Epistemological atheism: highlights a branch of philosophy that deals with determining what is and what is not true, and why we believe or disbelieve what we or others do. On one hand, this is begging the question of having the ability to measure “truth” – as though there is an “external” something that one measures against.
Epistemology is the analysis of the nature of knowledge, how we know, what we can and cannot know, and how we can know that there are things we know we cannot know. In Greek episteme, meaning “knowledge, understanding”, and logos, meaning “discourse, study, ratio, calculation, reason. Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion. In other words, it is the academic term associated with study of how we conclude that certain things are true. Epistemology: the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope. From this atheist orientation, there is no, nor has there ever been, nor will there ever be, any “external” something so there can be no god-concept. Many debates between atheist and theists revolve around fundamental issues which people don’t recognize or never get around to discussing. Many of these are epistemological in nature: in disagreeing about whether it’s reasonable to believe in the existence of a god something, to believe in miracles, to accept revelation and scriptures as authoritative, and so forth, atheists and theists are ultimately disagreeing about basic epistemological principles. Without understanding this and understanding the various epistemological positions, people will just end up talking past each other.
It’s common for Epistemological atheism to differ in what they consider to be appropriate criteria for truth and, therefore, the proper criteria for a reasonable disbelief. Atheists demand proof and evidence for other worldviews, yet there is no proof and evidence that atheism is true. Also, despite the abundant evidence for Christianity and the lack of proof and evidence for atheism, atheist reject the truth of Christianity.
*Epistemology (knowledge of things) questions to explode or establish and confirm knowledge. Epistemology “Truth” questions/assertion: Lawyer searches for warrant or justification for the claim. Epistemology, (understanding what you know or can know; as in you do have and thing in this reality to know anything about this term you call god, and no way of knowing if there is anything non-naturalism beyond this universe and no way to state any about it if there where). -How do know your claim? -How reliable or valid must aspects be for your claim? -How does the source of your claim make it different than other similar claims? I may respond, “how do you know that, what is your sources and how reliable they are” (asking to find the truth or as usual expose the lack of a good Epistemology)
Atheists refuse to go where the evidence clearly leads. In addition, when atheist make claims related to naturalism, make personal claims or make accusations against theists, they often employ lax evidential standards instead of employing rigorous evidential standards. For the most part, atheists have presumed that the most reasonable conclusions are the ones that have the best evidential support. And they have argued that the evidence in favor of a god something’s existence is too weak, or the arguments in favor of concluding there is no a god something are more compelling.
Traditionally the arguments for a god something’s existence have fallen into several families: ontological, teleological, and cosmological arguments, miracles, and prudential justifications. For detailed discussion of those arguments and the major challenges to them that have motivated the atheist conclusion, the reader is encouraged to consult the other relevant sections of the encyclopedia. Arguments for the non-existence of a god something are deductive or inductive.
Deductive arguments for the non-existence of a god something are either single or multiple property disproofs that allege that there are logical or conceptual problems with one or several properties that are essential to any being worthy of the title “GOD.”
Inductive arguments typically present empirical evidence that is employed to argue that a god something’s existence is improbable or unreasonable. Briefly stated, the main arguments are: a god something’s non-existence is analogous to the non-existence of Santa Claus.
The existence of widespread human and non-human suffering is incompatible with an all powerful, all knowing, all good being. Discoveries about the origins and nature of the universe, and about the evolution of life on Earth make the a god something hypothesis an unlikely explanation. Widespread non-belief and the lack of compelling evidence show that a god something who seeks belief in humans does not exist. Broad considerations from science that support naturalism, or the view that all and only physical entities and causes exist, have also led many to the atheism conclusion.
