Tag: atheism

The scientific benefits of faith

Tangentially related to the day’s earlier post comes this news that there are material differences between the brains of religious individuals and those of the irreligious:

They say religion is a matter of the heart – but it seems the shape of our brains could also have a role to play. Believers or those with a spiritual side have ‘thicker’ sections of brain tissue than other people, a study suggests. And in welcome news for the faithful, the researchers think that this thickening could also help to stave off depression.

‘Our beliefs and our moods are reflected in our brain and with new imaging techniques we can begin to see this,’ Dr Myrna Weissman, a professor of psychiatry and epidemiology at Columbia University, told Reuters Health.

As I mentioned in the previous comments, I think it might be informative to see a study done on the frontal lobes of atheists. My scientific hypothesis, based on the observation that adult atheists tend to exhibit a variety of reasoning patterns more commonly observed in teenagers, is that the brains of atheists will show signs of their frontal lobes not being fully developed.

And before you deny the science, keep in mind that not one, but two scientific studies at two different universities have already found evidence supporting my hypothesis concerning a connection between mild forms of autism and atheism. It looks increasingly likely that Sam Harris’s attempt to bring neuroscience into religious matters is going to backfire on atheists in a big way.

But this should have been obvious from the start, as who is more likely to be aneurotypical, a small and poorly behaved minority or the overwhelming majority? As economists have learned over the last 80 years, Sigmund Freud’s ideas are a very poor basis upon which to build one’s scientific hypotheses.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that Mr. Harris’s frontal lobes are, at least in part, to blame for his inability to correctly reason through the probable connection between brain development and religious belief, assuming that there is one in the first place.

UPDATE: Gara complained that I didn’t mention the fact that atheists have higher average IQs than theists. So, I’m rectifying that by quoting myself on the subject of superior average atheist intelligence:

“I have readily conceded that religious individuals are less intelligent on average than non-believers in general and atheists in particular for years.  However, what the midwits who get very excited about this
statistical fact never seem to keep in mind is that because there are so
many more religious people, there are considerably more highly
intelligent religious people than there are highly intelligent
non-believers.

In fact, the ratio of theists to atheists with Mensa+ level IQs is more than 10 to one.”

The Fifth Horseman 2

I finished Peter Boghossian’s A Manual for Creating Atheists yesterday. Needless to say, it did not succeed in creating one. In fact, I suspect Dominic, TGM, and some of the other intelligent atheists here will tend to be mildly embarrassed by it, in much the same way that intelligent Christians are embarrassed by a Kirk Cameron attempt at apologetics. The difference is that Cameron means well, while Boghossian is, quite literally, the sort of person who will kick out a crutch from under a cripple’s arm because he doesn’t believe the individual is truly crippled. Nor will he likely apologize when he learns, after the fact, that he was wrong.

It is readily observable that Boghossian almost certainly ranks higher on the Aspie scale, or whatever they are calling it these days, than Sam Harris or even Richard Dawkins. He’s simply clueless about what (silence) in a conversation means, inevitably assuming that what the dialogue tends to indicate means: (I can’t talk to this idiot, he’s hopeless) is actually: (oh my goodness, I am struck dumb by the irrefutable reasoning of your beautiful mind). And that is giving Boggie the benefit of the doubt and assuming that he is accurately recalling the dialogues rather than inventing them out of whole cloth.

The funniest part of the book is without question the following conversation with his father. I have a strong suspicion that his father regards Boghossian with mixed embarrassment and pride, the latter over his minor celebrity, the former over the fact that Boggie is the picture of what Bruce Charlton describes as a clever silly.

(Not that these particular sillies are especially clever. The second funniest part of the book comes in the Introduction by the ever-hapless John Loftus:“I thanked God for everything, from getting me into the Christian-based Pepperdine University (my grades and SAT scores were unspectacular) to finding a parking place at theaters and restaurants.”)

Unspectacular grades, mediocre SATs, and barely getting into a third-rate university. And these guys are constantly appealing to their intelligence? But back to the two Boghossians and the book’s best dialogue:

When I told my father that K–12 educational systems should promote the value of epistemological rigor, he replied incredulously, “Are you kidding me? High school dropout rates are hovering around 33 percent in most [U.S.] cities. We can’t even teach kids how to read. What makes you think we’d be any more successful with instilling ‘epistemological rigor?’”

Whether or not we can be successful in helping people see value in epistemological rigor is an empirical question. I have my own speculation that this can be accomplished through pop culture—for example, comic books and TV shows for children that personify new heroes, Epistemic Knights, and new villains, Faith Monsters.

