Dialogue with an Atheist Concerning My Semi-Satirical Critique of Atheism

This came about as a result of an atheist responding to my paper, Why Atheists Are Far More Religious Than we Think. It occurred on a public Facebook page. His name will remain anonymous (unless he requests otherwise), but all the words are his, and will be in blue.
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It really is just kind of semantic. The atheist, at least the scientifically minded one, would not starkly claim that there is no possible way that a god created the universe. We are simply saying that there is no more reason to believe a god created it than to believe it was created by the tooth fairy or a dragon.

Exactly my point in reverse. Thanks for verifying my reasoning. I was arguing that there is no more reason -- and that it requires as much faith [which might be defined very broadly as a belief in unproven axioms] -- to believe that atoms and cells can do the remarkable things they do by their own self-generated power (which came from . . . ?) than to believe that there is a spiritual entity called God that put it into them in creating them.

There is some reason to believe that there is a completely natural explanation as every single scientific inquiry that has ever been solved has been solve through a natural explanation, not a supernatural one, so that is where we are going to focus our efforts of explanation.

There is plenty that is unexplained at the presuppositional level, as my post gets into. No one really knows by what conceivable process life came from non-life. There are several theories bandied about, of course, but by no means any definitive answers. So it requires "faith." You guys don't know why life is here or how the big Bang could start a process that led to it (by what laws and mechanisms?), and so you know no more than we do. You have to believe in faith that the processes that brought about these remarkable things were completely natural , whereas we agree that they are largely natural but that the missing ingredient that explains origins is indeed God. You have faith in the remarkable inherent qualities of atoms. We have faith in God. One is no more plausible than the other in this basic "brass tacks" sense.

Many great philosophers and other thinkers have believed in God, based on various arguments, as well as internal experience or intuition, so the belief can't be dismissed with a wave of the hand as mere fairy tales or on the level of a belief in unicorns, etc.

Might we be wrong in the end? Um... sure I guess. But most atheists would then put it to the theist: why your God and not another religion? Why not a tooth fairy? Why not a dragon?

And we say: "why atoms, that supposedly developed the power to create the entire universe by themselves?" Is that not an incredible blind faith? I would say that is more of a blind faith even than belief in tooth fairies or dragons as alleged possible agents of creation.

Bottom line: Jesus Christ. He revealed that God exists and what He is like. As an apologist I can give a host of reasons why I believe in God, Christianity, and Catholicism in particular. It's like asking someone "why do you love your wife?" There are a host of reasons, and the usual immediate response is to hesitate, precisely because there are so many; you don't know where to start in describing your feelings of love.

These are not questions (whatever one's view is) that are given to short, sound-byte answers. It just doesn't work that way. As I said, many great minds (arguably the vast majority of the best, most original ones) believed in God. Certainly atheists would have a hard time arguing that they were all gullible fools and anti-rational simpletons?. . .

There is no more reason for me to believe in that god than any of the hundreds upon hundreds of other gods that have made sense to their followers throughout time.

There certainly is. Christianity is based on historical argument. We can point to concrete things in history that happened, that confirm the existence of God. That's already very different off the bat from the eastern religions. But most secularists / atheists / agnostics today are ignorant of the huge differences between religions, and tend to collapse them all into an irrational box.

So atheism being a religion is really just a word game. 

Not at all, as I carefully explained in the paper. To believe what you guys do about mere material atoms requires an extraordinary, quite childlike, non-rational faith.

Atheists believe that the origin of the universe most probably has a natural explanation simply because nothing... nothing else ever has had an explanation otherwise.

Sheer nonsense. What you have in effect done is worship matter rather than spirit (that we worship). Why one rather than the other? It's completely arbitrary. You put all your faith in science, which is a variant of philosophy, that starts with unproven axioms just as every imaginable belief-system does. You have to believe that 1) the universe exists; 2) that matter follows discernible predictable laws (uniformitarianism); 3) that our senses can be trusted to accurately convey these laws and observations to us.

