The Burden of Plausibility
I've mentioned before that the burden of proof is not the only burden when it comes to discourse. Before the burden of proof come the burden of coherence and the burden of plausibility. These are critical: if a proposition can't sustain the first two, the third is never even reached! You don't demand evidence for the pseudo-proposition Treblig gainges.
Today let's focus on the burden of plausibility. We'll ignore the fact that the notion supernatural and hence God are logically absurd because they require that something exists outside existence.
The Abrahamic God story (all the way through Islam and Mormonism) simply defies belief. A very good discussion of why is to be found in Christopher Hitchens's book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Hitchens points out that if the human race is 100,000 years old (as conservatively estimated), why did the omniscient, omnipotent, all-loving God wait about 96,000 years before showing itself? (Abram, who became Abraham, was allegedly born in 2000 BCE.) That may not have been a lot of time for Yahweh, but real people endured an awful lot of suffering, which the Almighty could have abstained from inflicting. The story just makes no sense.
From that point on, it only gets worse. But even before that point, it makes no sense. Why would a perfect God create the universe? God perfect, without deficiencies. How and why would it feel the need to be adored? You and I understand the logic of human action as the selection of means to achieve ends we value ("need") because those ends supply something positive or remove something negative and thereby make our lives better. (The logic and study of human action per se was best formalized by the Austrian economist and social theorist Ludwig von Mises in the 20th century. The theorists who work in the tradition he helped establish constitute the Austrian school of economics.)
God, who is supposedly not only perfect but also eternal, could have no needs, no ends, and therefore no cause for action. Ironically, we can conclude that because the universe exists, there is no God. (I think I've ventured into logic and away from plausibility, but that's okay.)
Implausibility plagues the rest of the story. So a good and merciful God makes a deal with his first disciple: in return for his foreskin (which God designed) and obedience to all kinds of commandments, God would make his descendants a great nation and give them someone else's land (Canaan).
Then this God commanded this disciple to murder his cherished son. Come on! (Don't tell me it was just a test.) Oh, right: he's also jealous and capable of anger. But how could a perfect being be such things? This same wonderful deity then flooded the world and killed nearly every living thing. Oops! It also committed, authorized, and enabled mass murder, even genocide, and slavery. And the stoning of people for homosexuality, adultery, and idol worship. (Not a fan of religious freedom, I see.) And on and on and on. We haven't even gotten to Jesus yet!
If you want documentation of the implausibilities at the foundation of Judaism, you can do no better than to read the Hebrew Bible. If you find one thing that seems credible, leave a comment.
Face it, if you were hearing these stories for the first time, you wouldn't believe them. Does this disprove the existence of God? Let's say this: it's enough to show that Yahweh materially impossible and that therefore one ought to believe it does not exist.
Today let's focus on the burden of plausibility. We'll ignore the fact that the notion supernatural and hence God are logically absurd because they require that something exists outside existence.
The Abrahamic God story (all the way through Islam and Mormonism) simply defies belief. A very good discussion of why is to be found in Christopher Hitchens's book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Hitchens points out that if the human race is 100,000 years old (as conservatively estimated), why did the omniscient, omnipotent, all-loving God wait about 96,000 years before showing itself? (Abram, who became Abraham, was allegedly born in 2000 BCE.) That may not have been a lot of time for Yahweh, but real people endured an awful lot of suffering, which the Almighty could have abstained from inflicting. The story just makes no sense.
From that point on, it only gets worse. But even before that point, it makes no sense. Why would a perfect God create the universe? God perfect, without deficiencies. How and why would it feel the need to be adored? You and I understand the logic of human action as the selection of means to achieve ends we value ("need") because those ends supply something positive or remove something negative and thereby make our lives better. (The logic and study of human action per se was best formalized by the Austrian economist and social theorist Ludwig von Mises in the 20th century. The theorists who work in the tradition he helped establish constitute the Austrian school of economics.)
God, who is supposedly not only perfect but also eternal, could have no needs, no ends, and therefore no cause for action. Ironically, we can conclude that because the universe exists, there is no God. (I think I've ventured into logic and away from plausibility, but that's okay.)
Implausibility plagues the rest of the story. So a good and merciful God makes a deal with his first disciple: in return for his foreskin (which God designed) and obedience to all kinds of commandments, God would make his descendants a great nation and give them someone else's land (Canaan).
Then this God commanded this disciple to murder his cherished son. Come on! (Don't tell me it was just a test.) Oh, right: he's also jealous and capable of anger. But how could a perfect being be such things? This same wonderful deity then flooded the world and killed nearly every living thing. Oops! It also committed, authorized, and enabled mass murder, even genocide, and slavery. And the stoning of people for homosexuality, adultery, and idol worship. (Not a fan of religious freedom, I see.) And on and on and on. We haven't even gotten to Jesus yet!
If you want documentation of the implausibilities at the foundation of Judaism, you can do no better than to read the Hebrew Bible. If you find one thing that seems credible, leave a comment.
Face it, if you were hearing these stories for the first time, you wouldn't believe them. Does this disprove the existence of God? Let's say this: it's enough to show that Yahweh materially impossible and that therefore one ought to believe it does not exist.
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