The False Logic of Atheism Logic Debunkal

by Sondre Bjellås.

This is a response to the paper, The Illogic of Atheism by Miles Mathis.

I consider myself an atheist, while Miles doesn’t want to classify his position, neither as a skeptic nor his position on religious believes. I consider myself a poor skeptic, as it requires immense practice to become a good skeptic. Humans are by their nature, not skeptical creatures. The brain is wired to believe what we are being told by others. This is an important evolutionary skill for humans to survive. Our big brains have come at a cost, namely the inability to take care of ourselves from birth. Being a skeptic requires a lot of energy, energy that the brain want’s to preserve. Hence, the default position for most humans, are always to believe what we are being told – as that is easier, faster and requires less energy and effort.

Humans are biological computers, we have a immense parallel computational abilities. In the more concrete description, we are obviously not like digital computers. Why Miles reasons himself to the logic that humans are not computers, I fail to understand. Our current knowledge and understanding of the brain, indicates that there are certain similarities in regards to how the brain functions and how it does pattern recognition, etc. But don’t take my word for it, do your own research.

Let me add one further explaination on the computer/brain analogy. While the computer CPU only handles 0′s and 1′s, the software that runs on the CPUs have no limits in their abilities and they are only limited by the imagination of our brains. So while the human brain is an eletrical biological device, it can manifest memories, thoughts, feelings and experiences which is not explained by the pure mechanis of synapses. Skeptics of the computer/bran analogy fail to grasp this fact, so I just wanted to make it clear once more.

I can’t speak for every atheist or skeptic, but Miles does the disservice of categorizing everyone in the same box, by writing:

A modern skeptic is like an agnostic, and he or she is likely to lean to a “no” answer every time.

Leaning towards “no” is not something I personally do, I lean towards “yes”, as mentioned before, being skeptic to every single proposition is very demanding and few will ever be able to do so. While most humans lean towards “yes” as a default, many of us strive to achieve a conclusive answer, which is as objective as possible.

This is the first major flaw in the logic of Miles, where he assumes that all atheists and skeptics always defaults to a negative. I consider myself a person with an open mind, I try to stay objective and do use time to learn more about subjects before I make up my mind.

The conclusion of Miles comes from his example of how atheists and skeptics says “probably not” in regards to questions such as are there gods, are there unicors, is there a Bigfoot?

I resist this “skeptic” tag because leaning toward a “no” answer is a prejudice itself. It is unscientific.

Perhaps I’m wrong, maybe he is wrong, but I really don’t think skeptics lean towards a “no” in any incident. It’s just that there are a lot of folklore, fantasies, crazy people out there that people have thought deeply and investigates extensively before us and concluded with their falseness.

From this initial illogical conclusion by Miles, he continues down a path of more wrongs and assumptions about both atheists and skeptics.

Take for example the non-existence of unicorns and Bigfoot. It’s not because people have looked everywhere on the Earth that they don’t exists, they simply don’t exists because there exists no evidence of neither ever been evolved. Evolution is an incredible tool, it allows us to predict what type of animals we will find at certain locations and at certain depths in the layers of the ground. If we can’t find any indication that horses have started to develop a uni-horn in the middle of their foreheads, we won’t find any unicorns with a full developed horn.

We obviously have only discovered a fraction of the fossils that exists in the ground, and millions of animals will never be found and documented. Their existence will never be known. Perhaps we one day might find an early horse with a semi-developed horn. As there are no evidence that indicates such a development, we have to assume that it’s false. Yes, we do not know entirely for sure, but that’s not what skeptics, atheism and science is about.

Science is not about true or false, it’s about degrees of being right. It’s more correct to say the Earth is a sphere than flat, but the Earth is not a perfect sphere. Henri Poincaré in 1885 published an article that the Earth was pear-shaped, this was more correct than the theory of it being flat, but less correct than what we know today.

We do not need to search the entire universe to conclude that it’s unlikely that there exists any gods. Miles writes:

By definition, a god is a being whose powers are far greater than ours, who we cannot comprehend, and whose form we cannot predict.

Where does Miles get his understanding about the concept of a god, as a being with powers greater than ours? Have any gods spoken to Miles? Where does this knowledge come from, the creative mind of Miles?

He goes on with more about the search for a visible god:

A very large or small god would be above or below our notice, and a distant god would also evade our sensors. Not to mention we only have five senses. If we are manipulated by gods, as the hypothesis goes, then it would be quite easy for them to deny us the eyes to see them. Only a god of near-human size in the near environs would be possible to detect.

Why would a god hide from us? If we look at the religious thinking that a god created humans, why would he want to hide from us?

What brings Miles to the logical conclusion that a god has a need to hide?

