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Knowledge

What do we know? And how do we know it? This question has been debated by philosophers for many years, and many arguments can be traced back to the times of Plato and Socrates. The study of acquisition of knowledge is known as Epistemology, and you will quite often find many atheists and theists alike use concepts from epistemology to justify their position.

In order to better use and understand these arguments, we must first examine what it is that epistemology is, and how it relates to theological arguments.

Types of Knowledge

Psychologists will frequently distinguish between knowing facts (”knowing that”) and knowing procedures (”knowing how”). These two types of knowledge are referred to as declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge, respectively. Examples of these types of knoledge can be summed up as follows: people “know that” the sky is blue, but can “know how” to ride a bike. Epistemology concerns itself with the first type of knowledge - declarative.

What is Truth?

While this may seem like an absurd question, it is important to epistemologists to define what we’re talking about when we say that “reality contains truth” (or as The X-Files popularized the phrase, “The Truth Is Out There”). There is an implicit assumption with this line of reasoning that there actually is a reality in existence, and it does contain truths. This assumes that reality is not artificial, such as it is popularized in the movie “The Matrix”. (Such a view of the world is referred to as epistemological solipsism).

In order for something to be considered “knowledge”, it must be “true.” The example given in Wikipedia goes as follows:

Suppose that Jeff thinks that a particular bridge is safe, and attempts to cross it; unfortunately, the bridge collapses under his weight. We might say that Jeff believed that the bridge was safe, but that his belief was mistaken. We would not (accurately) say that he knew that the bridge was safe, because plainly it was not. For something to count as knowledge, it must be true.

When we speak of “knowing truth,” we admit that we are referring to a non-artificial reality to which we have firmly established a property of.

What is Belief?

Belief is not an opposing system to truth. Belief is a complementary system to truth - in order for us to establish knowledge, we must believe in the truth. Typically when someone says they “know that the sky is blue”, it is assumed that they also “believe that the sky is blue.” (Although interestingly, this may not be the case when referring to a person in the third-person, which is referred to as Moore’s Paradox.)

What is Faith?

While faith and belief are typically used interchangably, this isn’t quite accurate. As explained above, belief is based on truth, which has been established from reality. Faith takes a slightly different stance: faith is belief without evidence of truth. For instance, from our example above of Jeff crossing the bridge, it is more accurate to say that Jeff had a belief that bridges in general were safe, and had faith that this particular bridge was safe. In either case, it is not the case that he knew that this bridge was safe. With absence of “knowledge” of absolute truth, we resort to using faith. “Faith” can be used in both secular and non-secular ways, as illustrated above with our bridge example.

What is a Proof?

A proof, or a “logical argument” is an attempt to demonstrate the truth of an conclusion (or “assertion”) based on a set of premises. Premises are formed from other proven conclusions, or are “truths” themselves. When formally arguing with theists, it is important to make sure that any premises are valid when making a straight-forward argument, or agreed upon by the opposing party to form a proof by contradiction (”reductio ad absurdum“). For instance, many theists will agree to a premise such as “god is omniscient, creates us, and gives out free will”, which atheists can exploit to prove a property about god that is a contradiction. (For instance something to the effect of: “god is omniscient, therefore, a priori god knows everything including the future, thus he creates us knowing what we will choose. Therefore, we can not have free will since we have been created with pre-known choices and outcomes.”)

So, how do we establish “truth” or acquire “knowledge”?

This is probably the main contention in epistemology circles. There are two schools of thought when trying to establish what “truth” (or more widely, “knowledge”) is. The two types of epistemology: epistemological methodism and epistemological particularism. Basically the two approaches differ in asking the order of the questions: “How do we know?” and “What do we know?”. Methodists will ask “How do we know” first and particularists will ask “What do we know?” first. Notably, skeptics (and consequently, atheists) will use methodism, and theists will typically report using a particularist approach.

Which is the better way? In actuality, we will use an assortment of both in our everyday lives. When dealing with issues of science, methodism is acknowledged as the “proper way” of approaching a scientific problem or theory. However, for more mundane matters of everyday life, we require less scientific rigour for instances where we just take it on faith that when somebody tells us something, they’re not lying to us.

As methodists, how do we know anything?

