Argument.
This argument can be formulated as follows:
P1. There have been thousands of proposed Gods throughout human history
P2. Most of these proposed Gods are now believed to not exist
C. Therefore it is probable that any remaining proposed Gods in the future will also be believed not to exist
Response.
The inductive connection here is extremely weak. The argument assumes that all proposed gods are equally likely and belong to the same evidential category. But this is precisely the point in dispute. A far more reasonable explanation for why most proposed gods have been abandoned is simply that they were false—and this says nothing at all about the truth or falsity of an unrelated God-concept.
Moreover, many historical gods were proposed in contexts with far less scientific, philosophical, and historical understanding. It is not irrational to think that concepts of God which persist despite advanced knowledge are more promising candidates than those that disappeared as knowledge progressed.
For this reason, the argument is not really an argument against theism but an argument against certain specific conceptions of God. As Bob Seidensticker has noted:
In just the same way pointing out that mankind has believed in thousands of other gods and worshipped in other ways may be a decent argument against my own conception of God, but it is a terrible argument to try and make me believe that there are no gods at all. Indeed it only strengthens my faith in the supernatural1
To see why the historical inductive argument is weak, notice that it would only be strong if the following were true:
- Our understanding of the world has remained fairly constant over time.
- Each proposed God was equally probable.
But neither of these conditions holds. Human understanding has expanded dramatically, and the probability of each God’s existence is not uniform. Therefore, the argument does not provide a convincing case against the existence of God.are not the case, the argument is not very convincing.
Notes
- Bob Seidensticker. I Just Believe In One Less God Than You Do – An Atheist Fallacy ↩︎