Matt McCormick
“We can divide the justifications for atheism into several categories. For the most part, atheists have taken an evidentialist approach to the question of a god something’s existence. That is, atheists have taken the view that whether or not a person is justified in having an attitude of belief towards the proposition, “a god something exists,” is a function of that person’s evidence. “Evidence” here is understood broadly to include a priori arguments, arguments to the best explanation, inductive and empirical reasons, as well as deductive and conceptual premises. An asymmetry exists between theism and atheism in that atheists have not offered faith as a justification for non-belief. That is, atheists have not presented non-evidentialist defenses for believing that there is no god something. Not all theists appeal only to faith, however. Evidentialists theist and evidentialist atheists may have a number of general epistemological principles concerning evidence, arguments, and implication in common, but then disagree about what the evidence is, how it should be understood, and what it implies. They may disagree, for instance, about whether the values of the physical constants and laws in nature constitute evidence for intentional fine tuning, but agree at least that whether a god something exists is a matter that can be explored empirically or with reason.” ref
“Many non-evidentialist theists may deny that the acceptability of particular religious claim depends upon evidence, reasons, or arguments as they have been classically understood. Faith or prudential based beliefs in a god something, for example, will fall into this category. The evidentialist atheist and the non-evidentialist theist, therefore, may have a number of more fundamental disagreements about the acceptability of believing, despite inadequate or contrary evidence, the epistemological status of prudential grounds for believing, or the nature of a god something belief. Their disagreement may not be so much about the evidence, or even about a god something, but about the legitimate roles that evidence, reason, and faith should play in human belief structures. It is not clear that arguments against atheism that appeal to faith have any prescriptive force the way appeals to evidence do.” ref
“The general evidentialist view is that when a person grasps that an argument is sound that imposes an epistemic obligation on her to accept the conclusion. Insofar as having faith that a claim is true amounts to believing contrary to or despite a lack of evidence, one person’s faith that a god something exists does not have this sort of inter-subjective, epistemological implication. Failing to believe what is clearly supported by the evidence is ordinarily irrational. Failure to have faith that some claim is true is not similarly culpable. Justifying atheism, then, can entail several different projects. There are the evidential disputes over what information we have available to us, how it should be interpreted, and what it implies. There are also broader meta-epistemological concerns about the roles of argument, reasoning, belief, and religiousness in human life.” ref
“The atheist can find herself not just arguing that the evidence indicates that there is no god something, but defending science, the role of reason, and the necessity of basing beliefs on evidence more generally. If someone has arrived at what they take to be a reasonable and well-justified conclusion that there is no god something, then what attitude should she take about another person’s persistence in believing in a god something, particularly when that other person appears to be thoughtful and at least prima facie reasonable? It seems that the atheist could take one of several views. The theist’s belief, as the atheist sees it, could be rational or irrational, justified or unjustified. Must the atheist who believes that the evidence indicates that there is no god something conclude that the theist’s believing in a god something is irrational or unjustified? No. Most modern epistemologists have said that whether a conclusion C is justified for a person S will be a function of the information (correct or incorrect) that S possesses and the principles of inference that S employs in arriving at C. But whether or not C is justified is not directly tied to its truth, or even to the truth of the evidence concerning C.” ref
“That is, a person can have a justified, but false belief. One could arrive at a conclusion through an epistemically inculpable process and yet get it wrong. Ptolemy, for example, the greatest astronomer of his day, who had mastered all of the available information and conducted exhaustive research into the question, was justified in concluding that the Sun orbits the Earth. A medieval physician in the 1200s who guesses (correctly) that the bubonic plague was caused by the bacterium yersinia pestis would not have been reasonable or justified given his background information and given that the bacterium would not even be discovered for 600 years. We can call the view that rational, justified beliefs can be false, as it applies to atheism, friendly or fallibilist atheism. See the article on Fallibilism.” ref
“The friendly atheist can grant that a theist may be justified or reasonable in believing in a god something, even though the atheist takes the theist’s conclusion to be false. What could explain their divergence to the atheist? The believer may not be in possession of all of the relevant information. The believer may be basing her conclusion on a false premise or premises. The believer may be implicitly or explicitly employing inference rules that themselves are not reliable or truth preserving, but the background information she has leads her, reasonably, to trust the inference rule. The same points can be made for the friendly theist and the view that he may take about the reasonableness of the atheist’s conclusion. It is also possible, of course, for both sides to be unfriendly and conclude that anyone who disagrees with what they take to be justified is being irrational. Given developments in modern epistemology and Rowe’s argument, however, the unfriendly view is neither correct nor conducive to a constructive and informed analysis of the question of a god something. Atheists have offered a wide range of justifications and accounts for non-belief.” ref