This is why modern science began in a thoroughly Christian culture (Europe in the Middle Ages) and why the founders and developers of virtually all scientific sub-fields were Christians or at least some sort of theist: because Christianity offered these necessary presuppositions, to start doing science. Hence, the Lutheran Kepler's famous statement that the scientist was "thinking God's thoughts after Him."

If anyone can claim credit for historic, foundational science, it is Christianity, not atheism. I wrote a whole book about it.

I have never met an atheist who didn't say that if you showed them any actual evidence to the contrary that they wouldn't change their mind. But no religion has yet done so. Not one. And that is the difference between atheism and a religion.

These are merely empty (and rather sweeping, dogmatic) claims. How do you know no religion has ever offered a rational answer to the sort of garden variety questions that atheists bring up? How much of religion have you studied? If you were once a Christian, what books of apologetics and philosophy of religion have you read? Have you read debates between Christian philosophers and atheists, etc.?

It's always easy to make sweeping, dramatic claims (such as you have done) without backing them up.

My argument is of a different nature. I'm not saying that atheists are dummies or immoral, just because they are atheists, but rather, that the faith they claim that Christians exercise and they supposedly don't, is a Grand Myth: that they, too, exercise faith, just as anyone does who believes in any worldview (including science, which is a form of philosophy called empiricism). It's impossible not to start with some unproven axioms, and they are, well, unproven. That means they weren't arrived at through observation or empirical evidence or even reason. They can't be absolutely proven.

So there is no reason for atheists to look down their noses at the supposedly "gullible" or "childish" Christians on this score. There is equally no reason to claim that Christianity is allegedly inexorably opposed to scientific inquiry. It's all atheist fairy tales and talking points, exhibiting a huge ignorance of the history of both science and philosophy.

Atheists (in my experience) are ready to change their mind for evidence.

And in my 34-year experience discussing things with atheists it is just the opposite: they are largely impervious to reason and fact if they go against their views already held in faith, without reason at the axiomatic level.

But there are atheists who have converted and become Christians by means of reason. I know several of them. I just haven't seen it happen in my own experience. I've had several atheists tell me, though, that my books were key in convincing them to become theists and eventually Catholics.

If one changes their mind without evidence, what is to stop them from drifting from one religion to another to another every time someone presents them with a new perspective? 

I fully agree. Reason has to be exercised in any rational, plausible worldview, or it ain't worth much.

What each religion is asking the atheist to do, is to take their un-evidenced word for it, but not the next person's un-evidenced word for it.

That's what an unsophisticated Christian might do: "just accept our beliefs with a blind faith" -- but that is not the view of either the Bible or the Christians who devote themselves to rational defense of the faith (apologists like myself) or those who are philosophers of religion or theistic philosophers.

I literally have no reason to choose one religion over the next besides my own comfort with its message.

This clearly exhibits your non-acquaintance with the competing truth claims of various religions. Again, I ask you: what have you read of Christian apologetics? How much did you even understand the theology if you were once a Christian? Neither can a person cannot reject what they never understood, or fully understood, either. They are, instead, rejecting a caricature or straw man, which they proceed to pillory the rest of their lives if they are atheists.

I have shown this again and again in analyzing atheist "deconversion stories." Soon I will be compiling a book about that, too, and how so many atheists vainly fancy themselves as such experts on the Bible, whereas they are in fact profoundly ignorant and don't know the first thing about proper biblical hermeneutics or exegesis or the various literary genres in the Bible, etc., or the ancient Near Eastern (i.e., Mesopotamian) cultural background that is a crucial component of both Judaism and Christianity.

Moreover, I would point out that no message is more appealing (in one big sense) to human beings than atheism. You're accountable to no higher being. You can do whatever you want or desire to do, including the usual sexual desires and freedoms that people so often seek after. You can go the hedonist route and live merely for pleasure, or have fun deriding Christians and having a sense of self-importance and superiority in so doing (I've met many atheists of that sort; but many are not).

In other words, it's a wash. Human beings of whatever belief-system tend to follow what personally appeals to them. If you want to claim that this is the exclusive characteristic of Christians or all religious folk, it works the same way in criticizing atheism, so this "argument" proves nothing one way or the other.