I only point out that, as a matter of logic and science, a hypothesis that has not been proved is not the same as a hypothesis that has been disproved.

What does Miles mean by the word hypothesis? It’s a proposition to explain a phenomenon, and you can put forward a scientific hypothesis, but that requires the use of the scientific method which requires that the hypothesis can be tested.

Anyone can put forward a hypothesis for any phenomenon, but it’s only the scientific hypothesis that can be proven. Scientific hypothesis comes before scientific theories, and the hypothesis are there because existing theories might not explain the phenomenon in question.

I agree with the atheists and agnostics that the existence of gods has not been proved, but I do not agree that the existence of gods has been disproved.

How do you apply the scientific method to test the existence of gods? There are nothing to test, so there is nothing to actually disprove. You can’t prove a proposition of a non-existent phenomenon. There are no phenomenon of gods, hence there are no need for a hypothesis.

Miles then tries to discredit the atheists, calling names and not giving any evidence to back up his claims.

People of faith are actually more consistent in their views, since they never claim to believe in science anyway.

Everyone believe in science, even people of faith. If you did not believe in science, you would most probably be dead. Science tells us what is dangerous, what is safe, it tells us how the world works. Without science, we wouldn’t have televisions, no computers, no cars, no modern medicine, no modern vaccines, no airplanes. There are no basis for this statement, it’s plainly false.

What Miles fails to understand in this context, is that many people pick and choose what knowledge in science they want to believe in, in a similar way that may religious pick and choose which phrases and moral rules they abide to in their religious writings. The most common topic is evolution, some religious people believe in evolution, there are evidence that support it. Many don’t believe it, but that doesn’t mean they don’t believe in science. There is a flaw in the logic that makes Miles come up with such a conclusion.

A theist at zero is just a theist, and no harm done. But an atheist at zero has had a fall, and must be damaged.

Whenever knowledge leads us back to square one, we can start over again and try again. You are not damaged, but you have improved your knowledge of what is either false or does not work. When you know about something that is illogical or false, then you know that truth is not to be found there and have to search elsewhere. This is a positive negative and it’s worthwhile for humanity to gain such knowledge.

To put it in philosophical terms, the atheist has chosen a position that is epistemologically stronger than the theist. By stronger, I do not mean that the atheist is more likely to be right, I mean that the position of the atheist requires more proof.

This is where Miles starts to have something sensible to argue. It is true that many atheists have a strong position. Reasons for this might be many, but I think one is the need to show distance against a system (religion) that has grown and spread to a large degree of the human population. Religions as they historically and currently work, does not always promote reason, logic, science and truth. They preach and promote obedience, sacrifice, illogical conclusions and self-fulfilling prophesies that enhances the faith and can become destructive. Miles explains this himself:

since it is possible for them create a closed system of illogic that circles back in a self-affirming way. The search for truth is no part of their system, so it is no failure when they find none.

Some atheists (often categorized as strong atheists) will say they know that gods does not exists, while most will probably say they believe that there exists no gods. There are wiggle room in the atheists proposal, even though Miles doesn’t acknowledge such a possibility.

I’m not a well educated individual, I’m not well versed in argumentation and I’m not a scientist. I’m not a very good skeptic. But I do see a logical wrong in the following:

Belief and faith are built mainly on willpower. Atheists will say that such a foundation is quicksand, and I tend to agree, but atheists stand in even waterier mud. The atheist claims to be quite certain that there is no god, and he claims to be contemptuous of unsupported belief, so he must provide us with some firm foundation for his “knowledge.” This he can never do. If there are no proofs that God or gods exist, there are also no proofs they do not exist.

You don’t need to have proof or knowledge about a specific proposition to disbelieve it. I don’t believe when someone tells me there is a huge pink elephant flying in orbit around planet Earth. Anyone is free to believe this if they want to, but the problem is that people who are religious, they live in a society with other people. And when you live with others, decisions you make can and will affect others. When important decisions are made by irrational, religious people, who (according to Miles) does not believe in science, the consequences can be catastrophic and dangerous. Faith is no longer a personal opinion when it affects the politics and agenda of the powerful elite in our society.

That is part of the reason why some atheists can appear and possibly are, hostile against those of faith.

The atheist is just as unscientific as the theist.

This is false, most atheists apply scientific method to any phenomenon. The logical wrong by Miles, is to fail to see that there are no phenomenon, and hence there are no reason for any hypothesis. You can’t hypothesize around a non-phenomenon, clearly anyone can fantasies up wild and crazy ideas, but they are not phenomenons that happens in the world around us, only in the imaginative minds of individual people.

