The Assumptions about God and Creation, of Both Theists and Atheists

The Universe exists. Theists, who believe in God(s), and atheists, who do not believe that god(s) exist, both have some similar assumptions about how the universe comes to exist. Theists make many additional assumptions about the force that causes the Universe to exist, all of them centered around the belief that the first cause is 'god'. Whether this force is God or not is unprovable, hence why we say that theism is based on faith. Theistic assumptions also include attributes about God: That it is all-powerful, emotional, benevolent, that it wants to be worshipped and is omniscient, along with other particular assumptions of various religions. This page highlights those assumptions and reminds us that the existence of God does not mean that we can arbitrarily make these extra assumptions about God. In comparison, atheists make fewer assumptions about reality so their position is more likely to be correct.₁

1. The Similar First-Cause Assumptions of Theists and Atheists
2. Additional Theistic Assumptions
   1. Introduction: Faith and Religion
   2. God is Not Necessarily Omnipotent (All-Powerful)
   3. God Does Not Necessarily Feel Emotions (Especially Human Emotions)
   4. God is Not Necessarily Benevolent (Good)
   5. Worship is Not Necessarily Meaningful to God
   6. The Existence of God Does Not Explain Existence
   7. God is Not Necessarily Omniscient (All-Knowing)
   8. Spirits, Angels, Demons
3. Proving the Existence of God Would Not Support Any Particular Religion
4. Conclusions

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1. The Similar First-Cause Assumptions of Theists and Atheists

	Theistic	Atheistic	The Underlying Shared Premise
1a.	God requires no cause or	Universe requires no cause or	Something can exist that requires no cause and / or
1b.	God is infinite or	Universe is infinite [nc] or	Something can exist for infinity
1c.	God was not created	Universe was not created	Something can exist that was never created
2.	Logic exists because of God	Logic exists as part of the Universe	Logic exists
3.	God is conscious	Universe is conscious [nc]	An omnipresent entity is conscious, not mechanical
4.	God is omniscient	Universe is omniscient	Properties of energy/particles exist: their aggregate forms physical reality

[nc]: No Consensus, but there are theories that postulate that this is true.

The atheists' premises about the Universe are very similar to the theists' about God. It seems that one or more of 1a, 1b or 1c must be true. The scientist could even believe in an all-present conscious being that is the universe. I will therefore call this being the godhead.

Omniscience
The godhead as a repository for all existing information would be considered omniscient. The godhead would inherently observe, perceive and note the existence and properties of all existing objects. The godhead would be all-observing, seeing everywhere at once, due to its nature as the be-all of existence. This would be true whether or not we considered the godhead conscious or not, and whether or not we grant the godhead free will.

Whether or not I can use the word "omniscient" to describe a non-conscious being is a valid concern... I use the term anyway as the unconscious universe, as the container of all that is to be known is encapsulating of all knowledge and "omniscient" is as good a term to use as any and aids in comparing theistic and nontheistic premises about existence.

2. Additional Theistic Assumptions

2.1. Introduction: Faith and Religion

Although atheism and theism share many of the basic assumptions about the cause of reality, theists make, on the basis of 'faith', many further assumptions. When these assumptions become codified and traditionalized, they form religions. This website is primarily about monotheistic religions, so I will not be mentioning the complexities of polytheism, henotheism, pantheism, etc.

1. Godhead is concerned with Human Beings' welfare.
2. Godhead is benevolent.
3. Godhead has created Heaven.
4. That there is cosmic justice.
5. Godhead has free will.
6. We can communicate with the godhead.

These assumptions turn the predictable godhead into the theistic 'God' or 'Allah'. If a theist is to prove the existence of the traditional monotheistic God, they must give evidence or feasible arguments to back up these assumptions. These things are the extra steps of faith that a theist has, the extra assumptions that they have that an atheist doesn't.

2.2. God is Not Necessarily Omnipotent (All-Powerful)

Any powerful, unearthly, being could appear to us to be omnipotent. It could trick minds, perform tricks, even cause floods and inspire books to be written, but, we would have no way of knowing if it was truly all-powerful or merely very powerful. Arthur C Clarke famously wrote 'Any technology, sufficiently advanced, will seem like magic' and likewise, any particularly powerful being can seem as God to us. Assuming that God is all-powerful is not a logical part of belief in God.

More interestingly, it seems that God itself is constrained by the laws of logic and rationality. God can't break logical rules by making a square circle, or by making an object that it can't destroy₂. The strength of these logical rules imply that nothing can be omnipotent, and therefore that any God(s) are merely very powerful. Also, God itself has to think in a logical manner in order to do any creating, so, God cannot itself have created logic. The fact that the laws of logic seem constraining led me to conclude that logic itself cannot have been created by God.

It seems that the only way to avoid contradictions is if omnipotency is impossible.

Related page:

• "Pascal's Wager is Safer in Reverse: Picking a Religion is Dangerous" by Vexen Crabtree (2010): Important questions about us mistaking powerful beings for God.

