One of the most persistent reasons any Christian remains stuck in that delusion is that they are really bad at thinking their way out of any false position. Christians are prone to deciding what to believe based on groupthink, cult-think, and intuition (otherwise known as emotion in lieu of reason). But they are very good at whitewashing all of this, hiding it under a blizzard of rationalization, denialism, and bluster. You can see this as the common theme across all sincere examples I’ve analyzed (from Which Is ‘Rational’: Theism or Atheism? to Unbelievable: Justin Brierley’s Epistemic Failure). The same folly-construct keeps white supremacists and mandroids and flat earthers and election or climate denialists stuck in their respective delusions. It’s all the same construct. Just supporting different delusions.

Which is a different problem from the liars and grifters (from William Lane Craig to Timothy Keller) whose aura and authority the merely delusional gullibly fall for. Sometimes you can’t tell the difference, because the gullible repeaters of a grift look and sound the same, and both rely on the same tactics of thought-manipulation, whether lying to others or themselves. But if they ramble enough, you can sometimes start to catch them out and distinguish the delusional from the dishonest. There is no steadfast cure for either ailment. Liars obviously don’t care about the truth, and so can’t be persuaded to. And the whole point of a delusion is to trap the delusional in a hall of mirrors from which they can never escape. That’s what distinguishes a delusion from mere error. Errors can be corrected. Delusions are self-engineered to be immune to correction.

Does Atheism Actually Predict Nothing?

Today I will illustrate this with a recent example: the claim that “atheism predicts nothing” as a reason to believe in Christianity (or whichever religion you’ve trapped yourself in). This came up in a long back-and-forth centering (again) on the YouTube show Capturing Christianity hosted by Cameron Bertuzzi. If you want to catch up on the whole affair you can watch The SciPhi Show 11: Alex O’Connor Defended, Christian Critique Backfires and The SciPhi Show 12: Alex O’Connor’s Christian Conundrum: Still Unsolved, or even the original Capturing Christianity videos these fisk: because this all started with a LIVE DEBATE: Cliffe and Stuart Knechtle vs Alex O’Connor and Phil Halper on whether God existed, followed by a dishonest review of that by Bertuzzi, Alex O’Connor’s EMBARRASSING Debate Against Cliffe Knechtle w/ David Wood, and then various other commentaries across several channels.

I’m not interested in the whole thread. Debates are largely useless, because they are clocked-and-constrained (without footnotes or fact-checking or even rigor) and thus become largely the playground of demagogic rhetoric—and the Christians in this case are such bad actors that this debate was especially useless (to anyone who actually wanted to get at the truth of anything). There was shouting, insults, lies, bluster, evasion, bullshit. But nothing new of any merit. I’m more interested in a single argument that came up not in the debate itself, but in Bertuzzi’s reaction show to that, and which gets addressed in the responding SciPhi show, but too briefly and cerebrally for most: the notion that atheism predicts nothing, therefore if atheism were true, there should be nothing (ergo, that there is something disproves atheism).

This starts with a semantic mistake (an equivocation fallacy) between “nothing” as in the absence of specific predictions and “nothing” as a specific prediction. For example, imagine someone said, “Your having blonde hair predicts nothing as to whether you will win this card game on the next draw, therefore the next card drawn will have nothing on it.” It’s obvious the mistake they’ve made. “Predicts nothing” (so any possible card could be drawn) does not mean the same thing as “will produce nothing” (a blank card). The same is happening in this Capturing Christianity argument. They’ve messed up how words work—to the point of thinking predicting nothing about the coming card will magically cause it to literally be blank. This makes no more sense at cards than in cosmology. More competent philosophers explain this in SciPhi Show 11, but the short of it is, predicting that exactly nothing will happen is actually predicting something (a very specific something). So…how do you derive such a hyper-specific prediction from simply “there is no God”?

