John Loftus Explains Why He Is An Atheist, Part 1:

John Loftus writes "Why I Am An Atheist", and we will examine his enumerated reasons.

” 1) If there is no God then life has no meaning. Wrong. No one should ever reject the evidence for a conclusion simply because they dislike the conclusion. If there is no God then we are our own meaning makers. Period. Only after you realize God doesn’t exist will you see this.”

Loftus has charged a logical error against the deduction. What has he charged? Let’s look at the statement:

”No one should ever reject the evidence for a conclusion simply because they dislike the conclusion.”

So if I don’t like the conclusion that “life has no meaning”, then I must not reject the premise that “there is no God”?

First reaction is, why not? Sartre did. But let’s move on.

If the actual universals are used (“meaning = universal, common meaning), then we can ask, how does that change the statement?

“If there is no God then life has no meaning”

Becomes

”If there is no God then life has no specific, commonly understood, objective meaning”

And this tends to agree with Loftus’ position. Most Atheists would agree that there is no specific, commonly understood, objective meaning to their existence, and that, like Loftus claims, all meaning is subjectively determined.

But let’s examine his premise. Loftus’ point seems to be that what appears to be a premise in the original statement is the actual conclusion: “there is no God”. The evidence is not to be rejected. Any conclusion should support the premise. But how is that premise supported? It is not enough to merely assert a premise as Truth; there needs to be a supporting premise chain which delineates the undeniable Truth of the conclusion:

”IF [X1 through (Xn-1)], THEN [Xn]

”IF [Xn], THEN [there is no God.]”

This would represent a valid argument, IFF X1 through Xn can be shown incontrovertibly and incorrigibly inarguably valid, correct and true.

Only then can the following argument be made:

”IF there is no God, THEN all meaning is subjective and relative.”

If the conclusion follows the premise(s), then the conclusion is accepted, unless the argument fails coherence tests. But the contrary can also be valid, as when contrary premises are used:

”If there is God”, THEN all meaning is STILL subjective and relative.”

Common meaning which is found is still found individually, even by theists, who study and interpret and meditate on prior theist writings. And any theist assertion of contact with deity cannot be assumed to be a universal, it is a specific, subjective experience.

An argument which can be proven by contradictory premises has no meaning, logically. The conclusion shows true, despite any involvement of the existence of a deity. It is not a falsifiable proposal.

So Loftus is right, although his attachment to one premise over the other is without any merit so far. What he has done is merely to reject a theist’s illogical assertion. He has not given a reason to reject the existence of a deity.

Argument 2

” 2) If there is no God then everything is permitted. Wrong again. The ones doing the permitting are people in their respective societies. Even if Thomas Hobbes is correct that we are at war with everyone else, we must still adopt some kind of reasonable social contract whereby we join together for the common good. If not, a society will collapse into chaos. Since no one desires chaos there are reasonable limits to what any society will permit. By contrast, if God exists there are no limits to what can be permitted when people believe something to be divinely authorized.”

The first argument here seems to be that Loftus thinks that there must be some objective, preordained limits to the behaviors of humans. His assertion is without actual evidence, but is rather a “must” statement which indicates either a moral imperative or a natural law which demands satisfaction. He provides no case for either. Further, he presumes that the limits he imagines are necessary to prevent chaos, but he gives no justification in the form of hard evidence for that. In fact, there are “Lord of the Flies” types of justifications for the original statement: objective rules cannot exist without an objective source. Subjective rules can include or exclude anything. Denial of an objective source entails the denial of an objective rule set. Without that, any individual is ruled only by what he thinks he can get away with. This is supported by Atheists from Kinsey to Dahmer to Dawkins (who could not say that Hitler was wrong).

The second argument is this:

”By contrast, if God exists there are no limits to what can be permitted when people believe something to be divinely authorized”

This is true only for certain religions and cults, not for all religions. Loftus seems to want to assert a Fallacy of Overgeneralization in order to perform a Fallacy of Guilt By Association. If not that, then he has performed a perversion of the theology of Judeo-Christianity. It is accepted that there are, in fact, perversions of Judeo-Christianity extant; that does not prove the universal claim Loftus makes here.

