Martin Wagner from The Atheist Experience Blog takes on the argument that God is unknowable therefore his existance can not be proven scientifically.
This is an argument that I get every now and then myself. And, boy howdy, do I have a problem with it. When I was a practicing fundamentalist, I would have argued against that point. I believed that God was knowable because I thought that I had a real relationship with him. Funny thing is that a few of the people who argued that way, would also say that they have a relationship with God. So, how do you have a father and son type relationship with something you can never know. Makes no sense to me.
A being that can never be known may as well be non-existent. I would advise my christian friends and family to never argue that God is something that looks a lot like non-existence. Such as being outside of time and space or not of the universe. Besides, from what I know of fundamentalists, most of them would say that God is real and that it can be proven. So, a fundie using this argument makes very little sense and it looks like a very desperate move from my point of view.
I agree with Martin. This is pretty much the most desperate form any apologetics can take.
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3 comments:
I've always taken the "God is unknowable" argument as meaning he is unknowable in the sense that he can not be measured, tested or proved by any scientific means we posses, not that he is incapable of making contact in other ways (personal relationship).
However, I've always felt this is a cop-out. It seems too much like a white-wash argument to just counter ANY sort of explanation people try to come up with.
"I've always taken the "God is unknowable" argument as meaning he is unknowable in the sense that he can not be measured, tested or proved by any scientific means we posses, not that he is incapable of making contact in other ways (personal relationship)."
I see it as the same thing. The human brain is a physical thing. For a being to interact with the brain on a "personal" level is a physical effect. As such it should be measurable (in theory). We have things that can measure effects in the brain, right? So, why not?
"The human brain is a physical thing. For a being to interact with the brain on a "personal" level is a physical effect. As such it should be measurable (in theory). We have things that can measure effects in the brain, right? So, why not?"
Well, I think this would go back into the idea of if one can actually measure something that's spiritual. Probably the same reasoning behind why no one has actually recorded evidence of a ghost, etc. So say that were the case, and we can't indeed measure something spiritual on this plane, then if we watch the brain, we'd only see the effects on the brain itself, not the source of effect.....heh...how did I become devil's advocate?
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