I was invited to a semi-formal dinner by a charming and gracious coterie of students the other evening. Speeches were made, dessert was had, and the wine and the orange juice were mingled in equal measure. It’s always a pleasure to have a few hours of conversation with intelligent people. My only concerns were keeping my forks straight, and not seeming to be the crusty atheist professor of university lore. I’m not all that crusty really, so I did okay.
But one student, knowing my views, asked, “Is atheism falsifible?”
I’d been talking about falsifiability in class, you see. In order for a theory to be scientifically valid, there needs to be a way to prove it’s wrong. In class I’d used the example of last-Thursdayism: the belief that the entire universe was created last Thursday, complete with buildings, people, and everything, mostly just as it is now. And if you tell a last-Thursdayist “I think I can remember stuff that happened before last Thursday,” they’ll say, “Those are false memories that were created in your mind at the same time as everything else.” There’s no evidence you can present that would disprove their theory. And theists often say “You can’t prove God exists, but you can’t disprove it either,” as though this was a strength. In fact, this non-falsifiability is reason enough to throw it out. If a theory isn’t falsifiable, it isn’t helpful.
So, is atheism falsifiable? My first response was “Atheism makes no claims, it merely asserts that the claims of theists are baseless.” Which is a kind of claim, so I wasn’t entirely happy about that answer.
When I thought about it for a few more seconds, I realised that there are many things that would conceivably falsify atheism:
- God, angels, or supernatural beings could appear and allow themselves to be examined.
- There could be a study that shows that some goddy practice leads to some effect, in such a way that only supernatural forces could be at work. Many such studies have been tried (for example, the healing power of prayer), but so far nothing has worked reproducibly.
- Evidence of something having been created.
- Any kind of reproducible phenomenon that could only be explained by resorting to some kind of supernatural force.
So far, such evidence has not been forthcoming, and I’m not holding my breath. That’s why I provisionally accept the atheist point of view. If such evidence comes to light, I’ll examine it, and change my view.
However, if this evidence were to appear, it wouldn’t necessarily drive me back to church. I’d still have the question of which religion to use. There are millions, and believers have no consensus about which one is correct because there’s no data to appeal to. Just another problem for a non-empirical theory.
5 September 2007 at 11:28 pm
Thanks Daniel – I’m embarrassed to say that I never really understood the falsifiability thing before but now I do!
11 September 2007 at 8:41 pm
I’m no gun on why god doesn’t exist…but i’m sure i could be if i understood any of this crazy mathsy stuff:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=myfZ8hmmApE
by my calculations…a nice man in the sky wouldn’t allow such gibberish to exist.
also by my calculations, if you type 8008 into a calculator it says boob.
1 April 2012 at 8:23 pm
Even those wouldn't convince a truly consistent naturalist. To wit:
1. Sufficiently advanced aliens. 'Nuff said.
2. Couldn't this be read as "God of the gaps"? I can't think of any physical phenomenon that would require supernatural forces, that would exclude the possibility of some deeper physical law. For example, given the conclusions of Quantum Mechanics or Relativity, most Enlightenment-era freethinkers would probably throw their hands up and conclude that God's Ways Are Mysterious. How else could reality so deeply violate sacred Newtonian laws?
Of course, we know that they're culturally blinkered. But what's to say that we aren't similarly blinkered?
3. How would you exclude the possibility that some deeper physical force is at work? Even if something were to suddenly appear ex nihilo, and we could exclude all other hypotheses, why would this imply the existence of a personal God?
4. If it's a reproducible physical phenomenon, isn't it a natural law by definition?
Even if the Christian God Himself were to appear in all His ineffable glory on the Temple Mount at Jerusalem, there's no way to exclude the possibility of a mass delusion, or that He's just an alien dicking around. In fact, a naturalist would have to arrive at that conclusion, if she were completely consistent with her epistemology.
There's no falsifying naturalist atheism using empirical evidence. It validates and invalidates empirical perceptions as evidence, as "knowledge." It doesn't speak to metaphysics. It's up to us to choose our metaphysics in line with our intellectual aesthetics and our physical needs. And for that, unfortunately, empirical evidence has very little to say.
1 April 2012 at 11:30 pm
Yes — this is all correct. I wrote this post before the Myers earthquake, where he said that no evidence would be sufficient for him to believe.
I agree with his view — you had me at aliens — but for a while, I was uncomfortable with these implications. Like, if atheism isn't falsifiable, is it therefore unscientific?
Myers' answer: It's theism that is unscientific and badly framed, so we shouldn't be in trouble for refusing to accept it, or for accepting the contrary proposition.
And my answer: If there is a god, then it already knows what evidence it's going to take to convince me, and it isn't providing it.