I think it is clear that both the definition of a god and the question of the existence of a god are meaningful

I don’t think any atheists, including myself, find the pursuit of defining a god or investigating the existence of god meaningful in any way. How would one go about doing such a task? Read all the religious texts in the world and come up with a definition? There are no reason why I should investigate this, in the same manner as there are no reason I should investigate a pink elephant in orbit.

For another god, the evidence of gods might be clear at a glance. For us, all the hard evidence in the world might not suffice, since we could not recognize it for what it was. This means that my argument is also not a variation of “we can’t know.”

This is the type of meaningless and strange logical reasoning that happens in the minds of “religious” individuals. Where does these thoughts and opinions come from, expect from the wild imagination of Miles and those who came before him?

Further in the text, Miles goes on and tries to discredit scientists and scientific theories. It doesn’t matter how personal individuals are, you need to give proof if you have any problems with scientific theories. When those against science can’t give any proof, they attack the messenger. This is a known practice of argumentation, which is a very poor and bad one.

I’m not even sure I want to quote Miles on the following, but I’m doing it to show how he uses bullying practices in his argumentation.

All the contemporary theories are heavily fortified and policed, and they are famous for immediately blacklisting anyone who asks intelligent questions. Modern science consists of only two categories: those who agree with every word of the standard models, and cranks. Science in all fields has ossified into dogma, which is why it has stopped advancing. Physics, for example, hasn’t made a jot of theoretical headway in almost a century. It has spent the last eight or nine decades loading the old theories down with mathematical formalisms and other jargon, and building the walls as high as possible. I know this firsthand.

Mathis believes nothing in the religious texts, not a single claim, but that’s not the interesting part. Mathis’ problem is with the bad scientists and bloated atheists:

Scientists will say that the current models are superior to Genesis, at any rate, since one who accepts Genesis doesn’t continue to ask how the Earth evolved. This much is true. Good scientists continue to study, while religious people and bad scientists do not. But this paper is not about good scientists, it is about bloated atheists and bad scientists, the sort that think they already know how things are. They have barebones models of the early Earth, models less than a century old and ever-changing, and they think they can claim with certainty how things are, who exists and who does not, how things got here and where they are going. They think a theory of how things evolved is equivalent to a theory of how things were created.

These are to me, just ramblings. How many scientists and atheists have Mathis ever meet? Most people are humble, they realized the truth that perfect knowledge is not achievable. Evolution does not explain how thing were created, it doesn’t even try to do such a task. Which atheists or scientist does this? Maybe I have not looked hard enough?

Mathis keeps discrediting people by their physical appears, such as James Watson:

To be specific, let us look first at DNA. The princes of DNA like James Watson are among the ugliest scientists that ever existed.

Religious assertions are based on nothing but imagination. Scientific assertion are based upon models and testable hypothesis. Mathis fails to see and understand the difference, which does explain how it’s possible to come up with his illogical conclusions at times.

How can electrons and protons and mesons and so on, rushing around in gravitational and E/M fields, accidentally stick together or form structures, just as a matter of statistics, forming codes that other accidental conglomerations have a use for? Such a theory is just as fantastic as any other religious assertion, surely.

His attempt to debunk evolution is borderline ridiciouls and shows his lack of basic understanding of the theory of evolution.

Let’s look at his example with the giraffes, he can’t possibly understand how they developed a long neck when the three have their leaves high up and seemingly in the mind of Mathis, out of reach for the giraffes.

The mutation is useful only to an animal that is already living under trees, already trying to reach higher leaves. But if it could not reach the leaves before the mutation, why was it there? Was it just hanging around, looking up at those unused leaves, waiting for a mutation?

Simple explanation: Planets evolve too. They evolve protection against predators. Some grow taller, some develop poison. Is it not logical to think that some species of three have evolved to be taller and taller in tandem with the ancestors of the giraffe? Evolution is complex and not all animals develop the same features, as the three grew taller to avoid the animals, some might have changed their preference in food while others developed taller necks and legs.

Looking at the effects and trying to draw conclusions is very hard. This applies to everything, especially human society. Specialization in species and the synergies between two different species doesn’t necessarily have had to happen immediately as Mathis proposes. The same development with the giraffe, could have happened with his orchid and fly example. With his lack of ability to understand and reason around the simple logic, he concludes:

They must evolve together, and this is so unlikely as a matter of mutation statistics that it must show up the theory as a whole.

The theory of evolution is more than just natural selection and traits have different uses, and not always useful in the sense of survival. A very powerful element is the attraction of the opposite sex. Some birds have developed useless traits in the sake of survival, but which increases their chance of attracting a mate and propagate their seeds in their offspring. Then again, newer research have shown that the long and sexy tails of male hummingbirds might have minimal cost in speed and energy.

