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God – Fact or Fiction: A Plea for Humanism and Atheism
God – Fact or Fiction: A Plea for Humanism and Atheism
God – Fact or Fiction: A Plea for Humanism and Atheism
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God – Fact or Fiction: A Plea for Humanism and Atheism

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The author develops the problem of God in a stimulating way, by exploring science, philosophy, history, and other disciplines. He concludes that God does not exist because the supernatural does not exist and therefore God, an entity of the supernatural, also does not exist. He regards religion as the biggest hoax ever released on mankind. With his great erudition and critical reasoning, he will incite the reader to serious thought. The controversial topic will provoke a great deal of criticism and perhaps consequently contribute to clarification of the Gods problem. The main concern of the author remains the quest for truth from every possible angle. The book is a modern testament.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateMay 28, 2014
ISBN9781496981936
God – Fact or Fiction: A Plea for Humanism and Atheism
Author

Luke VandenBerghe

After being expelled from university in 1947, because his studies at an English grammar school during the war were not homologated (later well), the author started work at the Belgian Treasury Department at the lowest rank. He became a tax law expert and published many articles on the subject. His main work was a ten-volume commentary on value-added tax (VAT). He ended his career as director of VAT of the province of West-Flanders and as a commander of the realm. When he retired in 1993 at the age of sixty-five, he started studying religion, philosophy, and cosmology. A convinced atheist, in 2014 he published his essay “God, Fact or Fiction”. Immediately afterwards, he started his research for this book.

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    God – Fact or Fiction - Luke VandenBerghe

    I.

    FEATURES

    1. Knowledge

    1.1. Knowledge is a collection of facts, information, and skills acquired through experience or education. In philosophy, the study of knowledge is called epistemology. Plato defined knowledge as justified true belief. The acquisition of knowledge involves complex cognitive processes such as perception, learning, communication, association, and reasoning. It is also related to human beings’ capacity for acknowledgement, which is the ability to implement and synthesize acquired knowledge.

    Epistemology comprises empiricism, rationalism, idealism, and historicism.

    2. Supernatural

    2.1. The supernatural is anything above or beyond the natural and that exists outside the natural laws. The idea that something exists outside of the known world is present in all nations, at all times. It is kept alive by legend.

    Science only accepts those explanations for phenomena that are natural explanations, which can be investigated empirically. Supernatural themes are associated with paranormal and occult ideas. Miracles and revelations are perceived by the religious as supernatural claims, as are spells, curses, divination, and the afterlife.

    2.2. The first Homo sapiens to walk the Earth likely explained all complex phenomena on the basis of his or her assumptions, which perforce included both natural and supernatural causes.

    Supernatural explanations, no matter in which age they were conceived, gave rise to assumptions. They were not established as scientifically valid. Once scientists validate or rectify an irrational or supernatural explanation, many human beings assimilate the newly revealed scientific concepts and renounce their earlier superstitions. This way, human beings continue to uncover the secrets of the cosmos in which they find themselves. Those who consider only scientific, natural explanations as acceptable subscribe to the explanations of the origin of the universe and the development of life. These explanations include the Big Bang, abiogenesis, and evolution. Inevitably, rational people consider any religious explanation to be superstitious, like any mythology.

    The human brain must make assumptions in order to explain the phenomenon to which it is exposed, for that is the only way it can convert nerve signals into concepts.

    3. Reasoning and Introspection

    3.1. Though empiricists and rationalists hold different views on reason, reasoning is considered to be the intellectual faculty by which conclusions are drawn from premises. A syllogism illustrates the process of reasoning.

    Reasoning or argumentation is a process whereby one considers a number of arguments, assertions, assumptions, or axioms (postulates) to arrive at a position or conclusion.

    A theory is a system of ideas or hypotheses that explain observed facts or phenomena. Two major features of a theory are consistency and completeness. A theory is consistent if nothing contradictory to the theory presents itself. A theory is complete if any true proposition made by the formal language of the theory can be seen to exist within the theory.

    An axiom or postulate relates to mathematics and logic, as Euclid and Aristotle proposed. It is something unproven but accepted as valid. The postulate itself serves as the basis for providing evidence of other objectives or theorems.

    A theorem (a reflective teaching) is a statement derived from postulates and from previously derived theorems. A series of logical arguments are deduced from postulates in order to prove a theorem. A postulate is part of a deductive system. In mathematics, a theory is called a deductive system.

