Daniel Dennett - Arguments for Atheism?

dan I would really like to know whether God exists and I've been asking a lot of smart people questions about God about arguments here and all that and most of the people who don't believe in God would seek to attack and undermine the arguments of those who do fine I'd like to flip that around and say what are the affirmative arguments for non belief or for atheism well I think the first one it simply has to be this is the way naturalism always argues them and the burden of proof is sort of on the other side but don't multiply entities beyond necessity so the main reason for atheism is what for what do we need what do we need God for especially since we've got a circuit of reasons for seeing why in the absence of a god we would nevertheless believe in God I mean there's plenty of natural arguments explain why this false belief would arise so we don't have the puzzle of gosh we know where there's smoke there's fire where there's so much belief God must exist no I think we can just set that aside so now it's neutral and neutral yeah so that cuts no real ice here so now the question is if there's no positive argument for the existence of God then we should just assume there isn't one for the same reason we should assume that there isn't a GOG what's Gog well it's a sphere of copper two miles in diameter with the word Gog stamped on it and it's outside the like home so we can't ever see it now we have no reason deposits its existence so we might as well sue doesn't exist so the the core concept is that the burden is on the other side you know that that somebody has to come up with an affirmative burden a proof of God in order for us to see it because because that is the best argument for a theist well maybe if we want some further reinforcement on this if you understand that god is supposed to be good and it's supposed to be powerful then the problem with evil really looms and evil is everywhere and it's not just evil so that we can be heroes and and triumph over evil that that makes a good story and it makes us our lives more exciting and all that but what about the extraordinary brutality that we discover in the animal world when we find insects that that sort of hidden the ties their prey and then burrow inside and lay their eggs and then the eggs eat them out from the inside where they're still alive there's all sorts of gruesome tales of this sort that we could tell about things that as we're animals do to each other and why would a good God allow such such such horrible things to go on I think that evil is you can't explain it away and it doesn't have a romantic purpose well is this because it can the argument that you know is that evil is divided into two parts the moral evil in the natural evil according to certain theologians and the the moral evil is to enable some kind of free will as a lot of different complications but the freewill defense is generally the one given their natural evil is harder for them to deal with granted because that doesn't is no free will and nobody cares about the human spirit or whatever and they're they're a bunch of arguments that the probabilistic world and you know things have to go that way and well those do strike me is from hunger a fairly desperate fairly desperate arguments have to remember we have to remember that the idea that God is good is a fairly recent domestication of religion there were plenty of bad God's in the early days and this is a recent refinement and of course the problem of evil just disappears if you go back to the old religious day good gods and bad guys and they're duking it out and there's something very satisfying about that and once you decide to get rid of the bad gods and and be a monotheistic and suppose that God is good then you have this nasty problem with explaining why then all is evil and I'd argue no arguing to go back to the old ways are you well I think there was a certain there was a certain dramatic integrity to them that is missing from the more recent ideas our God you know when the I came here their names the the people that created the comic book characters Superman they realized I had a problem they have this omnipotent indestructible agent and work and how can they be suspense how can there be any storylines they had to invent kryptonite they had to invent kryptonite so that there would be a countervailing force in the world and I've you theologians attempts to handle the problem evil is this is this is just kryptonite and it's it's one understands why it's necessary as a sort of dramatic device but I can't take it seriously in any other way some theologians who would try to harmonize and all good God with an all-powerful God those two concepts and that's a tough one other theologians have now come along and to say okay we really can't do that so we have to compromise one or the other yeah and in general what they do is they diminish the the all-powerful and they somehow say that there was part of God that that is the from antiquities or everlasting that that's a that is unchanging and then but there's part of God that's open and uncertain he's done the best he can and the best and then it's impossible to do in order to maintain this relationship with with the free agents and so they diminish the all power and therefore eliminate the inconsistency well that's but in your own telling it sounds to me like it like like a storyboard for Superman comics and how are we going to solve this problem well let's see if we maybe if we if we tone down the the omnipotence a little bit thing we could be back in business all right let's do it but the idea that that that little innovation of theirs is answerable to anything other than their own sense of consistency is to me just incredible I mean right they're trying to tell a consistent story and they're playing by some pretty tough rules they've made it they tied both hands behind their back and this is the best they can come up with but what does that have to do with what's true it's just how to tell a story other arguments that have been used affirmative Lee for atheism I'd like to get your take on there were things like that if God is so wants me to believe why is he so hidden the hiddenness of God another is dead of God as a mind we've never seen a mind outside of any body form these arguments good philosophical arguments freedom well they are against people who hold the positions that they're addressed to so if if somebody really holds a position where God has a mind and I think actually most people who believe in God - sure I mean sure why are they praying to whom are they praying if God doesn't have a mind then I think they're their legitimate arguments what we have to face though is that there's a sort of shell game can I not mean that disparagingly yes I suppose in the neutral sense there's a shell game in which people who believe in God use richly personal language to talk about God and when you say wait a minute wait a minute and you start criticizing or asking them questions about oh we didn't mean anything is as crass as that no God doesn't have hands - they have fingernails it doesn't have eyes but he sees us what sets oh don't ask these questions and so they back off from the inconsistencies - a God which ends up being and incomprehensible spirit of goodness do I believe in an incomprehensible spirit of goodness well maybe wouldn't pray to it it wouldn't be he and maybe there's an incomprehensible spirit of badness too and don't see any reason to believe in it but if you do then at least you maybe find a consistent position

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Keywords: Daniel Dennett, Closer To Truth, Religion, Atheism, God, Christianity, faith, belief, theology, existence, Christian, theism, monotheism, church, science, education, seminary, University, College, lecture, agnostic, agnosticism, philosophy, argument, debate, reason

Id: v8rNb6-V2Oo

Length: 9min 30sec (570 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 29 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Existenti4lism]

That's interesting, as a psychological concept evil defined as a dramatic device as a counterpoint for an omnipotent being that is all knowing and all powerful.