The new organism is “stronger” or “fitter”, which must mean it is better adapted to the current environment. If so, why did the environment put up with the weaker pre-mutation organism?

The environment changes, earthquakes, floods, heat, cold, meteorites, volcanoes and tectonic plates that moves continents apart. These are all natural disasters which have shown to impact how animals develop. Evolution does not function on perfection, but a good fit. There will never be a perfectly fit animal for it’s environment.

By this way of looking at it, history should be a straight chronological progression from less fit to more fit (minus environmental cataclysms).

This is a false logical conclusion. Biology dictates a framework from within evolution can function, a new trait might appear on the cost of others. Humans have a very fragile body, which have evolved on the cost of improved mental capabilities.

It would require two simultaneous cross-breedings of precisely the same sort, creating two members of the new species, each of the opposite sex, and both fertile.

There is evidence in the genes of homo sapiens that we have genes from neanderthals, that there was interbreeding between homo sapiens and neanderthal. Experts are convinced that interbreeding happened between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago.

Again, I am not proposing that evolution is wrong or suggesting a return to any form of intelligent design. I am not proposing that God or any gods create plumage for strictly aesthetic reasons or their own pleasure, or that God or gods create or accelerate new species after a cataclysm. I am not proposing that God or gods monitor the progress of every bird and flower, to keep them in proper relative form. I am simply pointing out that our science in all fields and subfields is very incomplete, not to say embryonic, and that scientists, and therefore atheists, should be less strident.

It’s hard to understand what Mathis is trying to propose at all. Clearly, science is a field of ever progress. Scientists won’t stop and be content with what they know, they will always try to disprove their own and others theories and hypothesis.

Religious people are often or usually very ignorant, it is true, but scientists are only marginally less ignorant. Even the smartest of us know almost nothing about the universe.

I take less ignorant any day. Though I’m confident that it’s more than marginally less ignorant, scientists and atheists are the most open minded, intelligent, rational, logical and nice people to be around.

Mathis thinks it’s wrong for scientists to “force evolution upon religious people” as better alternatives to their myths about creation. We will never fully understand and know all the inner workings of our universe, but if what we know does not correlate with personal fantasies and myths, those who hold those myths need to decide whether they want to keep holding their unfounded believes and in turn, disconnect and distance themselves from the rest of the modern society.

Mathis is right one the following, the religious people have very little power today, compared to only a few decades ago. There is though, a potential danger that their power might reappear in the reduced capabilities on society to ask critical questions, reason with logic and be good skeptics. One example on this is the growing number of alternative healthcare services and remedies.

Like the theory of evolution, each scientific theory in each field is sold as true and complete and verified, although it never is. Each theory is an embryonic theory, full of holes, and verified only in small part, if at all. Each theory is full of contradictions and paradoxes and inconsistencies, and, as written at Wikipedia, each theory is padded and fluffed with false or fake equations and outright lies. But of course you aren’t told any of this.

This is just a negative random rant about the field of science, I won’t comment further on this.

The famous scientists were most often real scientists (until recently), which means they could probably see that atheism was not a scientific stance.

Atheism is not a scientific stance, that is entirely correct. Atheism is the denial in the existence of gods, while science is in the business of proving testable hypothesis that can become theories. There are no need for a hypothesis or theory about gods, their existence cannot be tested and hence are outside the scope of science.

Finally, they should recognize that atheism is a belief just as firmly planted in irrationality, in ego and desire, as theism. Atheism has no proof and no possible proof. It is unscientific. Like all human beliefs, it is a hunch based on a tissue, a guess based on a smear, a conjecture based on a passing mist.

Atheism is a definition on those who denies the existence of gods. There are no known phenomenon that warrant theism. Putting the atheists and the theist in the same category is as wrong as putting people who believe in pink elephants in orbit around the world, with those who don’t believe it and those who deny it. Those who deny and those who disbelieve, are in an entirely different category than those who believe.

Few people still believe in Valhalla, and the myths of Odin and his son Thor. Few people still believe in Mount Olympus and Zeus, with his many children, including Heracles. Then why does so many people still believe in Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit? And why does so many people still believe in Allah written by his prophet Muhammad?

What is the logical difference between any of these myths, that warrant any further investigation?

And to conclude, as Mathis himself uses in his book, if the premises are faulty, the conclusions are bound to be faulty as well. I hope some of my arguments have displayed how Mathis premises, such as those that atheists lean towards “no” and that there can’t be any meaningful hypothesis when there are no phenomenon to describe it, shows that his final conclusions are not warranted.

I end with the words of Stephen Hawking:

“The question is: is the way the universe began chosen by God for reasons we can’t understand, or was it determined by a law of science? I believe the second.”