Didn’t even slow him down. Yes, it is an empirical question, but the point that Boghossian the Younger simply ignores is that the question has been answered! As you can see, we’re not exactly dealing with a godless genius here.

Boghossian the Elder made precisely the same point that I have repeatedly made concerning the teaching of evolution in the public schools. Both the evangelical evolutionists and Boghossian the Younger are so removed from reality that they are not only wrong, they are making a fundamental category error. How are the children at schools like this one in Queens, where the children have no books, going to develop epistemological vigor even if they spend all day watching what sounds like a bad version of Captain Planet? The total impossibility of the task is only underlined as one reads the book, as one observes that even though the younger Boghossian values the idea of epistemological rigor, he does not actually practice it.

The entire book reads rather like it was written by Otto from A Fish Called Wanda. Aristotle was not Belgian. The definition of faith is not “pretending to know things you don’t know”. The central message of Scepticism is not “Ecrasez l’infame”. More than one argument for the existence of God has withstood scrutiny and many of them have done so for centuries. I should very much like to see Boghossian personally attempt to address my preferred argumentum e maleficus; it would be certain to provide an amount of hilarity.

In any event, now that I’ve read the manual, I’m not going to go through it on a page by page basis because most of my posts would consist of long quotes followed by short one- or two-word summaries: “exhortation” and “naked assertion”. Instead, I’m will begin with critiquing each of the 17 tactical anti-apologetics he presents, after which I will address certain other aspects of the book when I am finished with it. If there are specific sections or assertions you would like to see me address in a post, please download the book from the readily available torrent Pirate Bay and let me know. Even if you are an IP enthusiast, you can do so in good conscience, as Boghossian writes in Chapter 9:

“To prevent doxastic closure it’s also important to read the work of noted apologists. The only two I’d suggest are Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig, though I’d urge you not to buy their books; their projects don’t need your support.”

It is entirely possible that Boghossian not familiar with The Irrational Atheist, but even if he was, I am confident he would not recommend reading it to prevent doxastic closure because TIA is exactly the sort of thing that Boghossian recommends his Street Epistemologists avoid at all costs: the questioning of atheist assumptions and the criticism of their arguments. The Manual may be intended to be inoffensive, but it is all offense and offers very little in the way of anticipated defense. And therein, as I will demonstrate in this series of posts, lies the tactical Christian response.

Since this has already been a long post, I will begin with one of the shorter anti-apologetics from Chapter 7:

ANTI-APOLOGETIC #12


Defense: “Atheism is just another religion. You have faith in atheism.”

Response: “Atheism is a conclusion one comes to as a result of being rational and honest. Atheism is a conclusion that’s based on the best available evidence for the existence of God—which is that there is none. Atheism is not a religion. Atheism is not a belief. Atheism is, basically, the lack of belief in God(s). Atheists follow no creeds or doctrines. They engage in no particular set of behaviors.”

VD RESPONSE: How old were you when you became an atheist? Most atheists declare themselves to be atheists before they are old enough to be considered mature enough to legally drink, so reason indicates that it is less a conclusion based on reason and honesty than on teenage hormones and temptation. There is considerable documentary and testimonial evidence for the existence of God, the kind of evidence that is legally admissible in a court of law. You are deceptively substituting the subset of scientific evidence for the entire set of evidence, which calls into doubt your evidence-free assertion that atheism is based on being honest.

As for your other claims about atheism, do you believe in ghosts? Do you believe in Feng Shui? Do you believe in evolution by natural selection? Do you believe in abiogenesis? What do any of those things have to do with a lack of belief in God? Your definition of atheism is clearly incomplete, at best.

Finally, the atheist Peter Boghossian declared that an evangelical atheist “offers a humanistic vision”. He wrote that his atheist Street Epistemology “offers a humanism that’s taken some hits and gained from experience. This isn’t Pollyanna humanism, but a humanism that’s been slapped around and won’t fall apart.” So, how can you say that atheists follow no creeds or doctrines when they are going around actively trying to sell a specific type of humanism? Is that what you are offering to me? A humanistic vision? Then you obviously have faith in humanism! And given what you’ve been saying about the evils of faith, shouldn’t you be addressing that log in your own eye before worrying about any splinters in mine?

