Horatio, a recent visitor to my blog raised the question of the Many Creeds argument. I’ve written a number of discarded treatments of that argument, I like this one.

Let’s let Horatio kick it off:

“How do you know that yours is the true system, and not Islam/Zoroastrianism/Sikkhism/Buddhism/Shinto/Judaism/blah blah blah. Oft repeated, because no believer has yet provided a sound answer.”

Now, when I leveraged a similar argument against a naturalistic worldview, he responded by calling it relativism. (See here) But I observe that not only do that many groups make claims about God, but many more make claims about an answer. Add naturalism to that list, and combine it with the naturalistic reductionism, and I think you have the argument that I was giving.

Thus when I pose questions about naturalistic philosophy, they are the doubts that I would have were I to go back to believing in nothing. In my essay Christian Skepticism, I address my pre-Christian belief that assuming less would have a definite end.

But whatever my level of doubt, I can still assume less than that. I can doubt that such a process has an end, or that it does not have the end that I saw in it. Thus assuming the least actually results in a contradiction, because I have to assume something about why I am “assuming the least”. The only thing I was doing was playing it safe, but at the cost of forever hovering in limbo.

Sextus Empiricus, the classic Greek skeptic seems to have missed this problem. He writes, confident that this discipline would relieve the mind of torment: the less you believe the less you need to strive for or against. His central premise is that anything that is known can become unknown, with additional facts. Just as the way that former theories had become unknown in the light of this one.

What Empiricus missed is that his principle could be argued away in the same manner. Thus, if he pursued the end of skepticism, he did so by investing conviction in a model in which skepticism provided a seeming end. Of course, this opens up the question of whether absolute truth is as important as relative ends.

So how do I know what investing in model x will accomplish on an absolute scale? I don’t know. Can I even see the absolute scale? What basis do I have to judge what is true on an absolute scale? More to the point, will anything that knows itself as me ever have an answer, without the witness of an absolute observer?

Wil Durant’s histories opens up with the observation about world-wide morality. He posed that if you placed in a pile everything that some society on earth approved, and subtracted everything that some society condemns, you’ll end up with an empty pile. Durant said this with a great familiarity of investigating the cultures around the world in writing his histories. But atheists are still split on whether or not there is such thing as morality. Some of them confuse the fact of norming behavior with morality. Thus they answer the question of whether there is morality or not with “Yes, humans do engage in moral behavior”.

Fine, but I think we all knew that. But, is there a good morality, regardless of what people would put or take out of that pile?

Prominent atheist Michael Martin is indignant that anyone should conclude that atheists cannot maintain an absolute morality. Despite that, atheists themselves are split on this—but which one is right?

Now, I know that should I rejoin my life as an atheist (really, an agnostic), I can chose from either brand. But somehow I’m supposed to be believe that this question of “how I know I’m absolutely right” doesn’t plague me once I step over the line. Thus the endless “creeds” of atheism, are supposed to provide no barrier to my confidence in atheism, but the existence of competing claims is supposed to halt me in my tracks on this side of the divide, apparently.

Okay, I know that I’m not supposed to say that atheism is a creed, but just the lack of a theistic one. That’s kind of like saying I have something under my chair which is not an elephant, so that kind of narrows it down for you. In fact, by focusing on what you are not doing, you are kind of missing the endlessly disputable aspect of what you all believe. Thus, one could actually argue that there are many more competing claims on the atheistic side itself.

I will grant that atheists do not disagree with each other as vehemently. But if you even posit more than is evident on any level, it seems that you have a faction that can claim that you assume more than is observable, in this case the contempt for those who believe without seeing is not scaled in standard atheistic rhetoric.

The faction that believes in neither God or independent Logic or independent Morality—none of which are seen—has a sort of emotional, social accomodation for those who at least don’t place faith in God (yet still believe in an unseen). This appears less than an intellectual rigor, as it can often be represented.