“A notable modern view is Antony Flew’s Presumption of Atheism. Flew argues that the default position for any rational believer should be neutral with regard to the existence of a god something and to be neutral is to not have a belief regarding its existence. And not having a belief with regard to a god something is to be a negative atheist on Flew’s account. “The onus of proof lies on the man who affirms, not on the man who denies. . . on the proposition, not on the opposition,” Flew argues. Beyond that, coming to believe that such a thing does or does not exist will require justification, much as a jury presumes innocence concerning the accused and requires evidence in order to conclude that he is guilty. Flew’s negative atheist will presume nothing at the outset, not even the logical coherence of the notion of a god something, but one’s presumption will be defeasible, or revisable in the light of evidence. We shall call this view atheism by default. The atheism by default position contrasts with a more permissive attitude that is sometimes taken regarding religious belief. The notions of religious tolerance and freedom are sometimes understood to indicate the epistemic permissibility of believing despite a lack of evidence in favor or even despite evidence to the contrary.” ref
“One is in violation of no epistemic duty by believing, even if one lacks conclusive evidence in favor or even if one has evidence that is on the whole against. In contrast to Flew’s jury model, we can think of this view as treating religious beliefs as permissible until proven incorrect. Some aspects of fideistic accounts or Plantinga’s reformed epistemology can be understood in this light. This sort of epistemic policy about a god something or any other matter has been controversial, and a major point of contention between atheists and theists. Atheists have argued that we typically do not take it to be epistemically inculpable or reasonable for a person to believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or some other supernatural being merely because they do not possess evidence to the contrary. Nor would we consider it reasonable for a person to begin believing that they have cancer because they do not have proof to the contrary. The atheist by default argues that it would be appropriate to not believe in such circumstances.” ref
“The epistemic policy here takes its inspiration from an influential piece by W.K. Clifford in which he argues that it is wrong, always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything for which there is insufficient reason. There are several other approaches to the justification of atheism that we will consider below. There is a family of arguments, sometimes known as exercises in deductive atheology, for the conclusion that the existence of a god something is impossible. Another large group of important and influential arguments can be gathered under the heading inductive atheology. These probabilistic arguments invoke considerations about the natural world such as widespread suffering, nonbelief, or findings from biology or cosmology. Another approach, atheistic noncognitivism, denies that a god something talk is even meaningful or has any propositional content that can be evaluated in terms of truth or falsity. Rather, religious speech acts are better viewed as a complicated sort of emoting or expression of spiritual passion.” ref
“Inductive and deductive approaches are cognitivistic in that they accept that claims about a god something have meaningful content and can be determined to be true or false. Many discussions about the nature and existence of a god something have either implicitly or explicitly accepted that the concept of a god something is logically coherent. That is, for many believers and non-believers the assumption has been that such a being as a god something could possibly exist but they have disagreed about whether there actually is one. Atheists within the deductive atheology tradition, however, have not even granted that a god something, as he is typically described, is possible. The first question we should ask, argues the deductive atheist, is whether the description or the concept is logically consistent. If it is not, then no such being could possibly exist. The deductive atheist argues that some, one, or all of a god something’s essential properties are logically contradictory. Since logical impossibilities are not and cannot be real, a god something does not and cannot exist.” ref
“Consider a putative description of an object as a four-sided triangle, a married bachelor, or prime number with more than 2 factors. We can be certain that no such thing fitting that description exists because what they describe is demonstrably impossible. If deductive atheological proofs are successful, the results will be epistemically significant. Many people have doubts that the view that there is no god something that can be rationally justified. But if deductive disproofs show that there can exist no being with a certain property or properties and those properties figure essentially in the characterization of a god something, then we will have the strongest possible justification for concluding that there is no being fitting any of those characterizations. If a god something is impossible, then a god something does not exist. It may be possible at this point to re-engineer the description of a god something so that it avoids the difficulties, but now the theist faces several challenges according to the deductive atheologist. ” ref
“First, if the traditional description of a god something is logically incoherent, then what is the relationship between a theist’s belief and some revised, more sophisticated account that allegedly does not suffer from those problems? Is that the a god something that one believed in all along? Before the account of a god something was improved by consideration of the atheological arguments, what were the reasons that led her to believe in that conception of a god something? Secondly, if the classical characterizations of a god something are shown to be logically impossible, then there is a legitimate question as whether any new description that avoids those problems describes a being that is worthy of the label. It will not do, in the eyes of many theists and atheists, to retreat to the view that a god something is merely a somewhat powerful, partially-knowing, and partly-good being, for example. Thirdly, the atheist will still want to know on the basis of what evidence or arguments should we conclude that a being as described by this modified account exists? Fourthly, there is no question that there exist less than omni-beings in the world. We possess less than infinite power, knowledge and goodness, as do many other creatures and objects in our experience.” ref
