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Two Ways to Prove Atheism
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/quentin_smith/atheism.html
Two Ways to Prove Atheism (1996)
Quentin Smith
[This speech was delivered before the Atheist Alliance convention in Minneapolis, MN on April 6, 1996.]
Today I will discuss two ways to prove atheism: that scientific cosmology can prove atheism and that the existence of gratuitous evil proves atheism. I'll begin with scientific cosmology.
Scientific Cosmology
Since the mid-1960s, scientifically-informed theists have been ecstatic because of Big bang cosmology. Theists believe the best scientific evidence that God exists is the evidence that the universe began to exist in an explosion about fifteen billion years ago. It began in an explosion called the Big Bang. Theists think it obvious that the universe could not have begun to exist uncaused. They argue that the most reasonable hypothesis is that the cause of the universe is God. This theory hinges on the assumption that it is obviously true that whatever begins to exist has a cause. The most recent statement of this theist theory is in William Lane Craig's 1994 book Reasonable Faith [1]. Now there is a very interesting quote from this book which I will read to you at length because, at the end of this quote, Craig mentions me as one of the perverse atheists who deny the obviousness of the theistic principle. So let me quote to you how Craig states his argument [2]:
The argument may be formulated in three simple steps:
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
He goes on:
The first step is so intuitively obvious that I think scarcely anyone could sincerely believe it to be false. I therefore think it somewhat unwise to argue in favor of it, for any proof of the principle is likely to be less obvious than the principle itself. And as Aristotle remarked, one ought not to try to prove the obvious via the less obvious. The old axiom that "out of nothing, nothing comes" remains as obvious today as ever. When I first wrote The Kalam Cosmological Argument, I remarked that I found it an attractive feature of this argument that it allows the atheist as a way of escape: he can always deny the first premiss and assert the universe sprang into existence uncaused out of nothing. I figured that few would take this option, since I believed they would thereby expose themselves as persons interested only in academic refutation of the argument and not in really discovering the truth about the universe. To my surprise, however, atheists seem to be increasingly taking this route. For example, Quentin Smith, commenting that philosophers are too often adversely affected by Heidegger's dread of "the nothing," concludes that "the most reasonable belief is that we came from nothing, by nothing, and for nothing" -- a nice ending to a sort of Gettysburg address of atheism, perhaps. [3]
I'm going to criticize this argument from scientific cosmology which is the most popular argument that scientifically-informed theists and philosophers are now using to argue that God exists.
Let's consider the premiss of the argument. The premiss is that whatever has a beginning to its existence must have a cause. What reason is there to believe this causal principle is true? It's not self-evident; something is self-evident if and only if everyone who understands it automatically believes it. But many people, including leading theists such as Richard Swinburne, understand this principle very well but think it's false. Many philosophers, scientists, and indeed the majority of graduate and undergraduate students I've had in my classes think this principle is false. This principle is not self-evident, nor can this principle be deduced from any self-evident proposition. Therefore there's no reason to think it's true. It is either false or it has the status of a statement we do not know if it's true or false. At the very .. Presley is now swiveling his hips on the moon.
Conclusion
So, in conclusion, I would say that science does actually disprove God's existence. And secondly, the ordinary inductive logic we use in everyday life, when applied to all the evils we see, that in itself disproves God's existence. So I think there really is no case at all for theism and a compelling case for atheism.
Notes
[1] William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1994).
[2] Ibid., p. 92.
[3] Ibid.
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