But were one such group to start castigating fellow atheists, does that require atheists who want to argue for Logic and Morality to abandon their stance simply because somebody labels them irrational? Or they are not able to produce proof that will convince the random critic that there is a case for independent Logic or Morality?

On the other hand, were I to become an atheist, nothing requires me to adopt the stance “believers are a bunch of dummies.” So, atheism being as open as it is, I do not have to put a great stake in the Many Creeds argument even were I not to believe in God. As I understand it, there are no requisite beliefs other than a lack of belief in God. Thus, am I rational if I disbelieve in God yet are not entirely convinced of the litmus test of this oft-posed challenge?

Thus, the validity of the “Many Creeds” problem, might have a Many Creeds problem itself. Isn’t it then just best to become agnostic on the value of the “Many Creeds” problem? Why should it ever have to be “answered” by a believer, unless it can be answered by the unbelievers who pose it?

I am aware of no principle that would enable me to answer that question on many other aspects, if I were to give up the semantic meaning of my life now. If I set aside all that I “know” now as false, I’m subtracting information, not adding. It is doubtful that I would be able to answer any question better. I can only cross over to this other side, if 1) life’s lessons lead me this way or 2) I make a leap of faith through the fog of my doubts. I would trust that no atheist would have me do #2. So I must wait until I see the sense of it, and not just because I am stumped by a question.

But I cannot now see any path where I can fall into any faction on the other side of the line where I would then be able to give sufficient answer to everyone on the subject of any aspect of the claims of that group.

I either need to consider Many Creeds a special case for religions only—and then I need to have a ready answer why it is so, unless it is enough simply to assert that it is. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to “sufficiently answer” why that was so despite competing claims. However I cannot now see the rationale for limiting this only to claims about

Or I need to think about it’s general applicability to anything anyone invests in that is not immediately apparent to others. I know that as I explore these questions even while a theist, I lack an answer of how far to wide to apply these principles.

But skipping over that, I also have no reason to insist on such a stepped criticism where I find theists irrational out of proportion that I consider dualists or quasi-dualists irrational whether or not they can “convince” any given person or produce evidence for the second substance. I should think that I know to a pretty good degree that brains, on average, are very capable of producing all kinds of crap rationalizations, and gods—at least I think—are only a starter.

How much of the atheist stigmatization of this particular “character flaw” is simply cultural? Torquemada is evil, but is Stalin or Mao that much better because they lack a supernatural belief? I’ve conversed with free-thinkers who’ve argued that those two were “religious” in their own way. So despite that they believed in no invisible entity but the harmony of the world-state (if they did believe in that) are they just as irrational as people who believe in God?

Well, it’s at least possible to walk though the streets of a commune in a worker’s world paradise and see how idyllic it is, but will we ever hold Logic in our hands? Why does this unseen utopia put them on par with deluded theists, but those who posit some sort of independence for Logic do not flunk the same course?

So once we’ve spread the judgment around and implicated believers and non-believers of all sorts for all different crimes and balanced out the scales, we’ve only increased the universality of irrational behavior in the human beast. Now naturally we can expect a gradient, but the question remains to me, how stable the human beast is.

Stable enough to survive and increase our standard of living, no doubt. But is it stable enough to bear the weight of the claims we make? I think I’ll leave it there for now.

But, I will say that it is central enough to my analysis to avoid tying my arguments directly to my worldview, that I doubt that I would recant much of what I have written in any case. I am an eclectic philosopher simply because I cannot decide one model to use to analyze the world. And besides, I would tend to be interested in what can be said from a different point of view. Checking my worldview from other worldviews is part of my methodology.

But I’ve stood in that place, and I’ve learned what I have learned. And when I lean back and wonder how I would ever cross the line again, it comes to me clearly that I could likely only be an unbeliever again by believing in something else, by investing in another model and its promises. And because I lack the ability to see what that would be, I definitely lack the ability to answer how I know it is the case and none other.