But there is another mistake here as well. If we re-frame the question of what “atheism” predicts as “what should exist,” there actually are some substantive positive answers. Indeed, from the assumption that nothing exists to select what will exist, it can be proved literally anything could exist, to the point that God is no longer needed to explain why an inhabited universe will exist—because it can’t not (see What If We Reimagine ‘Nothing’ as a Field-State?). But more importantly, if atheism is true, there could have been infinitely many things that happened to exist other than God. Simply declaring that of all those possible things, we just got lucky and it turned out to be God, is actually an argument against it being God (see A Hidden Fallacy in the Fine Tuning Argument). Whereas that most of the random things you could have randomly ended up with instead of God would lead to an inhabited universe, is actually an argument for atheism—one that starts from the very premise that atheism predicts nothing as to what would be, in exactly the same sense as my being blonde predicts nothing as to what card will next turn up (see The Argument from Uniformities).

Even more importantly, atheism makes general predictions as to what kind of universe we should observe (I survey a ton of them in Bayesian Counter-Apologetics and Ten Ways the World Would Be Different If God Existed). For example, if what caused an inhabited universe wasn’t God, nor anything supernatural at all, then it must (to a very high probability) exhibit certain peculiar features:

• It must be extremely old, extremely large, and almost entirely lethal to life (and lo, that’s, weirdly, exactly the world we observe);
• The only minds in it (not made by other minds) could only be the output of extremely complex machines, arising solely from a long meandering process of evolution by natural selection (and lo, that’s, weirdly, exactly the world we observe).
• The only life in it (not made by other life) could only have begun as an extremely simple replicating molecule and only grown larger by first assembling a single-cellular environment, and then by aggregating cooperating colonies of those single cells into multi-celled beings (and lo, that’s, weirdly, exactly the world we observe).
• It could exhibit no evidence of a divine hand, so there would be no coherent universal communication or action from any godlike being, but just capriciously random and human-crafted events and communications (and lo, that’s, weirdly, exactly the world we observe).
• Sound reason (science and math and critical thinking) and morality (principles of conduct conducive to social and personal wellbeing) would only exist as self-invented technologies, not as revealed knowledge but something life would have to stumble upon on its own and perfect on its own, over time, through trial and error, while the evolved hardware of any brain would be mired with poorly designed mechanisms of reasoning and moralizing (and lo, that’s, weirdly, exactly the world we observe).

That’s a lot of really weird things to 100% expect just from the simple proposition that “there is no God.” So atheism is far outperforming theism predictively here. But the underlying mistake the Christians are making is that just because atheism does make a ton of specific and peculiar predictions, all of which have come true, doesn’t mean atheism entails anything else about what would exist.

Atheism no more entails that “nothing” should exist than that a mindless primordial Tao would exist (and cause everything else to exist). The latter is entirely compatible with atheism, and thus atheism (by itself) predicts nothing about it—neither that it would exist, nor that it wouldn’t. Evidence could then change what’s likely—so the fact that what we’d expect given a primordial Tao (or anything supernatural at all) also doesn’t show up means we can start narrowing the field of hypotheses. Hence we can expand atheism with an additional hypothesis: physicalism (a particular subset of atheism). And we’d not be doing that arbitrarily (vast evidence confirms it as likely by now). But once we add that auxiliary hypothesis, the Tao thing becomes unlikely (but note: only for that reason; not because atheism entails it’s unlikely). But now we have nonsupernatural equivalents: instead of a primordial Tao, there could be a primordial wave function, or a primordial chaos, or a primordial singularity, and so on. These are all far simpler than any God hypothesis (see Theism, Naturalism, and Explanatory Power), whether we’re measuring theoretical complexity or ontological complexity. So what need do we have of the God hypothesis?

