Way of the Mind

This FAQ answer doesn’t address the correctness of the consequences (e.g. whether life is pointless without God or not, etc.). You can find answers to some of those in the rest of my Atheism FAQ — or will be able to in the future.

Instead, the purpose of this entry is to show you how the very premise is based on faulty logic, and and is therefore an absolutely invalid argument.

In a nutshell, the statement says the following: if there is no God, <something bad> is true. Therefore, there must be a God.

What’s so wrong with it? Just this: even if the consequences were correct, that is, the result of “no God” was indeed bad, that has no bearing on the truth value of the premise. In other words, the desirability of a possibility has no effect on whether that possibility is true or not. It either is, or is not; its consequences don’t matter here.

Even if it were absolutely 100% true that “no God” meant “life is pointless”, that would have zero effect on the truth of whether God existed or not.

The error of believing something to be true just because “otherwise it would be bad” is a logical fallacy called appeal to consequences, a common example of wishful thinking. Your beliefs should be shaped by honestly attempting to perceive reality to the best of your abilities — not by believing in what you wish was true, in what makes you comfortable.

Again, note that I am not agreeing with the consequences in this FAQ entry’s title at all. Life isn’t pointless without gods, there is a basis for morality, and so on. But even if those consequences were all completely and undeniably true (like some others indeed are, such as “we’re evolved animals, not specially designed” or “there is no life after death”), it would have no bearing at all on the question of the existence of God.

(Note: please keep any comments related to the above question / answer, and not to other subjects, such as whether God exists or not. Thanks.)

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Related posts:

1. Natural Selection and Eugenics, part 2
2. Coming next: a short atheism FAQ
3. Bligbi: "If it wasn’t for Hell, I’d kill you but that doesn’t make me a bad person"
4. FAQ: Atheism is just another religion!
5. Stupidity and consequences