The Superiority of Empiricism is Not “Begging the Question”

I've become aware of a blog that doesn't like my open challenge and considers my conditions to be an example of question begging. The author writes,

See Alan Roebuck's "No Evidence for God?" in Intellectual Conservative for a useful treatment of the tendency of atheists to beg the question against theism by simply assuming, without basis, something like naturalism, materialism, or positivism to be true -- in other words, assuming the natural/material/empirically observable world is all there is.

While you're at it, check out one atheist's near-perfect instantiation of this tendency when he challenges theists to debate him... on a few conditions:

* By "knowledge and facts" I mean factual, scientific proof. No personal opinions, appeals to revelation, quoting the bible, no arguments purely from quoting an authority without actual evidence, personal/second-hand stories that cannot be confirmed, and no "philosophical bullshit.” **

** By "philosophical bullshit" I am referring to the fact that philosophy is not the most reliable method of getting at the truth. The sciences and empiricism are the most reliable methods of getting at the truth, not simple thought experiments, or philosophizing.

Of course, whether or not science is the fullest description of reality is precisely what is at issue here; taking it off the table simply begs the question against theism. And the claim that science alone is the basis of all knowledge is at once a philosophical assertion and a nonscientific one (as all epistemological claims necessarily are) -- and thus is simply self-refuting.

I made the above exceptions because each of the categories I excluded are some of the least reliable forms of evidence and argument one can encounter. Opinions are obviously pointless in debate if there are no relevant facts that support an opinion. Appeals to revelation are also excluded for the simple reason that not a single example of actual revelation has ever been confirmed and goes against all of the evidence we have about the world. Citing the bible is itself an example of circular reasoning.

The simple fact is that empiricism is the most reliable method that has so far been devised to investigate the world around us. It is the method that has gained the most successful results. A person can sit in an arm chair all day long and hypothesize all they want and it won't necessarily get them any closer to the truth. Ideas must be tested against all of the facts we know about the world.

This rejection of the supernatural is not in any way, shape, or form an a priori assumption. This view is held simply because there is not a shred of evidence for anything supernatural. Thus far, all claims to the contrary have not held up to scrutiny. I did not lay this out in the challenge because I had assumed those who would accept the challenge would have... oh you know, actually read my blog because I've covered this issue several times.

Many theists whine like little school girls when atheists reject their supernatural claims because they know they cannot stand up to investigation. They have no facts to hold up and say, “Look here. This is true because of these facts.” No theist can do this because there are no facts that are have been confirmed to be legitimate. To quote Donald R. Prothero,

[T]here have been many scientific tests of supernatural and paranormal explanations of things, including parapsychology, ESP, divination, prophesy, and astrology. All of these nonscientific ideas have been falsified when subjected to the scrutiny of scientific investigation (see Isaak 2006; also 2002 for a review). [Philip] Johnson loudly complains that the supernatural has been unfairly excluded from the debate, but this is clearly not true. Every time the supernatural has been investigated by scientific methods, it has failed the test. [1]

This is as far from a form of a priori argumentation that you can get. Once a psychic wins the lottery, once Christians actually get their prayers answered, or an amputee's leg grows back, then we can talk. Until then, theists need to stop with this incessant whining because it just makes them look pathetic. Provide evidence of this immaterial realm and demonstrate how a non-empirical method out performs the empiricism of science by providing results and information about the world we didn't already know with their (horribly low) standards and then we can talk. Until then, just shut up.




1. Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters, by Donald R. Prothero, Columbia University Press, 2007; 11