I've had some time to digest the comments of some atheists on my previous posts and here's my current conclusion. In the debate between atheism and theism, or more specifically to me, atheism and Christianity, any stopping point between "I am a collection of subatomic particles" and "I am a soul with a body" is completely arbitrary on the part of the atheist.
Scientific atheism's central point, in fact it's only point, is that it is logical and provable. "Prove God exists!" is the repeated cry from the scientific atheists. Outside of the few that actually do posit a nihilistic worldview that they are nothing more than a collection of subatomic particles (energy packets?), atheists employ sloppy reasoning and arbitrary logic. Centering the discussion around people or even living things is completely without basis and can only be defended by claiming that you need a convenient frame of reference. This causes all kinds of problems.
Once you admit that your stopping point on that scaling chart was arbitrary, all arguments about morality, life, saving the Earth, gay rights and so forth go completely out the window. While you can stop at any point on the chart for the sake of logical argument about God's existence (we don't diagnose our car's transmission with spectrometers because the components are so large), that's as far as that arbitrary choice can take you. After that, there is nothing useful you can derive from atheism. Everything devolves into "because I said so." Here are some examples in the form of a conversation between a Catholic and an atheist.
C: Why save the whales? The whales are nothing more than a bag of proteins.
A: No, they are beautiful, sentient creatures!
C: Why?
A: Because I said so!
C: Why should I not kill you and steal everything you own? You are nothing but a collection of atoms.
A: No, I am a living being. Your actions would be wrong.
C: Why?
A: Because I said so!
And so on. Far from being rational and logical, atheism, save for the nihilists, is arbitrary and irrational.
Wait... tailoring one's responses to the actual situation at hand is "arbitrary" now?
ReplyDeleteSome atheists are honest about this, like Richard Dawkins:
ReplyDeleteThe universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. As that unhappy poet A.E. Housman put it: ‘For Nature, heartless, witless Nature Will neither care nor know.’ DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.
Others like to pretend otherwise.
A: Why should I not kill you and steal everything you own? You are nothing but a collection of atoms.
ReplyDeleteC: No, I am a living being. Your actions would be wrong.
A: Why?
C: Because the Pope said God said so!
Is that really much better?
In the first place, atheism isn't currently 'provable' in my opinion, it's just that the majority of evidence leans that way. But apart from that, I don't understand the insistence on bringing an argument over morals into it.
ReplyDeleteAtheism is nothing more than a disbelief in a deity. It is not a moral code. Atheists can be, and undoubtedly are, on both sides of 'Save the Whales' or 'gay marriage'. The implicit argument seems to say that if atheism doesn't lead to a moral code, it must not be true. I don't see how that follows at all.
The fact that atheists can come to egregious and varied moral decisions is not a convincing argument that god exists. For that matter I would be surprised if Christians didn't end up on both sides of those issues. Some Christians support gay marriage, and I'd be surprised if some Japanese Christians didn't like a nice Whale steak now and again.
T.E.: "Because the Pope said God said so!" ???
ReplyDeleteShould we laugh, or call 911?
Anon: "The fact that atheists can come to egregious and varied moral decisions is not a convincing argument that god exists."
True. That's why it never was an "argument" that God exists, just as the fact that some people who claim, sincerely or not, to believe in God make egregious and varied moral decisions is not an argument God does not exist. Surely we can all agree that the fact of God's existence or non-existence is, by definition, not a function of any human activity of any kind.
Hey, Tim is right. I offload my theological thinking to someone I trust just as I offload my car repair to someone I trust. I never claimed to be 100% science and reason-based and that's OK with me. My position doesn't require those standards.
ReplyDeleteSeñor Gato,
ReplyDeleteI understand and appreciate what you are saying. But, Señor, as a fairly recent Catholic convert, I can assure you that for nine-tenths of my life the Pope's views on anything had, at its uttermost, indirect influence.
No, the guy who had the greatest and most stunning impact on my conversion to theism was a little guy in a beat-up pickup in the middle of the Wyoming desert. And he was probably a Pentecostal.
On the other hand, I do have to chuckle at what passes for theology in the atheist community. Freshman "dorm-room six-pack and a joint" physics is more intellectually sophisticated. And I say that as a former freshman, a former atheist, and a former engineering professor.
But speaking as post-conversion Christian and former Protestant, one of the most powerful attractions of the Catholic Church (excluding the Eucharist, which towers over everything else) is its theological peer-review system (the Magisterium) and the voice of Church as spoken by the Vicar of Christ.
So I see and appreciate your point, but, sadly, it wasn't true for me for most of my life.
All roads lead to Rome, but they come from many directions.
Secular, I was fortunate enough to have been born Catholic so I didn't have to make any kind of a journey at all. Having said that, your statement,
ReplyDelete"But speaking as post-conversion Christian and former Protestant, one of the most powerful attractions of the Catholic Church (excluding the Eucharist, which towers over everything else) is its theological peer-review system (the Magisterium) and the voice of Church as spoken by the Vicar of Christ."
hits home for me. Your understanding of your belief system has to grow as you grow, and the more I've read and researched it, the more solid I find the thinking of the Church fathers. I fully admit that I don't have a good understanding of other faiths, but it's been a great comfort to find that no matter how deep I want to go, there is solid content there.