Three r/atheism Images in Need of Debunking

Like many people, I have a fascination with the grotesque. Every few weeks, I find myself returning to the subreddit r/atheism.

Today I’ll be responding to a few of the (non-profane) images that I encountered on my latest reddit safari.

Numero uno:

When I saw this quote, I thought it seemed a little over the top (even for Hume). I did some double-checking, and it turns out that this is taken from Hume’s “A Treatise of Human Nature“. The sentence originally included a qualifier: “Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.”

It’s still a pretty bold claim. I give a few counterexamples.

- Social Darwinism
- Moral Relativism
- National Socialism
- Hedonism
- Anarchism
- Nihilism
- Opportunism
- Will to Power
- Segregationism

Next up:

I’ll tackle this one point-by-point.

“…every single bit of progress in human feeling…[has been consistently opposed by the organized Churches of the world].”

I’m not quite sure what’s meant by “progress in human feeling”…but one could fill tomes with the names of poets, artists, composers, and authors who haven’t been antagonized by organized churches.

“…every improvement in the criminal law…[has been consistently opposed by the organized Churches of the world].”

What about the post-Constantine Christian leaders, who reformed Roman law to prevent abuses against women and children? What about the role of the Justinian Corpus Juris Civilis in establishing an early basis for western civil law - including procedural justice and legal equality for women? What about the Judeo-Christian understanding of natural law, and the idea that all men are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”? What about the Catholic Church’s stance against torture, suicide, and euthanasia?

“…every step towards the diminution of war…[has been consistently opposed by the organized Churches of the world].”

What about the numerous Christian contributions to just war theory? Or from another perspective, what about the admirable nonviolence of the Quakers (an organized Church, last time I checked)?

“…every step towards better treatment of the coloured races, or every mitigation of slavery…[has been consistently opposed by the organized Churches of the world].”

Why, then, was the American abolitionist movement spearheaded largely by clergymen? What about William Wilberforce and the Second Great Awakening? What about the many thousands of church-supported Christian missionaries who have left their homes and families to bring spiritual, material, and medical support to the most impoverished corners of the world?

This Hitchens quote is a complete non sequitur. Let’s apply the reasoning to something besides religion.

“Since it is obviously inconceivable that all [economic theories] can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are all wrong.”

Or imagine that I ask 100 people for directions to the nearest post office, and I receive a hodgepodge of different, often conflicting answers. It’s possible that all the directions are wrong…but it’s also possible that one or more of them are right. Dismissing all of the competing claims outright isn’t “the most reasonable conclusion”; it’s just the most intellectually lazy.

(In a previous post, I tackled this issue from the perspective of a Christian who de-converts, in part, because of the competing claims of the numerous world religions.)

The Role of “Choice” in Faith: Puddleglum’s Speech

In my last post, I began a discussion on the role of “choice” in faith by addressing Bertrand Russell’s teapot analogy and the implicit idea that belief in God requires proof.

So for the duration of this post, I will be working off the assumption that a Christian’s faith entails a reasonable and purposeful belief that is supported by evidence. This kind of faith isn’t “blind” by any means, but neither does it demand empirical, scientific proof.

If one accepts this definition of faith and the premise that Christianity has a chance of being true, where does this leave us?

In a recent post, Max Andrews asked himself the question: “What would it take for me to be an atheist?” Some of his thoughts are given below:

“I was speaking with my professor over lunch a month or so back and we struck up a conversation on what it would take for us to be atheists.  Proving the resurrection false doesn’t disprove God, it just disproves Christianity.  The cosmological, fine-tuning, ontological, and moral arguments still work….I believe these arguments are sound.  If I were to become an atheist it wouldn’t be for intellectual reasons, it would be for emotional and existential reasons. What’s interesting is that I’m a Christian for existential reasons. My existentialism is what drove me to Christianity.  I recognized my life was utterly meaningless, valueless, and purposeless without God.” (read the full post here)

An atheist friend of mine once dismissed this idea as “believing in something because you want it to be true”. He then compared Christians to those who jump off tall buildings because they want to be able to fly…and actually believe they can. This comparison, however, suffers from the same problem as Russell’s teapot analogy. It equates a belief in human flight (something with no evidence at all) with a belief in Christianity (something with considerable philosophical and historical evidence, regardless of one’s ultimate conclusions).

