It’s rare one gets a glimpse of themselves in a bygone age… and for myself it was certainly the ghost of Christmas past. I was invited to discuss… well I’m not sure, but it was with an friend of a friend who had become an atheist. In all honestly the only thing I came away with was that this evangelical atheist was really just an angry Christian, but that’s a separate story. It really wasn’t much of a conversation as he was simply parroting New Atheist talking point that are based on fallacious presuppositions but takes a safe intellectual space to unpack them; a space this gentleman is years away from occupying. But I think I’ll play with one of them here. Mostly because it is one of the many reasons I left atheism myself a number of years ago. For me, it’s a rather diverting exercise in irony as for 12 years I held these views myself. So to suggest I didn’t understand or sympathize them would be nonsense. But in mocking these ideas I rather enjoy mocking myself post hoc.
Most religious folks will have run into the arguments I am going to rant about in varying levels of sophistication. But they really are all variations of the simple principles I’m going to poke fun at. And if anyone reading this thinks there will be a “magic bullet” argument that will crush your atheist opponent, think again. Atheists, contrary to their elevated claims, are just as susceptible of cognitive dissonance as any religious person whom is having their world view rigorously criticised. They will simply not see, or perhaps not acknowledge, the contradiction of the foundational principles of their own argumentation.
The first principle of Atheism is naturalism. The Natural world, that is to say the material or physical world is the only thing that we can know to exist and all things can, and must, be explained by these means. Verificationism is the principle that all these things must be verified via science to be “proven” true. “Proven” is in scare quotes because it’s a fundamentally and scientifically improvable” proposition e.g. prove you’re not a butterfly dreaming you’re a person discussing the existence of God with me.
At any rate, these conversations always come to the “God doesn’t explain anything” variation. This objection springs from not the misunderstanding, but the denial, of anything existing outside the physical world. The classic example of this idea would be an equation like (98 x Q2) / Z + GOD = X. A First Cause does not necessitate an explanation. That is to say, it cannot explain anything. It can give meaning, or lack of meaning given what “it” is; but it cannot be explained further. Naturalistic materialists will jump on the unifying theory of everything, or the multiverse theory, as those are easy outs to get around the clear evidence that St. Aquinas’ cosmological argument for the existence of God, something cannot come of nothing, is exactly what the Big Bang proposes. But if these alternate theories were true, what explanatory value would THEY have; given the stated concept that in order to be valid, something must explain something else and be explained? These Theories would explain nothing at all except the constants of the universe(s), but not the existence of it/them.
Moreover the assumption that the materialist nature of science can even investigate or verify non material, aka the supernatural, using materialist means is a contradiction in terms. Scientists recognize this. Although physical, gravity is an interesting analogy of the premise. We do not know what gravity IS, but we can measure and feel it’s effects. Thus, the immaterial or supernatural can just as easily have the same relationship to the natural world, yet be immeasurable aka unverifiable do to it being non-physical. And due to the atheist’s Anthropic principle that the Universe is just the way it is, none would bother considering the probabilities of such an effect.
Yet even if the theories mentioned above become true, it still doesn’t follow that God does not exist. God as such, could have simply made independently functioning universes; just as the same people assert he universe supposedly made independently functioning and self sustaining life forms.
 |
| I am in no way suggesting cities on Mars! |
At any rate, the issue of there being no “Made by God” stamp on the universe will come up as “evidence” for God’s non-existence or non influence on the natural order. Usually it’s some insanely large example like “Jesus’ name written on the moon” etc. But these same people will simultaneously use the anthropic principle to say the universe “is as it is” because it simply cannot be anything else. Well how can we find such evidence when one’s presupposition is that any such evidence is to be accepted as simply not being able to exist any other way. Indeed, Jesus’ name written on the moon would likewise probably be naturalistically explained away by saying we religious people simply created that connection because the human mind naturally tries to make connections and patterns which may or may not be there to successfully compete in the evolutionary race. So even if one could provide the evidence requested, it’s dismissed before it’s submitted.
Yet even if the obvious and imposing “Made by God” standard was readily recognized, it wouldn’t guarantee good behaviour or acceptance by humanity. The very criticisms that atheists make of religious peoples hypocrisy and nasty behaviour is evidence, that even those that really do believe in such a God don’t act in accordance with the obvious consequences that said God’s existence demands. So I fail to see how the big miracles to “prove” God’s existence to all humanity would positively effect man’s indifference and hostility to his fellow man… or God for that matter. The “angry, jealous, God of the Old Testament smiting people” would be supplementary evidence of this point as well. But I digress…
But some will even go so far into self fulfilling prophesy in the miracle discussion that, when given the evidence of the Miracles of Fatima, Guadalupe, the Shroud of Turin and others, they simply reply that “Well we just can’t explain it with science yet. But it doesn’t mean it won’t be explained!” Well la ti da, we get to give rational evidence and place our bets on a rigged roulette table of scientific explanations that may never come as an intellectually honest discussion on the rationality of belief in God. The whole reason for asking for evidence that does not fall into Naturalistic Verificationism is to find something science does NOT explain; not something it MAY explain later. And what if science does not explain it later? And how long is later? Until it can be dismissed as too long ago to be trusted? Is miraculous evidence for the existence of God to simply sit on the back burner of sceptical inquiry indefinitely because it does not support the theory of Naturalistic Verificationism? That sounds more like open ended Dogmatism rather than Rational Inquiry and Scepticism based on Reason.
In the end, the only thing this shows is that for all the high claims of atheists, they fall into the same double standards and cognitive dissonance that anyone does when the foundations of their world view is rigorously critiqued. I’ve even been told that my whole line of reasoning is antiscience (the atheist version of screaming heresy). As though understanding and stating the limitations of science somehow makes one hostile to it. But these are the recriminations of the sour grapes effect of a bruised ego. Thus when one is seriously challenged, or countered, one can simply dismiss reflecting on the points by declaring the opposition “antiscience”, or for using “clever debating tactics”. “Clever debating tricks” generally being basic philosophical principles like defining terms and using logic to make connections. I probably won’t get around to it, but I should write about how these same folks will claim Logic as a standard for understanding and making sense of the world and reality, but then turn around and say it’s not infallible, but the best we have. Well what failures make it the best we have? The points of science and moral concepts show Rationalism and Logic to be unable to make accurate predictions 100% of the time? e.g. old evidence must be assumed to be inaccurate. An observation about logic and rationalism, by the way, the Popes have consistently asserted since the beginning of the Enlightenment. But are we therefore to proclaim atheists “antilogic”? Of course not. Yet we Theists are to be given a separate standard when recognizing the value of the observance of natural phenomenon by the scientific method and at the same time seeing it’s obvious limitations.
These are the circular reasoning processes that I eventually recognized as an atheist and forced me to become sceptical of my “scepticism”. Like I said, the is no “magic bullet” argument that will defeat someone who has locked themselves in an intellectual feedback loop of circular reasoning. The only thing one can do is challenge the points and wait for the person to find the intellectually safe space to re-evaluate their position and world-view. A debate, where the ego is on the line, is the last place one is likely to change ones world view. But it is a great place to play with concepts and contradictions. If anything it’ll show you how much you need to study, or how desperately the atheist hasn’t been bothered to.