Atheism by itself predicts nothing as to what will exist among these options; even in conjunction with physicalism, options abound. The first cause could be anything. There is literally no evidence or reason that it has to be intelligent, or even supernatural. So just like the next card, atheism does not predict a blank card; it predicts any possible card in the deck except God. And that’s it. Which gets to a second point, also made on SciPhil 11: what any theory predicts is not going to be determined in isolation. We can say that, when there was nothing but the first or most fundamental thing (whatever that is; see The Argument to the Ontological Whatsit), there will have been no auxiliary things determining what would then result from it. But once things do result, we can do a lot more than that.

Epistemic probability is the probability something is true (as opposed to its alternative) given all the information we now have. It thus is not calculated from the “first condition” when nothing else existed. It is calculated from the “current condition” when we have a vast universe of evidence providing clues about that first condition. And note that I am not taking a position on whether “first” here means chronologically or ontologically. Either way, there is a “first” thing, we all agree. The only question is whether it talks, thinks, and has feelings or not.

When we are asking what the epistemic probability of atheism is, we must take into account all the actual data. And so, when we ask “What does atheism predict?” we must now include that. For example, when we ask “What card will come up?” we have abundant background data now on what the options are (e.g., it could be a ten of spades but not a thirty of monkeys). Likewise with atheism: given the observation now that the universe started in a hot dense state, that quantum effects constrain the scale at which gravity works, that it took millions of years to generate solar systems and billions of years to produce a rare instance of life and billions more years for that life to leverage itself into thinking brains, and so on, what is then more likely to be true about the first thing?

Well, it’s not going to be “something that talks, thinks, and has feelings.” All the evidence trends the other way (see, for example, How the New Wong-Hazen Proposal Refutes Theism and Naturalism Is Not an Axiom of the Sciences but a Conclusion of Them and even Six Arguments That a Multiverse Is More Probable Than a God).

And that’s that.

So there is no coherent argument that God must exist “because atheism predicts nothing will exist.” It doesn’t. It predicts pretty much what we observe exists. Theism does not—without a harangue of contrived epicycles designed to rescue it from failing so badly at this. But there is a reason the authors of Genesis knew nothing of cells, deep time, stellar evolution, the history of life, the poor design of the human brain, or the superiority of a morality based on universal human rights. No one was talking to them. They were just a bunch of dumb guys making shit up. But more importantly, there was then and is now no possible way to deduce these things from “God exists.” These things are extremely weird on that hypothesis. Which is why they didn’t think of them.

Hence Christians Are Christians Because They Are Bad at This

Now that you see my point, let’s watch Christians completely fail to get it—and in the process reveal that their failure to get this is why they are still Christians. Here is the emotionally irrational rant about this from Bertuzzi and none other than self-confessed psychopath and documented liar David Wood (toward the end of minute 32):

Bertuzzi: A lot of atheists will say, “Oh, well, you know, evil and suffering is is expected, it’s what I would expect,” and it just it triggers me no end.

Wood: I would expect nothing if atheism were true.

Bertuzzi: Dude. It triggers me no end when atheists make this claim. It’s just, like, what, where is this prediction coming from? I don’t get it.

Wood: By the way, just so you know, and it’s good that we’re getting there, because that’s my ultimate problem, that is my ultimate problem…

Bertuzzi: I’ve got a good analogy for it actually.

Wood: …with with the problem of evil. Like, based on expectations, and what they’re thinking is, “Yeah, if you had a universe, and if you had life, and if evolution is the only game in town, of how you got there, then that would involve suffering.”

Bertuzzi [and Co-host]: [assenting remark]

Wood: So, therefore, if you’re actually, like, abstracting, and just saying, “Okay, let’s start off: no Creator versus a Creator; what are you expecting? Go!” It’s like, “Okay, well, on one, I might expect something to be created, on the other one I would nothing.”

[Co-host]: Yeah.

