Jeune Street

Peterborough, Ontario

The most often-repeated argument made by the new atheists is that religion's claim about God has such far-reaching consequences that it should be a falsifiable proposition. They want to apply the rules of natural science to metaphysics. In other words, there should be a test to tell if God exists or not. In the absence of a test, we should reserve judgment.

While this might seem to be reasonable, it's patently absurd when one considers how many other concepts and theories we hold to be true that haven't been subject to the same critique. In the social science, it is axiomatic that the standards of natural science don't apply to social phenomena because causality is too messy. There are too many factors interacting in too many different forms to create the same reliable models of reality that are so successful in the natural sciences. As a result, we often resort to the use of abstract concepts to describe social reality. We acknowledge their limits, but use them nevertheless because they help us to understand our world better -- if only incompletely.

Take economics, for example. Of all the social sciences it applies the most tools and rules from the natural sciences. And yet many of its basic concepts and models are abstract metaphors and messy concoctions that are used because they describe something that exists, but which we have no other language for. Consider the concept of market equilibrium, for example. No one has ever seen a market where prices clear perfectly. But the model itself and the idea of the market and the price mechanism are crucial to the discourse of economics, which helps us to understand whole systems of production and exchange. I can't imagine anyone arguing that 'the market' doesn't exist because it's a mere abstraction. It is an abstraction, and it exists. It has also proved to be a reliable basis on which to organize social life in a way that increases prosperity.

Much the same could be said about God. The nature of God is a mystery. But the concept of God is so widespread and consistent in what it describes as to make it an elemental part of our human apprehension of the world. While what we ascribe to the powers of God may change over time -- just as we now recognize the political and institutional foundations of markets -- that doesn't in any undermine the reality of God. God is a universal concept, as are the practices associated with worship: prayer, fasting, the acquisition of noble qualities, the leading of an ethical life. A belief in God has provided a consistent and reliable foundation upon which to organize social life -- it's brought us this far in social evolution.

There are lots of gaps in my reasoning, and I'm not intending to 'prove' the existence God. These brief thoughts are simply meant to highlight the sophistry of one of the new atheists arguments.