    When compiling a theory, one must take into account certain limitations:

    •   Postulates must not contradict each other.

    •   Postulates must not be deduced from other postulates.

    •   Postulates which are contradictory make a theory inconsistent.

    •   A postulate that can be derived from other postulates is not a postulate, but a proven theorem.

    Reasoning is usually deductive and truthful. It consists of applying a general rule to a specific situation. Inductive reasoning consists of deriving a general rule from a number of specific situations.

    3.2. Reasoning is associated with thinking, cognition, and intellect. It is a definitive characteristic of human nature, one that is applicable in philosophy, science, language, mathematics, and art. Reasoning is the means by which rational beings understand themselves and think about cause and effect, truth and falsehood, and what is good or bad.

    A general proposition is not self-evident but is proven by a chain of reasoning. It is a truth established by means of accepted truths.

    Intelligence requires objectivity. Without objectivity, one may be clever but not intelligent. Intelligence also requires an open mind.

    3.3. Aristotle, one of Plato’s students, said that human beings are rational animals, and he emphasized reason as a human characteristic. He said that the highest human happiness or well-being is achieved through a life which is lived consistently, excellently, and completely in accordance with reason.

    3.4. Empiricism (Aristotle, Alhazen, Avicenna, Ibn Tufail, Robert Grosseteste, William of Ockham [who proposed the principle known as Occam’s razor], Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, Robert Boyle, John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume, Leopold von Ranke, John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell, et al., were empiricists) operates on a theory about knowledge. It asserts that knowledge comes only, or at least primarily, via sensory experience. Speaking to the philosophy of science, empiricism emphasizes evidence, especially that evidence discovered by way of experimentation. It is fundamental to the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories be tested against observations of the natural world, rather than resting on a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation. Roger Bacon (1214-1294), a Franciscan monk, emphasized the need for an empirical approach to scientific study. He was imprisoned as a heretic. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) said that if one finds, from one’s own experience, that something is a fact and it also contradicts what some authority (e.g. the Christian Church) prescribes, then one must abandon the authoritative explanation and base one’s reasoning on one’s own findings.

    3.5. The renowned Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) pointed out that the use of even the simplest forms of induction cannot be justified by inductive reasoning itself. Moreover, induction cannot be justified by deduction, either. Therefore, induction cannot be rationally justified. Hume simply explained that we do induce, and that it is useful that we do so, but that our inductions are not necessarily justified. The Church of Scotland attacked Hume because he denied that inductive reasoning was logical admissible. He was preceded by the physician and philosopher Sextus Empiricus (c. 160-210 CE; he lived in Alexandria, Rome, and Athens), who questioned how the truth of the universals could be established by some particulars which are infinite in number. Religious people advance the idea that scientists use induction, but this is not true, as a scientist cannot rely on something that does not exist. Mathematical induction is not a form of inductive reasoning, even though it may be inspired by the non-base cases. The formulation of a base case firmly establishes it as a form of deductive reasoning. Aristotle established the inductive method when it came to reasoning, but when it came to science, his approach was purely empirical. Surely, you are familiar with the principle Occam’s razor (also called William of Ockham’s razor), which is the law of parsimony, of economy, or of succinctness. It states that when faced with competing hypotheses that are equal in other respects, one must select the hypothesis that makes the fewest assumptions.

    3.6. John Locke proposed, in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), his views that the only knowledge human beings can have is a posteriori knowledge—i.e. knowledge based on experience—and that the human mind begins as a blank tablet (tabula rasa). The Irish Anglican bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753) determined that Locke had opened a door leading to atheism (Berkeley proposed that God supplies human beings with perceptions they would otherwise fail to perceive). David Hume, the champion of empiricism and scepticism, heavily criticized Berkeley.

    3.7. Rationalism (Descartes [Cogito ergo sum], Spinoza, and Leibniz were rationalists), not to be confused with rationality, is any view that appeals to reason as a source of knowledge or justification. For rationalists, the criterion is not sensory, but intellectual and deductive. Since the Enlightenment, it was associated with the introduction of mathematical methods into philosophy. It is often contrasted with empiricism, but in fact the two views are not mutually exclusive, since one can be a rationalist and an empiricist at the same time.