The more honest atheists, such as Aldous Huxley, even freely admitted that they ditched religion precisely for the purpose of sexual freedom.

. . . which honestly Christianity's message in the end comforts me in no way.

Exactly! But atheism does, and makes you feel good, which is what you accuse Christians of doing. You do the same thing that you have just derided. You choose it because it suits you. We believe, on the other hand, that we choose Christianity, not because it makes us feel wonderful and warm fuzzy happy, but because it's true.

The great apologist G. K. Chesterton stated, "Christianity has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried."

It's a difficult life, but I wouldn't trade it and its joy and peace with anything. I've tried to seriously live the Christian life for now 38 years. It has never let me down. But it is not without suffering. Joy is deeper than suffering. This is why Christians have been willing to die as martyrs through the centuries. They weren't trying to avoid suffering, but rather, hell.

This is what you have just revealed to us is how you approached the matter: based on your desires and the comfort-factor, not based on an objective, dispassionate search for metaphysical and/or moral truth. At least that is how it appears or sounds at first glance. I'm just going by your own words . . .

As for the different faiths, theists (of the Abrahamic vein) are fully convinced that there are no gods at all... except for their one god. Why is it completely rational for Christians, Muslims, Jews to discount every other god that people follow except for this one, but the atheist who believes in just one fewer gods is absolutely wrong?

Yes; that is the nature of monotheism, because we believe that this one God has revealed Himself. We do for various reasons, that can't be briefly summarized, because there are so many of 'em.

It's not that you believe in "just one fewer god" but that in so doing you have to explain the universe according to pure naturalism or materialism, and it just doesn't make any sense and comes off sounding rather fantastic and irrational, when closely scrutinized, as I did in this paper.

You're welcome to explain to all of us how these atoms managed to do all that they have supposedly done, by themselves, with no outside or spiritual or supernatural aid, as a result of an explosion 15 billion years ago (or however long ago it is believed to be now).

We're waiting with baited breath. But no atheist has done so thus far, and I would bet good money that you will not be the first one. It's such a mystery that atheists are now fond of postulating "multiverses" so that they can simply ignore their huge problem of explaining origins, and push it back to earlier universes that they are equally ignorant of, as to process and origin. Very convenient, isn't it? If you can't explain something, invent a completely arbitrary fairy tale, with no rational or empirical evidence whatsoever to back it up . . .

And we Christians get accused of "God of the gaps" with this sort of desperate avoidance analysis going on among materialist scientists? It's a joke!

We are effectively living the same process with one minor tweak further. All religions have equal amounts of evidence (zero) so why one non-evident religion over the next? 

You are merely assuming what you are trying to prove here, which is circular reasoning. You have not provided any actual reasons for believing these things. You simply make bald assertions. And I can tell you from my own long study in apologetics that they are not true statements. I do have the papers and books that already contain my reasonings.

There may very well be a god/goddess/gods/goddesses,

If you truly believe that, you should assume an agnostic stance, rather than an atheist one (but it sounds like you self-identify with the latter).

but since he/she/it/they have elected to give no evidence to the empirical senses with which they created us,

Once again, you assume what you think you prove. There is all kinds of empirical evidence for Christianity. Jesus was an actual human person, identifiable in history. He performed miracles, which were witnessed. He rose from the dead and was seen by more than 500 eyewitnesses. There is an empty tomb that hasn't been adequately expained. It was guarded by Roman soldiers, under the pain of death if they failed to guard it. We know that the tomb was empty, from hostile reports and theories that the body was stolen, etc. People were willing to die for this faith, etc. There is all sorts of hard evidence that has to be grappled with.

There is no way to know who it is without relying solely on personal subjective interpretation and heresay [sic] from supposed eyewitnesses from centuries ago in books which no one has any reason to believe other than faith in certain groups of human being who have supposedly preserve the integrity of these first hand accounts hundreds of years ago.

