Atheists make sense to me, but I can’t take them seriously. Their
motives vary, but typically fall into the camps of righteous indignation or misapplied
nihilism. Then there are those who just don’t care (though if your push them,
they turn out to be mostly agnostic).
Atheism, at its simplest, is the positive claim that there
is no God. As a philosophy student, my question is instantly “how do you know
that?” I ask this because the claim is not “there is no particularly good
reason to believe in God.” No, it is stated as the truth distilled from the
lips of reason herself that there is no God.
Yeah, No.
My beef with this is a common blunder of attaching the word “reason”
to claims that “make sense.” Spock, nor scientist, nor atheist may call their
modus operandi “reasonable.” To say that a claim is backed by reason is usually,
(I would say always, but in this I am agnostic), a total cop out designed to
make belittling one’s opponents seem like the moral high ground: “I alone of
all people (together with those who think like me) see the manifest truth (which
is obvious) and anyone who does not agree is a blind idiot. So there.”
Define reason. No, don’t give me your evidence; I want to
see your method and criteria. What are they? Oh, subjectively defined
non-empirical criteria loaded with oodles of value assumptions (which
incidentally can never be derived from “matters of fact”). Uh huh. So you are
saying that you have decided that God does not exist and have then gone looking
for sufficient corroborating evidence to make you feel like you believe because
of the overwhelming, evident, manifest truth after the fact? Got it. You are
still arguing? So you have convinced yourself well. Now here come the prepared
attacks on faith generally as immoral (see the above problems with establishing
moral criteria from “matters of fact”), and attacks on my religious tradition
(inferred hastily and a bit too generally) as irrational or inconsistent.
I understand that there are a host of reasons for
disbelieving in God. I understand this with the heart as well as the head. What
I have a problem with is claiming to hold reason as the enemy of faith,
particularly when the “reason” implied is empirical. No decision or assertion
of value of any kind is consistent with empirical reason outside of pure
subjective preference as the ultimate arbiter.