PREVIOUS IN THE SERIES: The Fifth Horseman 1

The Fifth Horseman 1

Peter Boghossian has written a little manual on atheist evangelism that has concerned some Christians. Having read two of its nine chapters so far, I can assure you that it is simply a weaponized version of the same endless bait-and-switching upon which Messrs. Dawkins and Harris rely so heavily. However, given MPAI, I have no doubt there are living, breathing human beings who found Mr. Harris’s Red State argument as conclusive and convincing as Mr. Dawkins did, so it seems worthwhile to provide an inoculation to Mr. Boghossian’s poisonous little book as a public service.

This I shall do on the blog, going through it in much the same way various atheists went through the first three chapters of TIA before reaching Mount Chapter Four and running off to Las Vegas and so forth.

This book will teach you how to talk people out of their faith. You’ll learn how to engage the faithful in conversations that help them value reason and rationality, cast doubt on their beliefs, and mistrust their faith. I call this activist approach to helping people overcome their faith, “Street Epistemology.” The goal of this book is to create a generation of Street Epistemologists: people equipped with an array of dialectical and clinical tools who actively go into the streets, the prisons, the bars, the churches, the schools, and the community—into any and every place the faithful reside—and help them abandon their faith and embrace reason.

A Manual for Creating Atheists details, explains, and teaches you how to be a street clinician and how to apply the tools I’ve developed and used as an educator and philosopher. The lessons, strategies, and techniques I share come from my experience teaching prisoners, from educating tens of thousands of students in overcrowded public universities, from engaging the faithful every day for more than a quarter century, from over two decades of rigorous scholarship, and from the streets.

Street Epistemology harkens back to the values of the ancient philosophers—individuals who were tough-minded, plain-speaking, known for self-defense, committed to truth, unyielding in the face of danger, and fearless in calling out falsehoods, contradictions, inconsistencies, and nonsense. Plato was a wrestler and a soldier with broad shoulders. He was decorated for bravery in battle (Christian, 2011, p. 51). Socrates was a seasoned soldier. At his trial, when facing the death penalty, he was unapologetic. When asked to suggest a punishment for his “crimes,” he instead proposed to be rewarded (Plato, Apology).

Hellenistic philosophers fought against the superstitions of their time. Lucretius, Sextus Empiricus, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and others combated the religious authorities of their period, including early versions of Christianity (Clarke, 1968; Nussbaum, 1994). They thought the most important step was to liberate people from fear of tortures of the damned and from fear that preachers of their epoch were spouting. Hellenistic philosophers were trying to encourage stoic self-sufficiency, a sense of self-responsibility, and a tough-minded humanism.

Boghossian starts off by trying to fire up the troops. They’re going to be as tough as street preachers and unemployed boy-buggering Greeks! More importantly, he also signals right away that he’s going to play very fast and loose with the readily verifiable truth, given that Lucretius (55 BC) lived before Jesus Christ, Sextus Empiricus wrote against mathemeticians and the very Hellenic philosphers Boghossian is lionizing, and Marcus Aurelius actually WAS the religious authority, being not only the Emperor of Rome, but a member of “all the priestly colleges” of Rome who was literally deified in 180 AD.

None of these four examples, not a single one, “thought the most important step was to liberate people from fear of tortures of the damned”. Sextus Empiricus, for example, declares that “the aim of the Sceptic is tranquility of soul in those things which pertain to the opinion and moderation in the things that life imposes.” Indeed, Boghossian’s very stated purpose is in direct and explicit opposition to everything Sextus Empiricus advises, beginning with “suspension of judgment”.

Boghossian intends to teach atheists how to become an evangelical. And I am going to teach you how to crucify and humiliate those evangelicals using the very tools to which Boghossian is fraudulently appealing. He may be an educator and a philosopher, with two decades of what already appears to be not very rigorous scholarship behind him, but then, I am a superintelligence who has already taken four atheist scalps.

The fifth one won’t be any trouble at all. The manual is nothing but rhetoric in the guise of dialectic, and as most of you have learned, rhetoric combined with actual dialectic will reliably trump the pseudo-dialectic.

Proofs of God’s nonexistence

What is funny about this compilation of atheist arguments of God’s nonexistence is that it is extraordinarily difficult to tell some of the real arguments from the parodies. It reminds me of one of the things I always enjoy about atheist testimonials, and why I think it can be very helpful for young Christians to be exposed to them, is that they reliably reveal how stupid and irrational the average atheist’s rationale for his disbelief happens to be.