Loftus has again not proven that there is no deity, nor given any reason to think that.

”3) Science is no substitute for religion. Bogus. If there is one mark of the deluded mind (defined as "believing against the overwhelming evidence") it’s that somewhere along the line he or she must be ignorant of, or denigrate, or deny science. Religion has given us nothing in comparison to science. Faith-based reasoning processes are notoriously unreliable. They do not help us get at the truth. What do they offer as a substitute for evidence based reasoning processes? “

Here Loftus reveals his certain ignorance of science as a philosophical derivative of logic, and he attacks with phony “evidence” that there is no knowledge which is not scientific or evidence-based. He claims that the opposition is ignorant of science or denies it (a common scientismist failure), while giving no evidence (scientific or otherwise) to support his prejudice. In fact, if he were as educated as some would have us believe, then he would be familiar with the falsification limitation to material experimentation, not non-material, which Popper illuminated; he would be familiar with the failure of induction to provide certainty, and the necessity of empiricism to engage in deduction, which is a mental process not a bag of scientific “factoids”.

Loftus even suggests that there should be an information source within religion which provides competition to empiricism, but there is not. Of course not. Were Loftus truly educated in the theology as is suggested, he would know that religion is oriented toward the meta-narrative of cause and purpose for the material universe and its inhabitants, not the details of the universe’s behavior. The meta-narrative is suggestive of purpose, while the science is incapable of determining such. Loftus seems to think that science has capabilities for determining things outside of material behaviors; it certainly does not.

Loftus claims, ”Faith-based reasoning processes are notoriously unreliable.” Really? Which ones? The deductive ones? Why? Where is your vaunted cache of evidence to support that claim? And as for your claim of “notoriously” unreliable, how is that measured, physically? And is it universally applicable to ALL theist deductions? Has he logically disproved EVERY theist process and claim? Prove that, please. We need scientific evidence here.

”They do not help us get at the truth.” Undoubtedly “truth” for Loftus is a bag full of empirical factoids, as yet unfalsified, yet falsifiable. Actual truth does not exist for science, only probabilities of non-falsification. Loftus shows no sign of knowing that. Truth is determined by disciplined deductive logical examination of propositions. Factoids regarding material things are determined by empirical experimental investigation.

Religion is relegated here to “faith”, which Loftus probably equates to having no intellectual input. That would be a product of his personal bias, not of knowledge of how theist philosophies actually function. If Loftus is educated in those areas, it does not show. Nor does he avoid logically useless disparagement.

” 4) God is the best explanation of the whole shebang. Spurious. Believers have always said this, even though science has made great strides in answering this question. God of the gaps arguments like this one have failed so many times in the past it’s quite surprising to see Randal still using it. So many questions abound. The scientific hypothesis merely starts with an equilibrium of positive and negative energy along with the laws of physics. Grant this and there is a 60% chance something should exist. Given the fact of evolution there is no need for a God, and there’s no evidence he is involved in this process at all. The main thing scientists have not yet explained is the origin of life. If your theology hangs on that gap then you are betting against everything science has solved so far. And once you allow god explanations into your equations then most any god will do, even an evil one.”

First accusation: Spurious/God of the Gaps. That argument has no basis, considering that science is limited to material-only parts of the “shebang”. The meta-narrative of the universe is and always will be untouched by material considerations, and the limited knowledge generation of science.

Next accusation: “ Something exists. So either something—anything—has always existed, or something—anything—popped into existence out of nothing. Those are the choices. The best explanation for our existence is the simplest one.”

That is false; as Einstein proved, “everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler”. He showed that Bohr’s theory was too simple when he proved that Brownian Motion demonstrated the existence of atoms moving. Ockham’s Razor is not a universal law of physics or of anything else.

” The theistic hypothesis is that a three-in-one God exists who never had a beginning or a prior moment to choose his own nature, who never learned any new propositions, who cannot think because thinking requires weighing alternatives, who cannot even laugh because nothing takes him by surprise, who created this world with its natural disasters, who doesn’t even benevolently act in the midst of our sufferings. This is no explanation at all.”

