After I wrote my last post, I copied and pasted it to my own blog as an introduction to other readers of what I would be writing about over here. Shortly after posting it, a religious friend of mine responded on the comment board with a number of refutations of my argument. All of the refutations either made no sense or relied on misinterpretations of what I was trying to say. Although it’s hardly necessary, you can view them all here. Normally, I wouldn’t have mentioned anything here at Lintbox, but some of his arguments were so hilarious in their lack of understanding that I felt it would be quite amusing to show them here.

First, I said:

Events within [the] scriptures seem to break the laws of nature that we have learned through personal experience and empirical research, thus, they probably didn’t happen. Likewise, the insistence of scripture (whether it be Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, etc.) that there is a God is also probably inaccurate, as there is no accountability of its accuracy

He said:

Jane has a psychological illness as yet unheard of, which causes her to lie compulsively. Her psychiatrist believes this is a breakthrough in abnormal psychology. Of course, no one believes Jane because she seems to compulsively lie about everything. No one believes her psychiatrist because the psychiatrist has no proof of the existence of this illness. Does Jane have an illness?

Well, first of all, no person is omniscient and thus no man can see inside the mind of Jane. We must look at this problem from the point of view of an objective outsider. If I saw this situation, I would have no grounds to assume that Jane had a psychological condition and I would think the psychiatrist to be a bad doctor because he is making assumptions without evidence, which is something a good doctor wouldn’t do. It’s possible that Jane has an illness, just as it is possible that God exists, but we must not assume such a thing until we have sufficient evidence to form a suitable empirical hypothesis because there is a greater chance that Jane is just a liar.

Secondly, I said:

To me, this seems as though people intentionally delude themselves [into believing in God] in order to be happy, which is wrong. They are like Don Quixote, who convinced himself he was a knight errant and achieved some sort of satisfaction and contentment out of it, but in reality, he was just a madman.

He said:

This is quite frankly, a corruptible argument. Why is it wrong to believe in something that makes you happy? That would be like saying it’s foolish to eat lasagna simply because you like it, or it’s foolish to watch a movie simply because of the aesthetic pleasure it gives you. You’ll have to stop watching porn if this argument is true.

I happen to like lasagna. In fact, I think lasagna is fucking delicious. I will continue to eat lasagna because I subjectively know that it is fucking delicious. But I am not deluding myself into liking lasagna as people are deluding themselves into believing in God; I truly enjoy my lasagna. Now, if I had never seen, heard, smelled, touched or tasted lasagna, but my mother told me it was delicious, and an old book told me it was delicious, and so I believed it was delicious for these reasons, then I would be wrong in my beliefs. If I derived pleasure out of objectively believing that lasagna was delicious despite my never having experienced lasagna in any way, then I would be deluding myself, and that would be wrong. Thus, I can continue to watch porn with no crisis of conscience.

Thirdly, I said:

Remember that there is no evidence of a transcendent God. Thus, although a transcendent God is possible, there is still no reason to believe in it; just like there is no reason to believe in a sasquatch.

He said:

There is also no reason to believe that gravity exists. Simply because we stand firmly on the ground or because things fall towards the ground, is not sufficient evidence of the existence of gravity. Hume himself will state this is a valid argument and makes it himself when he says that simply because the sun rises everyday, we cannot assume that it will tomorrow. Any disciple of Hume will accept this as true then. And so, since we have no sufficient proof of the existence of gravity, it’s unreasonable to believe in it.

I believe in this argument, my friend was being sarcastic and trying to use my own logic against me in order to throw my arguments into the realm of nihilism. But he makes the mistake of assuming that Hume wouldn’t use experience as a tool for learning. Just because an empirical hypotheses can never be absolutely proven doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t believe in it, as Hume himself said “Be a philosopher, but amidst your philosophy, be a man”. There is sufficient empirical evidence to believe in gravity, but there is not sufficient evidence to believe in God. In short, I experience gravity, I don’t experience God, therefore, gravity exists, and God doesn’t.

Alan is a contributing editor to Lintbox.  For more from Alan, click here.