A few of my favorites:

ARGUMENT FROM THE SAGAN STANDARD (I)
(1) Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
(2) The claim that God exists is extraordinary.
(3) Therefore, any evidence supporting it ought to be extraordinary as well.
(4) I’m not sure what I mean by “extraordinary.”
(5) But whatever you come up with, it’s not going to work.
(6) Therefore, God does not exist.

SIGMUND FREUD’S ARGUMENT FROM OEDIPUS
(1) The belief in God arises from the unconscious fear that your father
is going to castrate you when he finds out you have a desire to sleep
with your own mother.
(2) Obviously, only a crazy person would think that.
(3) Therefore, God does not exist.

ARGUMENT FROM INFANTILE INTELLIGENCE (I)
(1) Everyone is born an atheist.
(2) Therefore, we should think like that.
(3) Therefore, God does not exist.

SAM HARRIS’S IMAGINARY ARGUMENT
(1) Bad things happen.
(2) This means God is impotent, evil, or imaginary.
(3) If God is impotent, then He’s not powerful and thus doesn’t exist.
(4) If God is evil, then He’s not good and thus doesn’t exist.
(5) If God is imaginary, then God doesn’t exist.
(6) Now some theists claim God allows bad things to happen to bring about a greater good.
(7) This would mean God might still be omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and real.
(8) I don’t know any rational argument to disprove that.
(9) So, I’ll make this appeal to emotion: it’s callous to tell people that their suffering is meaningful.
(10) Therefore, God does not exist.

ARGUMENT FROM MODAL LOGIC (II)
(1) I am an atheist.
(2) I do not know what modal logic is.
(3) Any proof for God’s existence that uses modal logic is not understood by me.
(4) If I don’t understand something, then I can make fun of it.
(5) Therefore, God does not exist.

PARENTAL ARGUMENT (I)
(1) My daddy told me that God exists.
(2) I hate my daddy.
(3) Therefore, God does not exist.

RICKY GERVAIS’S ARGUMENT FROM HIS ELDER BROTHER
(1) I used to believe in God.
(2) But my older brother didn’t.
(3) My mom told him to be quiet.
(4) Therefore, God does not exist.

I think the philosopher is missing one very important argument, however, an argument so incisive and indisputable that it can be utilized to win any debate on any subject. It is an argument so powerful, so convincing, and so conclusive that frankly, I’m surprised none of the major atheists have considered resorting to it in order to convince the ignorant, bigoted, religious masses of God’s nonexistence.

JOHN SCALZI’S ARGUMENT FROM DEGREE
(1) I am an atheist.
(2) I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy of Language.
(3) From the University of Chicago!
(4) Therefore, God does not exist.

Atheist rule in action

No doubt Sam Harris will be arguing that the atheist Kim’s rational, but lethal form of governance doesn’t count as a strike against atheism because it isn’t committed “in the name of atheism”:

The first thing to appreciate about Kim is that he is not mad. He is undoubtedly what psychologists call a ‘rational actor’ — literally meaning that his actions are not irrational at all.

In fact, he is behaving in a way that many people would if they were born into a family that is the subject of an extreme personality cult: his father and grandfather were both long-time leaders of North Korea before him.

Like any Mafia boss or medieval warlord presiding over a crumbling territory, Kim’s first priority is simply to stay in power. And to do that, like any sane man, he is creating the spectres of enemies within — such as his uncle — and enemies without, such as the United States, which he has threatened in recent months with a pre-emptive nuclear strike, a piece of absurd muscle-flexing purely designed to raise his prestige at home….

The number of mass public executions have soared — with estimates of between 40 to 80 so far this year in towns across the country, when last year the total was under 20…. Judges have pronounced sentence for crimes as trivial as owning a Bible, communicating with South Koreans or Christian missionaries, or simply complaining about the hardship of life in a state where millions spend their lives close to starvation.

The prisoners — a rock stuffed in their mouths to prevent them shouting out and ‘defiling the great leader’ — are tied to a post and shot, one by one, by a three-man firing squad. Armed with rifles or machine guns, their killers shoot them so many times their faces are usually unrecognisable. The bodies are thrown into bags and dumped. As with any ‘offences against the people’, not only are the perpetrators punished but also three generations of their families — with grandparents and children alike ‘disappearing’ into horrifyingly brutal prison camps.

Of course, it is a little hard to deny that executing people for owning Bibles and talking with Christian missionaries is at least partially motivated by atheism. Atheist and pagan rulers alike have always feared Christians because Christians are intransigent about their stubborn belief in a higher power than the State, which thereby makes them dangerous to those who rule it. Not that this historical observation will stop the brilliant logicians from the School of Harris, who will no doubt proceed to argue next that it isn’t actually colder this winter because the sun has not reduced its activity “in the name of global cooling”.

