Monday, May 07, 2007

Perenially Trying, Perenially Failing

Atheists, that is.

excerpt:

I was an atheist for 27 years. I used to play on that team. I used to pick on religious people too. I knew the arguments to press and those to avoid.

Attack with how unscientific theism is, how religious people aren’t very smart because they don’t chair any departments in the hard sciences at the right schools (it’s really called censorship). Raise the problem of evil: How could an omnipo-tent, loving God allow evil? Either God is not all powerful and can’t destroy it, or He doesn’t want to. Either way there can’t be a God because evil exists (don’t bring up the existence of good though, it’s too problematic). And, finally, go for the jugular with the hypocrisy of religious believers (You know, mention “all the wars in the name of religion,” and “all the fallen pastors” and especially, “the founders owned slaves” stuff, it’s really a good distraction.)

Avoid the pesky problem of freewill. If atheism is true, if all that exists is mere matter and energy, then I don’t have a brain, I am my brain. But if the brain is exhaustively physical, then it is just as incapable of acting freely as a computer or any other machine. Which is why the idea of Artificial Intelligence makes for such fun science fiction – the more peo-ple believe that a computer can become a person, the less likely they will have need to believe they were created in God’s image. Thus, more AI, less theism – that’s the game plan. Same with the search for ET. Find life elsewhere so we can dismiss Genesis.

But, above all, avoid being cornered and forced to answer the questions of origins. Throw out lots of words that people can’t understand. Talk over them. Blind them with science. Talk about the details of the leaves on the trees but don’t allow them to bring it back to “Why the forest at all?” Assert the fact/value distinction. Claim that only science deals with knowledge. Drop in some postmodern gobbledygook. Distract them with how science deals with the “what, where, how and when” and not the “who and the why.” Especially avoid people who have had training in the philosophy of science – they’re dangerous because they see through us and know who we are – they don’t see the shimmering lab coats that everyone else sees. They don’t see any clothes at all.

Since the pre-Socratics, atheists have been intellectual parasites living off the host of Western Civilization. Able to con-struct so very little of their own that is either true, good, or beautiful, they live on the borrowed capital of their believing intellectual parents. Atheists have been asserting the same basic mechanistic worldview, and with roughly the same suc-cess, for centuries. They sell books and win converts from time to time, sure, especially among those gullible enough to buy the “just popped” thesis. Don’t be gullible.

But, for me, the real value of atheism lies in bolstering belief in God. When I doubt, I can begin to doubt my doubts by returning to the Four Big Bangs. And, I eventually fall to my knees and worship, “In the beginning, God.”

Yup. I love it when atheists put their best foot forward. The effects are the opposite of what they intend. And for rational philosophical reasons, not out of obstinacy on my part. Which is quite incomprehensible to them.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The phrase "all that exists is mere matter and energy" must have been on sale at the poorly reasoned arguments store -- it was used recently in defense of Intelligent Design Creationism, and here it is used in defense of theism in general.

It is trivially easy to argue that we have (or do not have) free will. Without a clear definition of the subject, though, any two sides in an argument will end up going in circles. The major problem for Pastore's argument is that most dictionaries define free will in terms of coersion, restraint or constraint -- not in terms of determinism. An example of why this is a useful distinction: If an "exhaustively" physical brain implies no free will because choices are driven by physics, then drug addicts are morally blameless because their choice to feed their fix is driven by biology and chemistry; weekly attendance to church is morally worthless because it is instilled as a matter of habit and implicit coersion. Deferring to an omnipotent Decider to make your decisions of what is good or bad is just as much a violation -- or abnegation -- of free will.