    3.8. In deductive reasoning, an argument is valid if the argument’s conclusion is based on solid truths of the premises.

    Inductive reasoning contrasts strongly with deductive reasoning in that the truth of the premises does not guarantee the truth of the conclusion, but only indicates a degree of probability. It is reasoning that moves from a special case or cases to a general rule. There is no logical movement from premises to conclusion. The premises constitute only good reasons for accepting the conclusion. Analytical reasoning is reasoning from the particular to the particular.

    Inductive logic is reasoning which takes us beyond the confines of our current evidence or knowledge to conclusions about the unknown.(101) The premises of an inductive argument indicate some degree of support (inductive probability) for the conclusion, but they neither entail it nor ensure its truth. The Church extensively uses inductive reasoning, not only making wrong conclusions, but also starting from wrong premises (dogma).

    3.9. Bayesianism is the most influential form of inductive logic. It does not determine which beliefs are a priori rational, but it does indicate that we should rationally change our beliefs when we are presented with new evidence. Bayes interprets the concept of probability as a measure of a state of knowledge, not as a frequency or a physical property of a system. Bayesian probability belongs to the category of evidential probabilities. The Bayesian interpretation of probability enables reasoning with uncertain statements. To evaluate the probability of a hypothesis, the Bayesian probabilist specifies some prior probability and then updates it in light of new, relevant data. The Bayesian interpretation provides a standard set of procedures and formulae to perform this calculation. Bayesian refers to the work of eighteenth-century mathematician and theologian Thomas Bayes (1702-1761), who provided the first mathematical treatment of the non-trivial problem of Bayesian inference. Nevertheless, Bayes was a minor figure in the history of science, one who had little or no impact on the early development of statistics. It was the French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827) who pioneered and popularized what is now called Bayesian probability. Around 1960, Ray Solomonoff founded the theory of universal inductive inference, which is the theory of prediction based on observations—for example, predicting the next symbol based on a given series of symbols. This is Occam’s razor mathematically formalized. Fundamental ingredients of this theory are the concepts of algorithmic probability, proposed sometime near 1957 by the Russian mathematician Andrey Kolmorov.

    Stephen D. Unwin (a theoretical physicist) misuses the theorem of Bayesian probability in his book The Probability of God, in which appears an equation showing a probability of 67 per cent that God exists. However, Richard Dawkins(10) proved that Unwin not only used hypothetic values in his formula but also started with a 50 per cent probability that God existed.

    3.10. During the twentieth century, thinkers such as Karl Popper and David Millar disputed the existence, necessity, and validity of any inductive reasoning, including probabilistic reasoning.

    3.11. Pragmatism, the philosophy expounded by C. S. Peirce and William James, evaluates assertions solely on their practical consequences and their bearing on human interests.

    3.12. Logic tries to answer and resolve paradoxes, whereas religious thought thrives on paradox. If you believe in revelatory truth, then you exclude reasoning.

    3.13. The difference between the reasoning styles of Plato and Aristotle is that Plato tried to gain insights from fundamental truth, whereas Aristotle was rooted in empirical observations.

    3.14. For centuries, many human beings have harboured the idea that such a thing as the self—one’s own hidden identity that is accessible only by introspection—exists. According to Descartes, a dualist (material and immaterial), the self is consciousness or is part of the non-material soul that is housed in a physical body. Out of Descartes’s work came his famous dictum "Cogito ergo sum (I think; therefore, I am"), which illustrates his view that self-awareness constitutes proof of human existence. Plato and Aristotle also dealt with the concept of self-awareness. Introspection or human self-reflection is an activity which consists of examining one’s own conscious thoughts, feelings, and behaviours (cf. chapter 9, infra).

    In psychology, the process of introspection relies exclusively on observation of one’s mental state. In spirituality, it may refer to the examination of one’s own soul (ibid.).

    Introspection generally provides us with a privileged access to our own mental state that is not mediated or instigated by other means. The process of introspection is purely subjective. It is criticized because people tend to be unaware of their own unawareness and biases (which make up what is called introspective illusion). Nevertheless, introspection has tremendous value for the righteous person. It allows him or her to investigate whether or not he or she acts in accordance with ethics, thereby preventing the appeasing of his or her conscience (ibid.).

    Modern people devote far too little of their attention to introspection. Siddhārtha Gautama (Buddha) taught and applied introspection five hundred years before the Common Era began, which was also the time when the Vedanta appeared. Plato asked, Why should we not calmly and patiently review our own thoughts, and thoroughly examine and see what these appearances in us really are? In the context of epistemology, introspection is similar to reason. Self-knowledge (self-reflection) is also understood as self-understanding. In this form it is symbolized in the heading of the ancient Greek Temple of Apollo: Gnothi seauton, or know thyself (ibid.).