“What is the philosophical importance or metaphysical significance of arguing for the existence of those sorts of beings and advocating belief in them? Fifthly, and most importantly, if it has been argued that a god something’s essential properties are impossible, then any move to another description seems to be a concession that positive atheism about a god something is justified. Another possible response that the theist may take in response to deductive atheological arguments is to assert that a god something is something beyond proper description with any of the concepts or properties that we can or do employ as suggested in Kierkegaard or Tillich. So complications from incompatibilities among properties of a god something indicate problems for our descriptions, not the impossibility of a divine being worthy of the label. Many atheists have not been satisfied with this response. The theist has now asserted the existence of and attempted to argue in favor of believing in a being that we cannot form a proper idea of, one that does not have properties that we can acknowledge; it is a being that defies comprehension. It is not clear how we could have reasons or justifications for believing in the existence of such a thing. It is not clear how it could be an existing thing in any familiar sense of the term in that it lacks comprehensible properties.” ref
“Or put another way, as Patrick Grim notes, “If a believer’s notion of a god something remains so vague as to escape all impossibility arguments, it can be argued, it cannot be clear to even one what one believes—or whether what he takes for pious belief one’s any content at all,”. It is not clear how it could be reasonable to believe in such a thing, and it is even more doubtful that it is epistemically unjustified or irresponsible to deny that such a thing is exists. It is clear, however, that the deductive atheologist must acknowledge the growth and development of our concepts and descriptions of reality over time, and she must take a reasonable view about the relationship of those attempts and revisions in our ideas about what may turns out to be real. Deductive disproofs have typically focused on logical inconsistencies to be found either within a single property or between multiple properties.” ref
“Philosophers have struggled to work out the details of what it would be to be omnipotent, for instance. It has come to be widely accepted that a being cannot be omnipotent where omnipotence simply means to power to do anything including the logically impossible. This definition of the term suffers from the stone paradox. An omnipotent being would either be capable of creating a rock that one cannot lift, or he is incapable. If one is incapable, then there is something one cannot do, and therefore one does not have the power to do anything. If one can create such a rock, then again there is something that one cannot do, namely lift the rock he just created. So paradoxically, having the ability to do anything would appear to entail being unable to do some things. As a result, many theists and atheists have agreed that a being could not have that property. A number of attempts to work out an account of omnipotence have ensued. It has also been argued that omniscience is impossible, and that the most knowledge that can possibly be had is not enough to be fitting of a god something. One of the central problems has been that a god something cannot have knowledge of indexical claims such as, “I am here now.” ref
“It has also been argued that a god something can’t know future free choices, or a god something cannot know future contingent propositions, or that Cantor’s and Gödel proofs imply that the notion of a set of all truths cannot be made coherent. See the article on Omniscience and Divine Foreknowledge for more details. The logical coherence of eternality, personhood, moral perfection, causal agency, and many others have been challenged in the deductive atheology literature. Another form of deductive atheological argument attempts to show the logical incompatibility of two or more properties that a god something is thought to possess. A long list of properties have been the subject of multiple property disproofs, transcendence and personhood, justice and mercy, immutability and omniscience, immutability and omnibenevolence, omnipresence and agency, perfection and love, eternality and omniscience, eternality and creator of the universe, omnipresence and consciousness.” ref
“The combination of omnipotence and omniscience have received a great deal of attention. To possess all knowledge, for instance, would include knowing all of the particular ways in which one will exercise one’s power, or all of the decisions that one will make, or all of the decisions that one has made in the past. But knowing any of those entails that the known proposition is true. So does a god something have the power to act in some fashion that he has not foreseen, or differently than he already has without compromising his omniscience? It has also been argued that a god something cannot be both unsurpassably good and free. When attempts to provide evidence or arguments in favor of the existence of something fail, a legitimate and important question is whether anything except the failure of those arguments can be inferred. That is, does positive atheism follow from the failure of arguments for theism? A number of authors have concluded that it does. They taken the view that unless some case for the existence of a god something succeeds, we should believe that there is no god something. Many have taken an argument J.M. Findlay to be pivotal.” ref
“Findlay, like many others, argues that in order to be worthy of the label “GOD,” and in order to be worthy of a worshipful attitude of reverence, emulation, and abandoned admiration, the being that is the object of that attitude must be inescapable, necessary, and unsurpassably supreme. If a being like a god something were to exist, his existence would be necessary. And his existence would be manifest as an a priori, conceptual truth. That is to say that of all the approaches to a god something’s existence, the ontological argument is the strategy that we would expect to be successful were there a god something, and if they do not succeed, then we can conclude that there is no god something, Findlay argues. As most see it these attempts to prove a god something have not met with success, Findlay says, “The general philosophical verdict is that none of these ‘proofs’ is truly compelling.” The view that there is no god something or god somethings has been criticized on the grounds that it is not possible to prove a negative.” ref