This is incredible "reasoning." We rely on eyewitness and firsthand testimony for all historical accounts whatsoever. You don't doubt those when it comes to the existence of Socrates or Alexander the Great or even Abraham Lincoln. But all of a sudden when religious faith is involved, all these people were gullible idiots, who made up a bunch of fairy tales, and then were willing to die for the fairy tales.

It makes no sense at all. What this amounts to is a huge double standard, where you accept history, except when anyone religious is the testifier or witness of what happened at a particular point. Then you dismiss it. That's irrationally arbitrary, self-defeating, and bigoted.

The Bible has, time and again, been backed up, as to its extraordinary historical accuracy, whether through manuscripts (e.g., the Dead Sea Scrolls) or archaeology or textual analysis. It's accurate. It reports history. But someone who denies the existence of miracles beforehand simply dismisses any miraculous account.

That's not a strictly "rational" analysis. It's not rational to arbitrarily choose to disbelieve that a miraculous event can ever happen, and so dismiss any such account because it doesn't fit the arbitrary axiom already accepted for no good reason.

Many things in science would have been thought totally impossible or implausible before they were proven (e.g., quantum physics or black holes or relativity). Yet what was "impossible" because possible and even "proven" in the usual scientific fashion.

Why could not miracles be the same sort of thing? How can you or anyone else say in a blanket way that they could not ever possibly have happened? You cannot . . .

Unless someone has a "Damascus road" experience, personally, their faith isn't in god anyway, 

At some point, experience must enter in, yes. We Christians claim to have various spiritual experiences that confirm our faith and beliefs. I have had several, myself. My life changed.

it's in people: the person who wrote the Scripture they believe, the person who they passed it onto; the person they passed it on to; the person who passed it on to you. 

Every belief-system has an internal tradition and a heritage which has been passed on. There's nothing new under the sun. You as an atheist argue the same way that atheists did 3,000 years ago. And that is because you all start from the implausible axiom that I have discussed in my paper. Because you have so little reason to back yourself up, you have to content yourselves with bashing Christianity, to make yourselves feel so intellectually superior to us. It just won't fly.

It may with some construction worker in a bar or an old lady with purple tennis shoes, who don't know apologetics or philosophy from a hole in the ground, but not with someone who is acquainted with those things, and how the atheist / secular mind works. I used to think in largely the same terms, and I was spoon-fed secularism in school.

If people want to say atheism is a religion, I guess thats fine if one wants define what one means by religion.

My argument in my paper was that it was not a whit more reasonable, nor does it require any less faith (defined as acceptance of unproven and unprovable axioms). You have not really overcome my actual argument at all. You're just preaching . . . That's usually what atheists do. Not always (I've had some extremely interesting and constructive dialogues with several atheists), but usually.

Just note the the faith in atheism is in a logical system, that has heretofore been the only system that has ever offered a correct answer to the way anything works. 

Where to begin? It's not logical at all, as I think I have shown: not at the presuppositional, axiomatic level. It's a profoundly faith-filled, arbitrary, implausible view. Secondly, atheism doesn't own science. Quite the contrary: it was begun by Christians and completely dominated by them for hundreds of years. Even now, some 40-45% of scientists would identify as some sort of theist (as well as a probably lesser, but significant number of philosophers: many among the best ones). Yet atheists routinely assume that they are the reasonable ones and own science. It's a lie.

What we Christians say is that science (or matter) is not all that there is. There are other forms of knowledge, and religious faith is real, and rational, and can be defended as such.

I don't consider logic my "god" because I don't believe in a god. 

I can see that, because from where I sit, you are not arguing very logically at all. Your belief-system is arbitrary and meaningless irrationality (which I would argue is what all atheism always logically reduces to).

I believe it's a system through which we have found answers and has thus far been the only such system.

That's simply not true. Science (begun and dominated by Christians), philosophy, and religion have all given us plenty of answers and solutions.

Is that faith? Sure? I guess? Sort of? But in a very different way. Semantics.

I think there are lots of word games that atheists play. I have offered what I believe is a solid, logical critique.

Nothing personal! Thanks for the dialogue.


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