Michael Antony argues against atheism:
“The question I wish to ask is this: How can the New Atheists employ evidentialist principles to argue that religious belief is irrational if they are unwilling to apply those same principles to atheism? If the New Atheists’ atheism is not evidence-based, as Hitchens implies in the above quotation, doesn’t evidentialism entail that atheism is itself irrational or epistemically unjustified? The answer is ‘Yes’; at least if evidentialism is interpreted in the standard way. So it appears that the New Atheists need some fix for evidentialism – a kind of ‘theoretical plug-in’ – which legitimizes their atheism in the absence of evidence.”
This is a response to Hitchens statement that “what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.” While this statement does simplify the issue it does have an air of truth to it. Atheists are constantly asked to give evidence to disprove god but often aren’t given arguments outside of “The Bible says so”. Sure there are better thought out arguments at which point presenting evidence or lack thereof becomes necessary. Atheism is “not evidence-based” in the sense that we base our lack of belief on the absence of evidence.
He wants to put the burden of proof in the lap of the atheists. I wonder exactly how we are supposed to prove our disbelief in something non-existent.
Person 1: I don’t believe in pink elephants because of a lack of evidence
Person 2: Prove that this lack of evidence exists, otherwise you are being irrational
Person 1: *Puzzled stare*
Now you see the problem with this idea that atheists have to prove their disbelief in god. Theists however, need to prove their god exists. Let’s look at Antony’s arguments one by one:
“While the word ‘atheism’ has been used in something like this sense (see for example Antony Flew’s article ‘The Presumption of Atheism’), it is a highly non-standard use. So understood, atheism would include agnosticism, since agnostics are also not theists. However, on the common understanding of atheism – no divine reality of any kind exists – atheism and agnosticism are mutually exclusive. Some insist that this non-standard sense of ‘atheism’ is the only possible sense, because a-theism means without theism. But if that were a good argument, the Space Shuttle would be an automobile, since it moves on its own (mobile=move, auto=by itself). Ditto for dogs and cats.
Yet none of that really matters, for even the non-standard sense of ‘atheism’ does nothing to neutralize evidentialism’s demand for evidence. As we saw, evidentialism applies to all ‘doxastic’ attitudes toward a proposition P: believing P, believing not-P, suspending judgment about P, etc. Therefore evidentialism says, with respect to the proposition God exists, that any attitude toward it will be rational or justified if and only if it fits one’s evidence. Now it is true that if one had no position whatever regarding the proposition God exists (perhaps because one has never entertained the thought), no evidence would be required for that non-position. But the New Atheists all believe that (probably) no God or other divine reality exists. And that belief must be evidence-based if it is to be rationally held, according to evidentialism. So insisting that atheism isn’t a belief doesn’t help.”
This is a rather lengthy mischaracterization of the atheist position. As mentioned above the position is based on absence of evidence not evidence of absence as Antony would prefer to have it. Atheists don’t hold evidence for the absence of god. Whereas the theist believes in something that they claim to have evidence for yet that evidence is absent.
“Another common claim of the New Atheists is that you ‘can’t prove a negative’ – where what is typically meant is a negative existence claim of the form ‘X does not exist’. Rhetorically, this claim functions to legitimize the idea that evidence needn’t be provided for God’s nonexistence. After all, if evidence cannot be provided for a proposition it would be irrational to expect one to provide some, and so reasonable to believe that evidence isn’t needed. But the claim that you can’t prove a negative cannot help the atheist. That is because, on each of two possible ways of interpreting what it means to ‘prove’ something, it is generally false that you can’t prove a negative (and often true that you can’t prove a positive).
Consider first, proofs which deliver certainty, as in mathematics or logic. Such proofs are sometimes possible for negative existence claims, such as the claim that there is no greatest prime number. One can also prove with certainty that there are no Xs whenever the concept X can be shown to be incoherent (like the concepts round square, or 3pm on the sun). Of course, it is true that many negative existence claims cannot be proved with absolute certainty, but the same holds for positive existence claims, for example, from science or common sense, such as that there are electrons or tables and chairs. So there’s nothing special here about negative existence claims.
Turn next to proofs which aim to establish only the probable truth of their conclusions. These are the sorts of proofs which result from successful scientific and other empirical investigations. In this sense of ‘proof’, it is easy to prove the non-existence of many things: for example, that there is no pomegranate in my hand, or no snow-capped mountains in the Sahara Desert. And while it may be difficult or impossible to even in this weaker sense prove the non-existence of many things – goblins, sombreros in the Sombrero Galaxy – the same goes for many positive existence claims – that Aristotle sneezed on his 20th birthday; that there is a transcendent deity; that there is a sombrero somewhere in the Sombrero Galaxy. So, again, there is nothing unique about negative existence claims. The unfortunate saying that one can’t prove a negative should be dropped.”