2.3. God Does Not Necessarily Feel Emotions (Especially Human Emotions)

If God exists, it doesn't mean it knows the same emotions that we do. Our emotions are a result of our brain chemistry and hormones (we know this because if we alter these chemicals, our emotions alter accordingly). God does not have the same bodies that we do. To state that God feels emotions (loneliness, anger, pride, hatred, love, doubt) is a ridiculous assumption on our behalf and merely shows our immaturity as a species to conceive of intelligent beings that are not like us! Personification of our emotions on to God is compelling for us to do, but we have no way to defend our assumptions that God feels any emotions that we can understand.

God could be an unconscious being without free will or any concept of morality.

Related page:

• "God Has No Free Will: 2 Proofs" by Vexen Crabtree (2001)

2.4. God is Not Necessarily Benevolent (Good)

If God exists, it could be neutral or have a morality completely different to our own. Stating that it is "good" from our point of view is a matter of assumption, defining God as "good" is something we cannot extrapolate simply from the belief that God exists.

Related pages:

• "The Problem of Evil: Why Would a Good God Create Suffering?: Argument from the Existence of Suffering that God is not Good" by Vexen Crabtree (2002).
• "God and Goodness: Can a Perfectly Good God Exist? Is God Love?: 'God is Good' is an Incoherent Statement" by Vexen Crabtree (1999)

2.5. Worship is Not Necessarily Meaningful to God

We do not know if worship is meaningful to anything else but ourselves. If God is omniscient, it knows all the respect we have for it and worship itself doesn't show God anything it didn't already know. Just because God exists doesn't mean that it wants worship. Why would an omnipotent being want to be worshipped? There is no good answer to this question: worship is a function of dogma and tradition. If we conclude that worship can make people feel happy then it's probably more honest for us to consider worship a form of meditation.

2.6. The Existence of God Does Not Explain Existence

“It is not enough to say that "God exists" as the explanation as to why the Universe exists. If a God created the Universe, then, why did it do so? God must have had thoughts - a creative impulse - to create the space-time continuum. Therefore it is the properties and thoughts of God that explain the Universe, not the mere fact that God exists. God could easily exist for all of its eternity, existing in perfection in a perfect world, without creating the Universe. So saying that God explains the existence of the Universe is not the whole story.

Unfortunately there have been no comprehensive or compelling arguments as to why God created the Universe. This is a problem that effects not only monotheistic religions like Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but also other religions such as Buddhism: Sages from all these religions have tried to explained why existence is the way it is, complete with suffering and death, but none have given a straight answer as to why any of it needed to exist at all.”

"The Universe Could Not Have Been Created by God" by Vexen Crabtree (2010)

Even if God exists we do not know why the Universe was created - yet many assume that simply by saying "God exists" you have explained why the Universe exists. This is not so!

2.7. God is Not Necessarily Omniscient (All-Knowing)

To be all-knowing is impossible because no being can know if it knows everything: Therefore no being knows everything. It is probably true that if you are all-knowing you have to be omnipotent, and if you are omnipotent you can attain omniscience with ease. The two properties appear to imply each other, so proof of only one of them is required. But, as all-knowing appears to be self-contradictory it is likely that omnipotent is also impossible.

"Open theology" is Christian belief that holds that God is not actually all-knowing. It is evident that the assumption that God is all-knowing is not universal, and is an unproven assertion by theists that believe it.

2.8. Spirits, Angels, Demons

The mere existence of God doesn't provide us with proof of anything else. We can't base the assumption that there are bad and good spirits on the fact that God exists, because the two are different topics entirely. Likewise, proving that ghosts or angels exist does not prove that God exists. Also, there could be a spiritual world, but that this itself does not require the existence of a particular god; if there are physical processes that lead to the survival of spirits without bodies then so be it, but it is an assumption to state that a spirit world implies the existence of God, or vica-versa.

3. Proving the Existence of God Would Not Support Any Particular Religion

If science found evidence for God, or philosophers came up with a logical argument that God exists, then we will still not know which religion, holy text, prophet or set of beliefs were correct. Most religions' beliefs contradict one another, so we know that most of them are wrong.

We can't conclude that the most popular religion is most likely to be correct. At various times in history various beliefs have been most-popular. For example, most people believed the world was flat. Doesn't mean it was! In the future, Islam will be the most popular religion. It doesn't mean, however, that it becomes the true religion. Popularity is not a measure of truth.

Related page:

• "Pascal's Wager is Safer in Reverse: Picking a Religion is Dangerous" by Vexen Crabtree (2010) warns about the dangers of picking a religion.

4. Conclusions

If evidence was found that implied the existence of god, or, a logical argument concocted that irrefutably posited the existence of god, then it is the job of the theist to prove the additional assumptions about God: That God is good, loving, conscious, all-knowing and all-powerful, amongst others. They also must prove that God should be worshipped. They would still need to prove that Heaven and Hell exist, and that other aspects of their faith are true. Also, the mere existence of God would not help us decide which religion was true. So do not accept the simplistic assumption that just because someone says they can prove God exists, it also means they can prove anything about God!