“No matter how exhaustive and careful our analysis, there could always be some proof, some piece of evidence, or some consideration that we have not considered. A god something could be something that we have not conceived, or a god something exists in some form or fashion that has escaped our investigation. Positive atheism draws a stronger conclusion than any of the problems with arguments for a god something’s existence alone could justify. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Findlay and the deductive atheological arguments attempt to address these concerns, but a central question put to atheists has been about the possibility of giving inductive or probabilistic justifications for negative existential claims The response to the, “You cannot prove a negative” criticism has been that it invokes an artificially high epistemological standard of justification that creates a much broader set of problems not confined to atheism. The general principle seems to be that one is not epistemically entitled to believe a proposition unless you have exhausted all of the possibilities and proven beyond any doubt that a claim is true.” ref
“Or put negatively, one is not justified in disbelieving unless you have proven with absolute certainty that the thing in question does not exist. The problem is that we do not have a priori disproof that many things do not exist, yet it is reasonable and justified to believe that they do not: the Dodo bird is extinct, unicorns are not real, there is no teapot orbiting the Earth on the opposite side of the Sun, there is no Santa Claus, ghosts are not real, a defendant is not guilty, a patient does not have a particular disease, so on. There are a wide range of other circumstances under which we take it that believing that X does not exist is reasonable even though no logical impossibility is manifest. None of these achieve the level of deductive, a priori or conceptual proof.” ref
“The objection to inductive atheism undermines itself in that it generates a broad, pernicious skepticism against far more than religious or irreligious beliefs. “It will not be sufficient to criticize each argument on its own by saying that it does not prove the intended conclusion, that is, does not put it beyond all doubt. That follows at once from the admission that the argument is non-deductive, and it is absurd to try to confine our knowledge and belief to matters which are conclusively established by sound deductive arguments. The demand for certainty will inevitably be disappointed, leaving skepticism in command of almost every issue.” If the atheist is unjustified for lacking deductive proof, then it is argued, it would appear that so are the beliefs that planes fly, fish swim, or that there exists a mind-independent world. The atheist can also wonder what the point of the objection is.” ref
“When we lack deductive disproof that X exists, should we be agnostic about it? Is it permissible to believe that it does exist? Clearly, that would not be appropriate. Gravity may be the work of invisible, undetectable elves with sticky shoes. We don’t have any certain disproof of the elves—physicists are still struggling with an explanation of gravity. But surely someone who accepts the sticky-shoed elves view until they have deductive disproof is being unreasonable. It is also clear that if you are a positive atheist about the gravity elves, you would not be unreasonable. You would not be overstepping your epistemic entitlement by believing that no such things exist. On the contrary, believing that they exist or even being agnostic about their existence on the basis of their mere possibility would not be justified. So there appear to be a number of precedents and epistemic principles at work in our belief structures that provide room for inductive atheism. However, these issues in the epistemology of atheism and recent work by Graham Oppy suggest that more attention must be paid to the principles that describe epistemic permissibility, culpability, reasonableness, and justification with regard to the theist, atheist, and agnostic categories.” ref
The Santa Claus Argument
“Martin offers this general principle to describe the criteria that render the belief, “X does not exist” justified:
A person is justified in believing that X does not exist if
(1) all the available evidence used to support the view that X exists is shown to be inadequate; and
(2) X is the sort of entity that, if X exists, then there is a presumption that would be evidence adequate to support the view that X exists; and
(3) this presumption has not been defeated although serious efforts have been made to do so; and
(4) the area where evidence would appear, if there were any, has been comprehensively examined; and
(5) there are no acceptable beneficial reasons to believe that X exists.” ref
“Many of the major works in philosophical atheism that address the full range of recent arguments for a god something’s existence can be seen as providing evidence to satisfy the first, fourth and fifth conditions. A substantial body of articles with narrower scope can also be understood to play this role in justifying atheism. A large group of discussions of Pascal’s Wager and related prudential justifications in the literature can also be seen as relevant to the satisfaction of the fifth condition. One of the interesting and important questions in the epistemology of philosophy of religion has been whether the second and third conditions are satisfied concerning a god something. If there were a god something, how and in what ways would we expect him to show in the world? Empirically? Conceptually? Would he be hidden? Martin argues, and many others have accepted implicitly or explicitly, that a god something is the sort of thing that would manifest in some discernible fashion to our inquiries. Martin concludes, therefore, that a god something satisfied all of the conditions, so, positive narrow atheism is justified.” ref