Note that Kim’s actions show how my observations concerning historical atheist rulers in TIA has proved to be a successful predictive model of his current behavior. The point isn’t that atheism makes anyone do anything. It doesn’t. The point, and the problem, is that it removes moral barriers from those who have evil desires.

The slumberer stirs

A few weeks ago, I was sent a copy of the Inflation-Deflation debate in ebook format. Having finished the first QUANTUM MORTIS novel, about which more later today, I thought it might be useful to put the 2011 PZ Myers Memorial Debate on the existence of gods in ebook format as well so I could review it preparatory to an eventual return to it.

I glanced at it on a train the other day, and since I’d almost completely forgotten how it proceeded, – was it really more than two years ago?!? –  I was surprised at how interesting I found it to be.  So yesterday I got in touch Dominic to see if he’d be interesting in continuing the debate and if he had any objections to my publishing it as an ebook once it is complete. He was more than happy to agree to  a return to the engagement, and so we intend to do so before the end of the year.

I am already working on my next installment, to which Dominic will write a response and both will be published here simultaneously. I’d like to know if Alex, Markku, and Scott are willing to return to their respective roles as Agnostic Judge, Christian Judge, and Atheist Judge; also, I’d very much appreciate it if Alex would send me his complete notes as all I’d posted here was his abbreviated summaries.

If you’re not familiar with the debate or, like me, don’t remember exactly how it went, you might like to read through it again in preparation for our return to the lists. So, here are the links as well as how it began with my first entry:

ON THE EXISTENCE OF GODS

In order to make the case that the weight of the available evidence and logic is more supportive of the existence of gods than of their nonexistence, it is necessary to define the two terms. In making my case for the existence of gods, I am relying upon the definitions of “evidence” and “logic” as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary. I am utilizing the term “evidence” in a sense that encompasses all three of the primary definitions provided.

Evidence:
1.Available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid.
2.Information drawn from personal testimony, a document, or a material object, used to establish facts in a legal investigation or admissible as testimony in a law court.
3.Signs or indications of something.

Logic:
1.reasoning conducted or assessed according to strict principles of validity

There is a vast quantity of extant documentary and testimonial evidence providing indications that gods exist. This evidence dates from the earliest written records to current testimonials from living individuals. While it is true that the quality of this evidence varies considerably, it cannot simply be dismissed out of hand anymore than one can conclude Gaius Julius Caesar did not exist because one cannot see him on television today. Each and every case demands its own careful examination before it can be dismissed, and such examination has never been done in the overwhelming majority of cases.

For example, there are many documented cases of confirmed fraud in published scientific papers. If we apply the same reasoning to published scientific papers that some wish to apply to documentary evidence of gods, we have no choice but to conclude that all science is fraudulent. But this is absurd, as we know that at least some science is not fraudulent. Therefore, if one is willing to accept the validity of published scientific papers that one has not been able to verify are not fraudulent, one must similarly accept the validity of documentary evidence for the existence of gods that one has not examined and determined to merit dismissal for one reason or another.

Introduction 1 and Introduction 2

Round One Vox and Dominic’s Reply

Round One Dominic and Vox’s Reply

Round One Judges

Round Two

Round Two Judges

Round Three

Round Three Judges

Mailvox: on evidence for gods

Shagrat’s Friend explains his perspective on the distinction between atheism and agnosticism:

[A]theism and agnosticism answer two different questions. Regarding the religions that inhabit the earth (or have done so), X -1 must be false, since they’re mutually exclusive (to the extent that there’s any substance to their claims). If at least X -1 must be false, it’s really not too hard to imagine that X -1 +1 are false. (I’m not going to get into any sort of veridical arguments about the “truthiness” of any given belief system. You want to believe that the New Testament tells a cohesive story that’s internally logical, go right ahead. Just don’t bother me with all the sophistical razzmatazz necessary to explain what exactly happened when Jesus was born or what happened to Judas after he counted his money.)

As for the broader picture, yes, it is impossible to disprove the existence of some hypothetical deity. Yeah, maybe that is who started the Big Bang (if it really happened) or makes the earth spin on its axis and revolve happily around the sun day in and day out or who winds up the clockwork that makes all that stuff happen. Sure, maybe there are some Epicurean entities who spend their existence in solitary blessedness beyond the travails of this mortal coil and outside the ken of us mere humans. So to that extent, I am an agnostic.