    4. Culture

    4.1. The word culture is commonly used to mean three basic things:

    •   excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities;

    •   an integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behaviour;

    •   the set of shared attitudes, values, goals and practices by a specific group of people.

    4.2. Some cultures hold a certain belief but, at the same time, are devoid of the humanities and certain knowledge. The Western world considers the Islamic world to be a poor culture because it discriminates against women and adheres to barbaric customs dating from medieval times.

    4.3. The basis of modern Western culture is the Justinian Code, which comprises the principles of civil rights: equality before the law, equality of women, procedural justice, and democracy. These things make up the ideal form of society. During the Dark Ages, after the fall of the Roman Empire, a good deal of Greco-Roman art and European literature, science, and even technology was lost. Gradually, beginning with the reign of Charlemagne (who had a passion for Justinian law) in 800, law and order was rekindled in Western Europe—and Christianity spread. But it was really the fall of the Byzantine Empire that caused a mass exodus of Greek Christian priests and scholars to Italian towns like Venice. They took with them as many scripts from the Byzantine archives as they could. Scholars’ interest in classical Greek and Roman works revived the humanities. Both Greek and Arabic influences led to the beginning of the Renaissance, which was later followed by the Enlightenment.

    5. Philosophy

    5.1. Philosophy is the love of wisdom. It is the rational and critical study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as being (existence), knowledge, values, reason, the mind, and language. Although philosophy has much in common with religion—as both are a way of life—it differs from religion in that it is enquiry based on reason and in search of the truth.

    5.2. Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that investigates principles of reality transcending those of any particular science. It is mainly concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being (this practice is called ontology). Before the development of modern science, people addressed scientific questions under the aegis of metaphysics, which was also known as natural philosophy. The term science itself meant knowledge of epistemological origin. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, natural philosophy had become an empirical and experimental activity distinguished from philosophical enquiry, which sought the non-empirical character of being. As science advances and we learn more about the Earth, the universe, and our being, the role of philosophy is diminished in society.

    5.3. Since the introduction of positivism, we now have a scientific approach to philosophy, one that is sceptical of theology and metaphysics. Metaphysics is not wrong, but it has become meaningless. David Hume (cf. 5.5, infra) repudiated all metaphysics on the basis that it indulges in speculation. When Hume’s friend James Boswell visited him before his death in 1776, he confided in him that he considered life after death to be a most unreasonable fancy. During his lifetime, Hume was very cautious in how he expressed his views regarding religion so that he would not be accused of blasphemy and be declared a heretic.

    5.4. All great minds of the past—Thales, Aristotle, Plato, Plotinus, Augustine, Averroes, Avicenna, et al.—were hampered by the lack of scientific knowledge. Now, scientists such as Max Planck consider that philosophy is dead (cf. 10.13, infra). The great philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein came to a similar conclusion (cf. 5.8, infra).

    At the beginning of the tradition of Western philosophy, the human being was defined as animal rationale, or the animal endowed with reason. Since then, reason has become an absolute value which—if people are educated in the Western tradition—brings a gradual transformation to all spheres of human life. The more the intellect of humankind increases, the more that humankind’s credulity decreases. The poet and philosopher Lucretius (c. 94 BCE-c. 55 BCE) assured people’s peace of mind by showing them that a fear of gods and the fear of death were without any foundation. With his book De Rerum Natura, Lucretius became the founder of atomism.

    5.5. Ethics is a branch of philosophy that deals with right and wrong human behaviour. On the matter of evil, which is an important component of both ethics and religion, David Hume (1711-1776; the most important philosopher ever to write in the English language), who is credited as the first to expound the problem of evil, cited Epicurus (341-270 BCE; the ancient Greek philosopher who taught that humankind should attain a happy and tranquil life and that the gods do not reward or punish humans in his book Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Hume stated the argument about evil as a series of questions:

    •   Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is impotent.

    •   Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

    •   Is he both able and willing? Whence, then, cometh evil?

    •   Can he not nor want to, why do we call him God?(68)

    Hume is attacked bij the Church because he denies that inductive reasoning holds logical susceptibility.

    5.6. Ethics were invented by human beings because living in a community demands rules. Ethics are necessarily compulsory in a civilization in order to harmonize living. Some religions have,

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