Wood: So right there. And then you say, “Okay, if you got a universe on either hypothesis, what would you expect? Go!” Well, on the god hypothesis I might expect a finally tuned universe, because God would have reasons to, you know, make make living things. On the other side, I would expect, since it’s vastly more probable to get a non-life permitting universe, I’d expect a non-life permitting universe, if you got one at all. And so you just kind of go down the line. And then, okay, would you expect life? Well, I I would on the theistic hypothesis, or at least much more so than on the non-theistic hypothesis. You could kind of go down the road, all [the way] to life, to human consciousness, to our our reasoning ability, to our moral sense. And so…it becomes, like, insanely more probable, all the evidence favors—massively favors—theism over atheism. So, when it’s just, “Oh, we’d expect it on our hypothesis but not on yours,” like, have you seen what you need for your argument to even work?

Phil Halper, Alex Malpass, and Dan Linford react to this in minute 33 of their response video. And what I have to say concurs with them.

Wood immediately refutes Bertuzzi’s argument—by explaining where the “prediction” comes from that there would be no kind or just or even intelligent management of a world without a kind or just or intelligent manager. They skip over that and pretend it didn’t happen. But it did. Bertuzzi’s irrationality was flat-out exposed right here, but he never acknowledges it or even notices. Obviously “no God entails no observed Godly activity.” That Bertuzzi needs it to be explained to him “where this prediction comes from” (and indeed that he is “annoyed” by not knowing where it comes from) illustrates his incompetence at basic hypothetical reasoning. And he implies this is why he is a believer—which means he is a believer because he is bad at reasoning.

And Wood is worse. One can doubt Wood’s sincerity. As a documented sociopath and liar, one can question if he really believes anything he is saying. But I’ll just pretend he’s being sincere. After all, sociopathic liars can also be bad reasoners and delusionally believe false things, same as anyone else. But Wood’s fumble is not Bertuzzi’s—Wood sees through Bertuzzi’s bad reasoning and immediately pegs it as irrational (suggesting Wood does know how to do this correctly). Rather, Wood wants to move the goal posts and pretend Bertuzzi never said that stupid thing, by changing the subject to “Atheism predicts nothing.” Which is that bizarre error of reasoning I explained earlier. He has irrationally assumed the only options are Intellgent Creator or Absolutely Nothing. Which is a violation of the Law of Excluded Middle and thus a rudimentary mistake of logic.

Wood also of course misses everything else. We don’t actually expect a finally tuned universe on God, because God has no need of fine tuning, whereas every godless world with observers in it will be finely tuned. Fine tuning is thus evidence against God (see Why the Fine Tuning Argument Proves God Does Not Exist). It is atheism that predicts this, and several other weird things besides (deep time, deep space, vast lethality of the universe), because those are the only ways we could exist in a godless universe (at least to any credible probability). “It’s vastly more probable to get a non-life permitting universe” could be true, but wouldn’t be relevant, because no matter how unlikely this world is, it is more likely to look like this if God didn’t produce it—so, since we are observing it, its improbability was obviously met. Its improbability therefore can no longer argue against it having happened.

Same as with God. Because, comparatively, theism also requires a vastly improbable coincidence—arguably one much less probable than a chance accident of fine tuning, but certainly no more so (see The Argument from Specified Complexity against Supernaturalism and Theism, Naturalism, and Explanatory Power). Thus “it’s improbable” cancels out for both theories. And that’s even if it were improbable. It isn’t. There are numerous cosmological models that get us a highly probable fine tuning without a God, and without any improbable first cause at all, much less one as absurdly improbable as a disembodied supermind that just exists for no reason. But even if that were the luck we had (we got a lucky God rather than a lucky Big Bang, per the Hidden Fallacy in the Fine Tuning Argument), we’d observe a completely different world than we do. So when we compare these two extremely improbable options, one of them leaves the evidence extremely improbable—and that must therefore be the one that’s false. And, uhem, that’s theism (see Ten Ways the World Would Be Different If God Existed).