But if that’s all “God” boils down to, who cares? I see no rational evidence for the day-to-day involvement of any deity in the regular affairs on earth. You want to believe that the sun stopped shining and an earthquake dumped the dead out of their tombs and they milled around for a while when Jesus died on the cross? Be my guest. Or that God held his nose or averted his eyes at Treblinka or Kolyma? Talk it over with Augustine and Orosius. But leave me out of that argument with all its a priori-isms that are invalid in my eyes.

A few corrections:

(1) It is not true to say that X-1 must be false or that most religions are mutually exclusive. For example, Judaism and Christianity part company on a single claim: that Jesus Christ is the Messiah. Most religions make no grand universal claims and both Christianity and Islam, the two great universal religions, comfortably encompass many, if not most, other religions by virtue of their distinction between a sovereign Creator God and the panoply of lesser gods subject to His Will.

(2) There is a considerable quantity of rational evidence for the day-to-day involvement of a deity in regular Earthly affairs. Indeed, this is the core basis for my own Christian faith. The Bible posits that the world is ruled by an arrogant, evil, intelligent, and malicious deity and we have no shortage of documentary, testimonial, and experiential evidence of his existence.

(3) There is no reason to assume that the supernatural is any less complicated, or any less full of detailed variety, than the natural. To repeatedly attempt to boil down a concept as a god, let alone The God, to a simple binary question is so intellectually vacuous as to appear either uninterested or intellectually stunted.

That being said, I can only agree that there is little point in engaging in “all the sophistical razzmatazz necessary to explain what exactly happened when
Jesus was born or what happened to Judas after he counted his money”. One might as profitably attempt to determine Martha Washington’s juggling ability or describe the loss of Alexander the Great’s virginity.

The ahistorical atheist

Armarium Magnum explains why so many atheists are historically illiterate:

After 30+ years of observing and taking part in debates about history with many of my fellow atheists I can safely claim that most atheists are historically illiterate.  This is not particular to atheists:  they tend to be about as historically illiterate as most people, since historical illiteracy is pretty much the norm.   But it does mean that when most (not all) atheists comment about history or, worse, try to use history in debates about religion, they are usually doing so with a grasp of the subject that is stunted at about high school level.

This is hardly surprising, given that most people don’t study history past high school.  But it means their understanding of any given historical person, subject or event is (like that of most people), based on half-remembered school lessons, perhaps a TV documentary or two and popular culture: mainly novels and movies.  Which is why most atheists (like most people) have a grasp of history which is, to be brutally frank, largely crap.

Worse, this also means that most atheists (again, like most people) have a grasp of how history is studied and the techniques of historical analysis and synthesis which is also stunted at high school level – i.e. virtually non-existent.  With a few laudable exceptions, high school history teachers still tend to reduce history to facts and dates organised into themes or broad topics.  How we can know what happened in the past, with what degree of certitude we can know it and the techniques used to arrive at these conclusions are rarely more than touched on at this level.  This means that when the average atheist (yet again, like the average person generally) grasps that our knowledge of the past is not as cut and dried and clear as Mr Wilkins the history teacher gave us to understand, they tend to reject the whole thing as highly uncertain at best or subjective waffle at worst.  Or, as Grundy put it, as “crap”.

All this leads some atheists, who have fallen in to the fallacy of scientism and reject anything that can’t be definitively “proven”, to reject the idea of any degree of certainty about the past.  This is an extreme position and it’s rarely a consistent one.  As I’ve noted to some who have claimed this level of historical scepticism, I find it hard to believe they maintain this position when they read the newspaper, even though they should be just as sceptical about being able to know about a car accident yesterday as they are about knowing about a revolution 400 years ago.

This is something I, too, have noticed with regards to many atheists, beginning with Bertrand Russell and Richard Dawkins. It is obvious they don’t know any more about history than they do about theology; no one who knows anything about history believes religion causes war, thinks that the Spanish Inquisition was one of the most lethal institutions in human history, or finds the assumption that Jesus was not a legitimate historical figure to be a reasonable one.

However, I do have to take exception to this statement: “This rejection can be more pronounced in atheists, because
many (not all) come to their atheism via a study of science.“ This observably isn’t true. Armarium Magnum has the order reversed. The vast majority of atheists become atheists as teenagers, before they have embarked upon any course of study, and they become atheists for reasons that are entirely emotional by their own account. They then turn to science for the explanations that they can no longer seek in religion, and are understandably disappointed and embittered when they cannot find them there either.