There are several schools of thought in answering this question - there are some people who would consider that we really know nothing, that is, we can never surpass the question “How do we know?” in the methodist order of knowledge. The idea is that in the case of any truth that is determined, we can examine it further to ask “well, how do we know THAT?” How do we know that our eyes aren’t deceiving us? How do we know that we don’t just live in an artificial reality? This line of questioning can go on ad infinitum, which is referred to as “infinitism.”

While this is possibly the most skeptical position possible, in practicality it isn’t terribly useful to assume that we can’t ultimately determine anything, thus all conversation about truth is rhetorical.

To get around this pitfall, there is another position which is used in methodism which is more reasonable which is foundationalism. Foundationalism assumes that there is a point to which we can cease asking “how do we know” and accept that it is a basic belief, or a belief that does not require further justification. For instance, if we observe an apple fall from a tree, we can assume that there really is reality, an apple, a tree, and our eyes actually saw it. That would be an instance of a “foundational justification” which leads to a “basic belief”. Many atheists will use this line of reasoning and use the acceptable limit that observable events with our senses or tools are “basic beliefs” and do not require further justification.

How should we approach knowledge of god?

In reality, it depends on which context we wish to consider god. For the god that lives outside the universe and stays outside, we can really use either way of thinking and still be epistemologically valid. This brings us back to the point that atheists can’t ultimately disprove the existence of god. However, many theists are not satisfied with a god that stays out of the universe - rather they think that god intervenes in lives, performs miracles (i.e. saves lives), and creates human beings. This is where the argument for the atheist begins.

You can see that these matters are instances of natural occurrences that are observable and testable. Furthermore, the explanation that “god did it” is essentially a competing “scientific theory,” while ignoring the usual requirement in science to use natural explanations. But as a competing scientific theory, we should approach the topic as epistemologic methodists, much like we would when considering theories in biology, chemistry, physics, or other disciplnes.

What is a “scientific theory”? Isn’t that just a guess?

“Creationists make it sound like a ‘theory’ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.” - Isaac Asimov

A scientific theory is not a guess. In science, when someone “guesses”, it is referred to as a “hypothesis”. The scientific method then uses that hypothesis to design an experiment, to make observations, then to make conclusions, which should lead to a formulation of a theory. As you can see, a theory is at the opposite end of the scientific method from a “guess”. A scientific theory is basically an explanation of facts or observations (which to a foundationalist epistemological methodist is simply direct observation). A theory is actually a higher order structure than “fact” - it is a collection (or set) of facts tied together in a digestible format. For instance, we have a scientific “Theory of Gravity” - the theory is basically a collection of every instance of observation where two bodies of mass come together with a force. It just happens that there’s a large number of observations confirming this - but in essence, it is still a theory. This is true in many disciplines in science - not just gravity theory, but evolutionary theory, atomic theory, light theory, electromagnetic theory, and many others.

The classic hallmarks of a scientific theory is that it must be:

a) Falsifiable (i.e. able to be disproven)
b) Able to make predictions about future observations

As such, you can see that if we ever encounter an observation that differs from what the theory predicts, we must revise the theory or abandon it.

So how do we address the ‘theory’ of god inside the universe?

The first problem with using god as an explanation for the origin of life, healing sick people, granting wishes to people, or protecting people from harm is that it breaks every property of a ’scientific theory’ and isn’t even conceived using valid scientific knowledge discovery techniques.

First of all, the very definition of science excludes supernatural explanations. Science is the study of naturalism and will seek to explain everything in terms of natural processes. This is the first strike against using god to explaining these processes.

Next, a theory of god does nothing for falsifiablity, nor does it make predictions (our only two requirements)! According to theists, god can’t be directly observed, so there is nothing to measure or test. Next, theists also insist that we can’t know god’s intentions or behaviours, so we can’t predict what god will do next. This is strike two.

Finally, establishing that “god did it” goes directly against our epistemological methodism that science requires. We have no observations of god, therefore we can’t get past the original question of “how do we know god did it?” There are no foundationalist “basic beliefs” we can build off of to make further arguments for god. Strike three, god’s out.

Conclusions

When people claim that they “know god”, they are using an particularist epistemological argument. While this may be a valid argument when concerned with if god exists outside the bounds of the universe - once theists try to bring god into the universe, god becomes a competing scientific theory and should be treated as such. As a scientific theory, god fails in three different ways that goes against the basic foundations of what science is. This conclusion serves to put forth a solid reason to have a lack of belief in god - particularly one that interacts with our natural universe.