Flogging a dead God

My unquestionable faith in the non-existence of an ineffable, unfathomable and utterly unintelligible being has been brought into question. “Aha! The fundamentalist atheist finally sees that the existence of the ultimate voyeur (as Sartre would put it…) is still very much up for debate.” What has brought about this paradigm shift?

The past couple of weeks have seen a hurricane of religious and at some points even rational debate. PhilSoc’s “Is there a rational proof for God” debate, a guest lecture from William Lane Craig and a flurry of Felix articles on related topics have raised the age old issue of God and religion again.

At this stage I must confess. As a fundamentalist, I have not changed my mind. My dogmatic faith in reason, evidence and rational thinking remain an obstacle. Brainwashed by Bertrand Russell I cannot see the utility of adopting beliefs which are untrue or at best unlikely. Thus, just as I have faith in the non-existence of unicorns, fairies and girls studying CompSci, I also believe, yes believe, that anything like the God of Abraham falls into this category. I would like to remind the reader that it would be impolite to pooh-pooh at my faith at this stage, as that would be disrespectful and cause offence. As we all know it is outrageous to dispute someone’s faith.

I write this article in response to an article written two weeks ago entitled “There’s probably no Dawkins…” in which Joshua asks “why does Dawkins refuse to debate Craig?”. It appears that Joshua’s queries were answered when Dawkins himself wrote an article (20th October) in The Guardian entitled “Why I refuse to debate William Lane Craig.”… The only real question to ask is whether Dawkins’ reasons are legitimate. I shall not venture down such an alley and let the reader make up their own mind after reading Dawkins’ article. I’d rather get to the next point.

The closing remark of Joshua’s article was of most interest. The article claims that 4,000 views of a YouTube video of Craig arguing for the existence of God indicates that this area is “still a hot topic…” and “very much open for debate”. Being a blind follower in the Cult of Dawkins I decided to examine the claims and use reason to come to a conclusion.

Fifty minutes of my life were thrown into the past as I watched the Craig lecture. Unsurprisingly, Craig was flogging a dead God. All of his arguments are at least 500 years old and have been thoroughly refuted (see Russell, Wikipedia, Kant, Google, Hume). Craig’s arguments included great classics such as the ontological argument (where God is defined into existence), the cosmological argument (causality implies the Universe has a first unphysical cause, let’s label this God and stop thinking), the teleological argument (the Universe appears to be made for our existence just like the puddle on the road thinks the pothole was made for its existence) and many, many more.

In Felix’s interview last month, Craig was asked whether his belief in God would be diminished if he found refutations (which he found convincing) to the arguments he presented. His response was “I would still have my belief, because my belief in God is not based on these arguments… I think my faith in God is based on the inner witness of God’s Spirit…”. The arguments are not strong enough even to convince himself. This and comments in which he explicitly supports God’s instructions to commit a genocide are enough to bring into question the intellectual integrity of any such debater.

After hundreds of years of argument, there has been little progress concerning God’s existence. The debate is only “open” to the extent that we keep reiterating the same arguments and refutations time and time again. On all things concerning supernatural entities which transcend the understanding, we should take the advice of Ludwig Wittgenstein: “What we cannot [intelligibly] speak about (i.e. the ineffable) we must pass over in silence.”