The reason the rejection is often more pronounced in atheists is because they are observably less rational than most people who are interested in history. No one who does not believe in the existence of gods through a rational process can legitimately call himself an atheist, for the obvious reason that it is impossible to rationally prove the non-existence of gods. An agnostic’s lack of god belief may have a rational basis, an atheist’s non-belief never can. Their irrationality not only makes them unusually susceptible to swallowing falsehoods that thirty seconds on Wikipedia would render obvious, but makes it hard for them to give up their ahistorical dogma.

What’s worse is that I’ve also experienced
atheists who have been shown extensive, clear evidence that the medieval Church
taught the earth was round and that the myth of medieval Flat Earth belief was
invented by the novelist Washington Irving in 1828, and they have simply
refused to believe that the myth could be wrong.

Neat historical fables such as the ones about Christians
burning down the Great Library of Alexandria (they didn’t) or murdering Hypatia
because of their hatred of her learning and science (ditto) are appealing
parables.  Which means some atheists fight
tooth and nail to preserve them even when confronted with clear evidence that
they are pseudo historical fairy tales.  

And before anyone angrily denounces Armarium Magnum as another theistic polemicist cut out of the same godbothering cloth as me, perhaps it should be noted that the gentleman is himself an atheist. It’s a good piece and I even learned something. It’s more than a little amusing to be informed that belief in the medieval belief in a flat earth is intellectually akin to belief in the Headless Horseman. And that will certainly make for a useful rhetorical device.

Mailvox: don’t struggle

TS writes of his difficulties in attempting to find belief in the existence of God:

Vox, I’ve read your blog for quite some time now and have enjoyed it immensely. Right now I am a struggling theist. More and more I am doubting the existence of God and it’s plaguing my thoughts and causing some serious depression.

My biggest hurdle in my mind right now is the fact that you can’t see God. You come across as very intelligent so I ask you personally: what helped you get past the fact that you can’t see God or hear from him. My mind continues to tell me I am being irrational for believing in a life form I can’t see. Am I missing something?  Is this truly a matter of “blind faith” as an atheist would mockingly say? Your thoughts are much appreciated. I genuinely want rational reasons that can help me get past this mental hurdle

It has become apparent to me that there are three primary causes for atheism. One is a simple neural anomaly where the atheist lacks something in the brain that is necessary for some forms of belief. This doesn’t merely relate to belief in God, but also in the ability to connect with other beings, hence the strong correlation between atheism and higher levels on the autism spectrum.

The second cause produces the most common and irritating variety, the intellectual perma-adolescent. This is the Religion Minus variety, which is nothing more than a parasitic Do What Thou Wilt Society. Combine it with the first cause and one has the typical New Atheist: smug, juvenile, and socially autistic.

The third cause is what I would describe as a failure of understanding. It is, I submit, a category error at its core. To me, it seems quite literally crazy to refuse to believe in ANYTHING simply because one has not seen it or heard it. We live in an age of virtual reality, where what we see and hear are entirely false. We live in an age of quantum physics, where what happens on one side of a galaxy has chaotic and unknown, but theoretically observable effects on the other side of it.

So, to think that because one has never personally seen nor heard something is any sort of indication that it doesn’t exist strikes me as solipsism of the first order. As for me, I have absolutely no problem whatsoever in believing in God’s existence. There is nothing to get past. Perhaps this paragraph explaining why I am a Christian, taken from my exchange of letters with Luke of Common Sense Atheism, will help you understand my perspective on the readily observable fact of God’s existence.

Why am I a Christian? Because I believe in evil. I believe in
objective, material, tangible evil that insensibly envelops every single
one of us sooner or later. I believe in the fallen nature of Man, and I
am aware that there is no shortage of evidence, scientific,
testimonial, documentary, and archeological, to demonstrate that no
individual is perfect or even perfectible by the moral standards
described in the Bible. I am a Christian because I believe that Jesus
Christ is the only means of freeing Man from the grip of that evil. God
may not be falsifiable, but Christianity definitely is, and it has
never been falsified. The only philosophical problem of evil that could
ever trouble the rational Christian is its absence; to the extent that
evil can be said to exist, it proves not only the validity of
Christianity but its necessity as well. The fact that we live
in a world of pain, suffering, injustice, and cruelty is not evidence of
God’s nonexistence or maleficence, it is exactly the worldview that is
described in the Bible. In my own experience and observations, I find
that worldview to be far more accurate than any other, including the
shiny science fiction utopianism of the secular humanists.