The whole of the argument here is that it may be possible to prove god. Ok, but is it been proven? No. Just because we can’t prove it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Of course, this is an argument that is neither for nor against the possibility of the existence of god. Here we get to the burden of proof argument I discussed earlier:
“The concept of ‘burden of proof’ (Latin, onus probandi) originally goes back to classical Roman law, and it remains important in legal theory. Who has the burden of proof, and what it consists of, is determined by a judge or by established rules which vary across legal systems. The same is true of formal debates which occur in a variety of formats. The idea of ‘burden of proof’ also has application in non-formal settings; for example, in academic disputes or public controversies. However, without a judge or rules to determine who has the burden and how it is to be discharged, it becomes unclear how the concept is to be applied, or even whether it has clear application.
“Yet although the concept of burden of proof in informal settings is ill-understood, that does not stop many from confidently proclaiming how the burden of proof should be assigned. The most egregious mistake is to think that it is a matter of logic. Rather, the burden of proof is a methodological or procedural concept. It is, in Nicolas Rescher’s words, “a regulative principle of rationality in the context of argumentation, a ground rule, as it were, of the process of rational controversy” (Dialectics, 1977). Another error is to presume that the burden falls on whoever is making the grammatically positive statement. However, positive statements can often be translated reasonably faithfully into negative statements, and vice versa: the statement ‘everything happens for a reason’ can be expressed as ‘there are no coincidences’, and ‘there is nothing supernatural’ can be restated as ‘reality is wholly natural’. A third problem is that to be taken seriously many negative statements – ‘there are no atoms’, ‘there are no coincidences’ – require evidence, whereas the corresponding positive statements do not.”
He wants to start off by arguing over the definition itself. Fair enough, I’ve been doing that in regards to how he seems to define atheism.
A quick Google search will reveal there are two definitions of the burden of proof: one legal and the other philosophic. Antony for his part appears to be going with the legal definition, which is irrelevant to the god question. If we look at the philosophic version we see that:
“This burden of proof is often asymmetrical and typically falls more heavily on the party that makes either an ontologically positive claim, or makes a claim more "extraordinary” (Marcello Truzzi).
Antony’s arguments have so far been based more on disagreements over definitions of atheists and how to define the arguments.
“No. The trouble is that Ockham’s Razor is of little use in disputes over whether some entity X exists. That is because it is typically an open question in such disputes whether everything that needs explaining can in fact be explained without X. Theists believe, or at least suspect, that there are features of reality which are inexplicable without appeal to a divine being: the existence of a contingent universe, the fine-tuning of physical constants, etc. We need not decide here whether a divine being is needed to explain these things: what is important is just that the Razor itself cannot decide such matters. It comes into play only assuming that a complete explanation of the relevant phenomena is possible without X; at which point it licenses us to eliminate X from our ontology. But theists will not accept that a complete explanation of reality is possible without appeal to a divine being, so long as no compelling case for that claim has been made. So Ockham’s Razor can have no persuasive force in this debate.”
The second last sentence of this argument sums up the problem with this argument. If theists will not accept that a complete explanation of reality is possible without appeal to a divine being than we have an irreconcilable difference in views. Antony does add that it’s possible for that position to change if evidence can be given to explain reality without god. Ladies and gentleman I give you the god of gaps argument. Atheists are simply saying with Ockham’s Razor that we can’t explain this but don’t automatically assume it’s god. Furthermore, we aren’t saying that god doesn’t exist because of that.
His next argument is deals with absence of evidence being evidence of absence. As mentioned I don’t necessarily think the two have to be intertwined. No absence of evidence for god does not disprove god but it doesn’t prove him either. Antony does give a lengthy argument that deals with this issue along with attempts to refute the tooth-fairy argument though it doesn’t seem like a wise investment of time when the issue here is how we are defining the atheist position in the first place. He does bring up arguments of fine tuning and religious experience as “weak evidence” for the existence of a god. This argument gets into the debate of whether the universe is fine tuned and the validity of religious experiences.
You will hear theists say that their position is misrepresented by the fundamentalists, no doubt. The more radical positions are not held by all believers. However, the same can be said about atheists. A point Antony misses throughout his argument.
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