_20100115-1008a.mp3

Download mp3 from RapidShare:
http://rapidshare.com/files/335825978/Thought__15_JAN_10.mp3

The script for Giles Fraser's thought should be is now available soon; meanwhile you can read an alternative interpretation at Platitude of the Day.

UPDATE 2010-01-19: On Saturday's Today Programme, atheist philosopher A. C. Grayling was asked to respond to both John Sentamu and Giles Fraser. He was calmly rational (as always), but scheduled at the very end of the programme he had insufficient time to deal in full with the idiocy that is theodicy. The vacuous blatherings of Messrs Sentamu and Fraser last week have been rightly castigated across the blogosphere — Manic Street Preacher's recent post contrasts similarly reprehensible, knee-jerk statements in response to tragedy with those displaying a more compassionate outlook.

The audio stream of A. C. Grayling's valiant but time-constrained effort is available here (scroll down to 0854):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8462000/8462906.stm

Or you can download the clip from RapidShare as an mp3:
http://rapidshare.com/files/337961781/Today_ACGrayling_Haiti_BBCR4i-20100116.mp3

¹UPDATE 2010-01-22: A transcript of John Humphrys' conversation with Archbishop John Sentamu is available at the JREF Swift blog.

Theodicy, or idiocy?

Listening to a recent episode of Unbelievable? in which Andrew Wilson and Norman Bacrac discussed their occasionally coincident views of God, I was struck once again by how the subject of theology seems to have been invented purely as an attempt to reconcile the inconsistencies of god-belief. The fact that theologians appear to tie themselves in logical knots trying to show how an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and omnibenevolent deity is somehow compatible and consistent with the physical universe as we perceive it, simply shows that they refuse to accept the most parsimonious explanation.

Theodicy, for example, is a real problem, but it's a problem that goes away entirely if you apply Occam's razor and accept that in all probability God doesn't exist.

For a relentless no-holds-barred take-down of theology, see this recent post from Chris Ray at Factonista:

Why skeptics do not, and should not, waste their time with academic theology | Factonista