My advice to TS is to stop struggling to understand how God functions or why God hasn’t submitted to a personal belief audit and start simply experiencing the effects of God in this fallen world.

Stand outside in the cold autum breeze, close your eyes, spread your arms, and feel the unseen wind on your face. Read the Book of Proverbs, read the latest professional manual on child-rearing, written with the benefit of more than two thousand years of collective human experience, then go to a park and observe the children interacting with their parents. Go drop one rock on top of another 500 times and do your best to convince yourself that all the life you see around you began as a result of a singular accidental collision. Go to a funeral of a stranger, observe the grief of the friends and family, and tell yourself that the rearrangement of atoms involved in the transition of the deceased from life to death was of no more material import or significance than the shattering of a rock into dust.

Speak to a murderer and ask him to tell you why he committed his horrific crimes. Look at the pictures of the aftermath. Then look deep into his eyes and try to tell yourself that neither good nor evil exist.

Immerse yourself in the atheist arguments with your eyes and your mind open. Not until you fully understand them, not until you reconstruct them from their foundational assumptions, can you grasp how superficial and foolish they are from a purely rational perspective.

Empirical mysticism isn’t a path I would recommend for everyone, but the excessively logical often struggle with the reality of the mystery. They simply cannot accept that Man is not capable of formulating the questions, let alone finding the answers. That is why allowing themselves to experience and accept the manifold mysteries of life, the universe, and everything can be necessary for them to permit themselves to be convicted of things not seen.

In the end, one is advised to make The Castrate’s Choice: It is so or it is not so. Because the life lived seated on a fence makes for a poorly lived one. Choose, and then live accordingly.

How institutions die

As various Christians at Northwest Christian University fall about congratulating themselves for being so open and accepting of having an atheist student body president at their nominally Christian institution, the reality is that this likely marks the beginning of the end for the school.

A student from a Christian university in Oregon ditched the privacy of the confessional and went public about his faith, writing in the school newspaper: “I am an atheist. Yes, you read that correctly, I am an atheist.”

Eric Fromm, 21, a senior at Northwest Christian University in Eugene published his thoughts about not believing in God in the Beacon Bolt, the student-run online newspaper — despite the fact that his university is a Christian school.

Although Fromm didn’t share the religious beliefs as the school, he said in his post he decided to enroll because Northwest Christian had a “solid communications program.”

“Before I enrolled, I visited the campus to make sure that the chapel services were comfortable enough that I could fulfill the requirement,” he said. “No one was speaking in tongues or handling snakes, so I decided to stay.”

But Fromm didn’t feel at peace.

“Every day I’m burdened by the fact that my peers might reject me because I’m different from them. I won’t be rejected because of my race or social class, but simply because of the fact that I don’t believe in God — because I am an atheist,” wrote Fromm in his post.

The university should promptly expel Mr. Fromm, return his senior year tuition, and make it clear that it is a Christian university and not a secular one. Christianity is not about acceptance. It is not about tolerance. It is about separating the wheat from the chaff and dividing the sheep from the goats. In his own words, Jesus makes it perfectly clear that he did not come to bring peace. He is, in fact, the dividing factor.

If the university does not expel Mr. Fromm, then it is quite clear that it is no longer a Christian institution. It is merely another secular institution with religion classes. What’s next, churches with atheist pastors….

Now, there is nothing wrong with secular institutions that welcome everyone and practice religious and ideological ecumenicism. There is a place for such things. Atheists are welcome here, for example. But not only is there no place for inclusive Christian institutions, such institutions have no rational reason to exist in the first place. To those who will say “well, what is wrong with permitting atheists attend/teach/work at religious institutions” the answer is quite simple: look at what has happened to the Ivy League universities, the Episcopal Church, and every other Christian institution that decides to be led by the principle of tolerance rather than doctrine-based exclusion.

Every institution that doesn’t actively police its membership will be invaded, taken over, and subverted by its opponents. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about the Cub Scouts or the Communist Party. It’s not an accident that Mr. Fromm pursued a leadership position, then promptly went public with his atheism.

Just look at that smug, self-satisfied face. You can see that he is absolutely delighted for having been able to pull one over on the university. The remarkable thing is that he managed to control himself from his inclination to lecture everyone about his adolescent concept of the life, the universe, and everything. And despite the fact that he wasn’t rejected by the school, he still managed to produce a conventional work in the oppression genre.