The reality is that one of Christianity’s greatest draws is its “appeal to beauty”. It reveals the ultimate source of meaning, value, and purpose that we’re all searching for. All that remains is to make the choice to believe; a “leap of faith”, but not a blind one.

In my opinion, this “appeal to beauty” is most elegantly conveyed in – of all places – a children’s book. In C.S. Lewis‘s “The Silver Chair“, the main characters have entered the underground realm of the Green Lady, where they’ve been enchanted into losing their belief in the above-ground world. One of the characters, a marsh-wiggle named Puddleglum, makes the following speech:

“Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things–trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.” 

Related Articles

Atheism’s Universe is Meaningless and Valueless (J.W. Wartick)

Faith and Reason (Part 1) (Quadrivium)

The Role of “Choice” in Faith: Addressing Russell’s Teapot

“Once to every man and nation
comes the moment to decide
In the strife of truth with falsehood
for the good or evil side.

With each choice God speaking to us,
offers each the bloom or blight
Then the man or nation chooses
for the darkness or the light.”

-James R. Lowell

When it comes to matters of faith and religion, there is a prevailing tendency among skeptics to deny that belief is a choice. At some point, most of us have probably heard something along the lines of, “Christianity sounds nice and all, but I’m just not able to believe it,” or perhaps, “I’ll believe it if you can prove it.”

Unfortunately, this attitude is dangerously flawed.

It’s flawed because the idea that belief requires proof is completely inconsistent with the meaning of faith.

It’s dangerous because it provides people with a spiritual and intellectual “out”. They reason: “If Christianity can’t be empirically proven, then I can’t be held responsible for not believing. God – if he exists – should have given me some proof.” In response to this, a quote from Tozer and a verse from John immediately come to mind.

“We rest in what God is. I believe that this alone is true faith. Any faith that must be supported by the evidence of the senses is not real faith.” -A.W. Tozer

“Then Jesus told him, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.’” -John 20:29 (NIV)

Skeptics commonly cite Russell’s Teapot as a justification for rejecting the existence of the God of the Bible. This well-known analogy is often used to place upon Christians the burden of proof for God’s existence – despite the Christian’s insistence that the need for proof (in a scientific sense) goes entirely against the point. The argument is stated as follows:

“I ought to call myself an agnostic; but, for all practical purposes, I am an atheist. I do not think the existence of the Christian God any more probable than the existence of the Gods of Olympus or Valhalla. To take another illustration: nobody can prove that there is not between the Earth and Mars a china teapot revolving in an elliptical orbit, but nobody thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account in practice. I think the Christian God just as unlikely.” -Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell

Of course, the problem with this reasoning should be immediately obvious to the fair-minded person. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that a china teapot exists in orbit between Earth and Mars, and in fact there are many very good reasons to doubt the existence of such a teapot. To make this same assertion about the Christian God requires that one willfully ignore not only the well-reasoned philosophical arguments for God’s existence, but also the overwhelming historical and archaeological evidence supporting many of the central claims and events of the Bible.

It’s one thing to debate these arguments for God head-on, but quite another to simply dismiss them outright or pretend that they don’t exist. And even if the skeptic ultimately finds the evidence for God to be insufficient, it must still be conceded that this is not the same as having no evidence at all (as is the case for the teapot). Thus, Russell’s analogy is fatally flawed (along with more modern parodies like the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the Invisible Pink Unicorn).

Keep reading: in my next post, I further explore the role of “choice” in faith.

Related Articles

Atheists and Unicorns: Emotional Appeal (J.W. Wartick)

If God wanted us to believe in him, why doesn’t he give us more evidence? (Wintery Knight)

Russell’s Teapot: Does it Hold Water? (Maverick Philosopher)