Wood makes the same mistake over and over again. Theism, he claims, predicts life. But it doesn’t. It doesn’t even predict any kind of life (there is nothing inherent about a God that suggests he’d have any interest in producing anyone or anything else—the perfect need no further thing). But even if we “epicycled” God into nevertheless, for some reason, wanting to make a bunch of imperfect people, he would not do it with a weird, fallible, drawn out process starting with single molecules, then single cells, then cell colonies, then cell colonies with tissue differentiation and thus limbs and brains. He’d just make people. No cellular structure. No long, meandering evolutionary history. If he wanted animals, they’d just exist. No cellular structure. No long, meandering evolutionary history. Likewise plants. And so on. There would be no deadly viruses or bacteria, no toxins, no cancer. There wouldn’t even be injury (why make bodies that can be damaged or destroyed?). Sure, maybe pain would still exist, but none of that other stuff. Because even we could build better worlds than that (see How Not to Live in Zardoz).

By contrast, the only way we could exist on atheism is if we were the cell-colony output of a long, meandering evolutionary history, with fragile and mortal bodies, and all manner of damaging defects and pointless dangers. Exactly as we observe. Atheism explains this. Theism does not. And if you try to escape this result, and in a panic try to hastily invent some extra unexplained reasons why God would make the world look exactly like a world with no God in it—indeed like exactly the world we’d observe if no God were behind it—you end up adding massive complexity to your theory that atheism is not saddled with. Atheism simply automatically entails what we observe. No epicycles. Ockham’s Razor kills God.

The same goes for “human consciousness.” God predicts well-designed, well-reasoning souls that can’t be killed or damaged and don’t hog all your nutrients and oxygen; atheism predicts fallible, killable, damageable brains so bad at thinking well that they need a self-made firmware update called “math, logic, and science.” Lo, what we observe is what atheism predicts. The same goes for “our reasoning ability” and “our moral sense.” Humans have been bad at both, especially in the Bible (which tramples human rights, endorsing slavery, oppression, rape, and murder, and all kinds of really bad ideas). We had to build better ways to think and better moralities, on our own, through arduous and wasteful trial and error. Exactly as atheism predicts. But not what we expect if there were a God who could do both better.

So Wood falters on a basic failure of logic, starting with a false dichotomy, that keeps him from noticing and thus having to rationally cope with what, in fact, atheism actually does predict. It is not “nothing,” but the absence of all Godly things. Hence, the absence of good design—in the cosmos, in the biosphere, in respect to mind, reasoning, and morality—is exactly what atheism predicts; not what theism predicts. Because atheism simply is the theory that “there is no God,” which entails, “there will be no Godly things.” As to matters of first cause, by contrast, atheism predicts nothing in a completely different sense: it makes no predictions at all. It does not in any way predict that there will be “no things,” because there is no logical way to get from merely “there is no God” to “there will be nothing at all.” Because there are infinitely many other things that could exist in place of God. And indeed, if nothing exists to pick one out, then by definition, what gets picked will be random. And the probability that “nothing” will then be picked is effectively zero—because one in ratio to infinity is effectively zero, and “nothing” is just one single option among infinitely many others.

So, really, atheism predicts, with near total certainty, that what will exist will not be “nothing.” By contrast, if God exists, he has no inherent reason to want to create anything. So we should sooner expect “nothing” to exist if God exists (apart from God himself, of course; but we wouldn’t be around to observe that). And certainly we have no less reason to expect that from God. For whatever excuses you invent to “epicyle” God back into wanting to make populated universes again (and poorly and immorally constructed ones at that), they won’t be inherently probable; whereas an unintelligent and hence perfectly random selection from among all possible things that could exist will effectively never select “nothing,” and that this is probable is a logical certainty. You simply can’t get the probability of that to be above one over infinity. But you can get the probability that God would create nothing well above that—and there is no logically necessary way to get it below that.

This all makes God a maximally bad explanation of present observations. And Wood misses this. Because he fumbled the Law of Excluded Middle at his very first premise.

Ergo, Christians are Christians because they are bad at this. While people who reason better than this, get out. Which leaves only bad reasoners to populate the Christian ranks—as I already observed in Which Is ‘Rational’: Theism or Atheism?