We’re getting close to the end of our look at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on atheism and agnosticism. This time, we’re on the last part of the supposed arguments for “local atheism“.

So far, I haven’t been remotely impressed but let’s continue on and see if it improves.

It starts off by, let’s be honest, making excuses for omni-theism and then, while acknowledging that it loses, it does so in as inoffensive a way as possible. “This doesn’t show that source physicalism is probable (a “large margin” in this context means a large ratio of one probability to another, not a large difference between the probabilities), because there may be even better runners in the race; it does, however, show that omni-theism loses the race by a large margin and thus is very probably false.” The issue here is that you have to have a demonstrable standard against which you can test your ideas and the religious reject all demonstrable standards in favor of their own entirely emotional ones. It’s why I continually challenge the religious to come up with a standard methodology that demonstrably works at a rate as great or greater than the ones that we’re currently using. So far, they’ve come up empty.

“An alternative strategy is to find a runner that begins the race tied with omni-theism, but runs the race for evidential support much faster than omni-theism does, thus once again winning the race by a margin that is sufficiently large for the rest of the argument to go through.” Except omni-theism doesn’t actually move in any demonstrable way. There are no credible arguments for any omni-property god because there is no reason whatsoever to even suspect that any gods exist at all. I don’t know if this is a means for philosophy, or at least the author of the article, to give theism an even chance, but it doesn’t deserve it. A position is evaluated by it’s demonstrable merits and religion doesn’t have any. It appeals to emotion, not evidence and thus, isn’t really worth considering at all once you acknowledge that it’s got nothing but fee-fees.

It then goes into a long section on aesthetic deism, which is every bit as pointless as theism because there’s no reason to suspect that there are any gods of any kind to begin with. If you want to read that section, the link is at the top of the article, by all means feel free. It’s at a point like this that I have to wonder what the point of any of this is. Just as in my criticism of the article on moral realism, it doesn’t seem at all concerned with the best supported arguments, only in what noodling their navels imbue them with. They like thinking that thinking is the only goal in the end, but that’s not the case. You actually have to care if any of it is defensibly true and, sadly, a lot of philosophers don’t seem to give a damn.

This goes on for a very long time and I wanted to at least address the formal argument that is made, so let’s start with the syllogism:

“(1) Aesthetic deism is at least as probable intrinsically as omni-theism.” Yet I don’t think that either of them are remotely probable. Just because some people like the idea, that doesn’t make it so. Therefore, the very first premise is specious at best, laughable at worst.

“(2) The total evidence excluding “the data of good and evil” does not favor omni-theism over aesthetic deism.” What evidence are you talking about here? There is no “data of good and evil” because good and evil are entirely subjective terms. It doesn’t favor either position because it’s not demonstrable to begin with!

“(3) Given the total evidence excluding the data of good and evil, the data of good and evil strongly favor aesthetic deism over omni-theism.” It doesn’t favor anything because it’s a nonsensical argument to make. I suspect this is why most theists completely misunderstand the Problem of Evil argument. It says nothing about the existence of any gods, it says everything about the arbitrary characteristics that the religious staple onto their imaginary friends, characteristics that are simply not defensible in any rational way. Here, too, we just see people running on pure emotion and zero evidence and that doesn’t impress me one bit.

“It follows from (1), (2), and (3) that (4) Aesthetic deism is many times more probable than omni-theism.” It does nothing of the sort because no form of deism and no form of theism has ever been shown to be remotely possible to begin with. Why are we even talking about this at all?

“It follows from (4) that (5) Omni-theism is very probably false. ” You don’t need this argument to demonstrate that. You only need to acknowledge the complete lack of evidence for any claims the religious make. It’s the same thing we can do with leprechauns. I don’t care how many people make claims about little men in green suits and pots of gold, the complete lack of any evidence corroborating the idea is enough to reject it, at least provisionally, until something better is presented.

“It follows from (5) that (6) Atheism (understood here as the denial of omni-theism) is very probably true.” That’s still not what atheism is though, which means that it’s a complete waste of time to continue following this failed line of thinking. It would be one thing to argue only with those who hold a strong atheist position. If they’d done that from the beginning, I wouldn’t have addressed the article at all. It’s the fact that many philosophy nerds are convinced that their invented definition automatically applies to everyone, whether the atheists consent to it or not, that makes it all so absurd. What’s the point of any of it if they think they get to speak for you? It’s like the Christians who tell you that you really believe in their God, even if you don’t. What’s the point?

Then, he tries to defend his syllogism but I’ve already torn it apart. He goes to Richard Swinburne to explain a potential problem for theists with premise 1, but why should we care what theists say? They haven’t justified any portion of their belief system in any way. I don’t care about “what is morally best” because morality, like good and evil, is entirely subjective. We can decide, for ourselves, what is a better moral outcome, but that doesn’t mean that it actually is. It’s all our choice.

Further, in the paragraph following, he says “It’s hard to think of a plausible challenge to premise (2) because, at least when it comes to the usual evidence taken to favor theism over competing hypotheses like naturalism, aesthetic deism accounts for that evidence at least as well as omni-theism does.” Yet omni-theism doesn’t actually have any evidence! That’s the whole problem! There isn’t any! Zero! Zip! Zilch! Nada! Absolutely none. What the religious have are claims, not evidence and those two things are not the same. He goes on to explain what a “good deity” would want, but how the hell do you know that? Better yet, how do you prove it? This is individual interpretation, not verifiable facts.

Moving on, he’s just restating all of the things that he asserted but never proved. The entire thing falls apart once you don’t accept the bald assertions and emotional diatribes that the argument requires. Therefore, we’re just going to jump to the end of this failed section where he sums it all up.

“To summarize, nearly everyone agrees that the world contains both goods and evils.” I don’t. Sure, there are things that we IDENTIFY as good and evil, that we INTERPRET as good and evil, based on our own subjective criteria, but that doesn’t mean that objective good and evil are real. I think it’s very clear that they’re not. This is just another mindless appeal to popularity. It doesn’t matter how many people think a thing. It only matters if that thing is demonstrably true. This is the same kind of problem that we saw in the moral realism article, the author simply assumes a lot of things not in evidence and runs with it. Never was there any hint of understanding or an attempt to validate the positions. It’s true because they want it to be true.

That’s just not rational.

Then he wraps up with the claim that those who reject these ideas, somehow we have the burden of proof because, clearly, he’s got to be right! That’s not how logic works, sorry. The world is, whether anyone likes it or not, amoral. The only ones who care about morality is us and only because we benefit from the view. Our emotional state doesn’t demonstrably change the way reality functions though. It doesn’t matter what humans want, it matters only what is objectively true and this article doesn’t produce a shred of evidence whatsoever to back anything it proposes up.

Sad, isn’t it?

Next time, we’ll get to the end of the article. I think this entire thing has been a disaster of wishful thinking and emotional tripe. Somehow, I’m just not surprised, are you?