This is no disproof at all. The basic theist premise is that ”there is a cause for the existence of an expanding universe, an existence which is an agent with the capacity to implement that subsequent existence”. What Loftus has done here is to inveigh upon a specific ecclesiastical iteration of deity his own concepts of how that deity must exist or behave. As with his other arguments, he offers no material, empirical evidence for the argument, because there is none to be given: the argument refers to a non-physical existence which Lotus imbues with his own imaginative characteristics which he deems impossible, apparently thereby proving the impossibility of the existence. For example, attacking the creating entity for allowing natural disasters and not being benevolent enough for Loftus has no bearing on whether an agent was involved in the creation of the universe.

” The scientific hypothesis merely starts with an equilibrium of positive and negative energy along with the laws of physics. Grant this and there is a 60% chance something should exist.”

Presented without evidence or reference, there is no way to determine where he got this. As far as I know, there actually is no such thing as negative energy. It is pure speculation that gravity serves as negative energy, balancing the universal energy to zero; it is purely hypothetical, especially considering that no one actually has a valid theory of gravitation, and the use of negative energy is proposed due to the inability of science to answer questions using the mass/energy which they actually have.

Further, the pre-existence of a quantum field is necessary for the origination of the first particle/anti-particle. The idea of a Free Lunch universe is predicated upon empirical ignorance of the initial conditions in terms of discoverable knowledge.

”Given the fact of evolution there is no need for a God, and there’s no evidence he is involved in this process at all.”

This is propaganda; it ignores the issue of first life jumping out of mere minerals; it ignores the creation of reasoning by changing the position of electrons just prior to a thought; it ignores the complete determinism of material existence, except for the unfortunate existence of agency in certain living things. There is no empirical evidence or rational deduction which favors a purely material existence.

” 5) If there is no God then we don’t know anything. False. If so, chimps don’t know anything either. They don’t know how to get food, or mate or even where to live. Without knowing anything they should’ve died off a long time ago. And yet here they are. They don’t need a god to know these things. Why do we need a god for knowledge? We learn through a process of trial and error. Since we’ve survived as a human species, we have acquired reliable knowledge about our world. Period. “

I suspect that the way the “theist” arguments are presented by Loftus is prejudicial toward his purpose, and not representative of the actual argument which was made. The stated deduction doesn’t represent any theist argument I’ve ever heard, yet I suppose that it might have been made. So let’s look at the response which Loftus makes.

” False. If so, chimps don’t know anything either.”
This attempt at Reductio Ad Absurdum is itself absurd. He has tried to take the conclusion out of its context into an exaggeration, but the result doesn’t disprove the argument. It is not a true Reductio, because it does not invert the logic. A true Reductio would entail something like this: [Even] If there is no God, Then we know things. This statement actually does refute the argument (which deserves it), but it has no bearing on the truth of the statement, There is no God. So far, Loftus has not proved this, or even addressed it as an Atheist issue.

The arguments are not properly parsed from the start, probably a failure of the theist involved. The attempt seems to be to assume consequences for the absence of a deity, and then argue that the consequences prove the premise to be false. It’s a sort of twist on “affirming the consequent” problem. The actual argument would be this: ”IFF we have knowledge (can think) THEN there is a God.”

Or this:

IF we are deterministic electrolytic minerals, THEN knowledge is not possible without God.

The point of the argument is that we actually do have knowledge; what chimps know is also evidence in favor of the argument.

” They don’t need a god to know these things. Why do we need a god for knowledge? We learn through a process of trial and error. Since we’ve survived as a human species, we have acquired reliable knowledge about our world. Period. “

This has to be the crowning achievement of focused ignorance. What Loftus argues is this: Why do we need a source for X? We have X. That’s all we need: X. Since the argument he is countering is not even addressed, this statement, besides being absurd, fails to address the argument, regardless of the phony verbal punctuation at the end. Loftus apparently thinks and wants us think, too, that just the existence of knowledge is enough to explain the reason it exists. Again, this is absurd.

So far in his reasons to be an Atheist, Loftus merely takes half-baked theist claims and gives his unconsidered reasons for rejecting them. At no point does he give any reason for Atheism, except that these particular arguments don't satisfy him.

This is all for today. Maybe tomorrow I will address the second five arguments which Loftus makes as reasons for his Atheism. Maybe.