1 Peter 3:15 commands us to always be ready to give an answer to every man who asks a reason for the hope that is in us. It doesn't say to only answer the easy questions. Indeed, the more difficult the question, the more urgent should our answers be. This is the reason I blog. It's true I devote much of my blog to the creation/evolution debate but that's because I believe evolution is the greatest challenge to the Faith in our time. Even so, I'm always on the look out for other criticisms of the Bible and of Christianity.
There's an article online titled 3 Famous Atheists & Their Best Arguments. You can read them all for yourself but, as I read them, I didn't find any of them very compelling. I'm not sure if I should be disappointed or excited. //RKBentley scratches his head// I will probably be writing about all the arguments in future posts, but I wanted to start with one in particular. It's not that I think this one is the best argument; rather, it's used less often and, since many Christians may not have heard it, they might not be sure how to answer it. From the article, the argument goes like this:
RELIGION
IS DESPERATION
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[Friedrich Nietzsche] noticed this painful truth about religion. It's made up of people who are intensely afraid of reality, and of the truth of the human condition. Religion comes from our hatred for our loathsome existence and our deep desire to deny the actuality of death and future loss. However, if we can be united in our dissociation from real life, we can be happy. We can call this dissociation "faith" and together we can be free from the horror of existence. Religion allows people to forget that we are on a rock zipping through the cosmic abyss at hundreds of kilometers per second and that eventually our sun won't even exist, our planet will not even be a memory, and this truth is something that people desperately scurry away and hide from.
While this article attributes this argument to Nietzsche, the idea well predates him. The earliest and most famous (infamous) person who raised this point is perhaps Karl Marx who said, “Religion is the opium of the people.” Wiki actually cites the full quote as saying, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” The implication is, life is really hard and people use religion like a drug to escape from reality. There is such a tangle of problems with this argument that it's difficult to find the best order to unravel them.
IT'S AN APPEAL TO MOTIVE
I believe I should dive right in and start with the obvious: this is a text book example of the fallacy, appeal to motive. Think about it. Suppose I really do believe in Christ only because I'm afraid to die. How would that make Christianity not real? It would be like a person, dying from cancer, rejoicing when the doctor says, “I have good news. Here's a cure!” The sick person certainly has a reason to want to believe the doctor but his eagerness (or even his skepticism if he doubted) has no bearing on whether he is really sick or whether the doctor really has a cure. To question the motive of believers, by saying they believe in God only because they are afraid of the world, does nothing – NOT ONE THING – to establish atheism as being correct or theism as being wrong.
If we looked at the opposite side of the coin, I could make this same argument against atheists – that God is real and atheists deny there's a God so they can live their lives however they want and pretend there is no God who will judge them after they die. I could say that Hell is real and the thought of eternal torment scares atheists so much that they try to convince themselves it isn't real. I could talk about the amazing historical evidence for the Bible, about the evidence for the Flood, about the evidence against evolution but atheists won't accept any of it because to acknowledge any point means they would have to accept the possibility of a God and that's not an option for them.
If any skeptic truly thinks God isn't real because Christians want Him to be real (I still can't quite figure out what point they're trying to make), then he needs to examine his own motives. Romans 1:18-20 says, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:” I believe the evidence for God is overwhelming. Everything I know about reality affirms over and over that there is a God behind it all. The Bible says we intuitively know there is a God, I shouldn't even have to present any evidence of Him. So when atheists deny what should be obvious, I do question their motives. Are you ready for a dose of irony? Many atheists only claim to be atheists because they know God is real!
IT'S A HASTY GENERALIZATION
Besides its faulty appeal to motive foundation, Nietzsche deftly piles onto his argument still another fallacy of logic, the hasty generalization. It's true there may be people out there who fear death so much that they would leap at any promise of eternal life – even an empty promise. Yet even if that's true, it's no basis to suggest this applies to all Christians or even most Christians.
The majority of Christians believe in God and the Bible for the same reasons people believe anything, namely, they are convinced that these things are true. We become convinced through many different lines reason: logic, evidence, and our experiences. It's factually wrong to suggest the primary factor why Christians choose to believe is fear.
IT'S AD HOMINEM
It's hilarious when an atheist acts “holier-than-thou,” but in their typical, condescending fashion, they suggest it's them who are enlightened thinkers that fully grasp reality while theists are quivering cowards who couldn't leave their house without an assurance that someone “up there” is going to keep them safe. I'm not sure exactly why they does this. It could be simple ridicule borne out of a habitual contempt for theism. It could be a tactic aimed at shaming people who claim to believe. Whatever the reason, it's rather shameful.
No one wants to look like a coward. No one wants to be thought of as a person who can't face reality. Yet that's what this argument tries to do with Christians. It may be possible to embarrass a person to the point he is afraid to admit what he truly believes to be true but it's just a gimmick. It does nothing to prove what the person believes isn't true.
IT CONTRADICTS ITSELF
If people invent religion to quell their fears of reality, why invent a religion with hell? It doesn't make any sense. In fact, it's beyond senseless for someone who already fears death to create a religion where a worse punishment might await him after death! If fear were truly the motivating factor for people to believe in God, some form of universalism, the belief that all people can live happily ever after, would be the most popular religion.
In conclusion, let me remind you of the title of the article that raised this point: 3 Famous Atheists & Their Best Arguments. I'll repeat that, “their best arguments.” Really? Saying, “You only believe in God because you're afraid of reality,” is one of the best arguments for atheism? I'm sorry but it's not one of the best. It's not even a good argument. It does nothing to support atheism and the author should be embarrassed that he even included it in his article.
2 Timothy 1:7, “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”
I had a problem with Blogger the last time I tried to reply, hence the delay posting these few quibbles.
ReplyDeleteFirst, the linked article is less "the best arguments of three famous atheists," than "four arguments from Sam Wickstrom, with slightly-out-of-context quotes from three famous atheists." It is Wickstrom who argues that religion springs from the terror of the transience of life amidst the vastness of time and space. I concede your point that this is an illicit appeal to motive.
This is not, I think, the same thing as Nietzsche's disgust with life: Nietzsche, famously, is the man who pointed out that the average human would be horrified to live forever, if it just meant living this life over and over again (the superman -- the hero able to create a true morality, transcending the master morality Nietzsche identified with Rome and the slave morality he identified with Christianity -- would be the exception). And Nietzsche was odd enough, and knew it, that I don't think you can extrapolate from his claim that atheism was instinctive for him to a claim that it was instinctive for everyone (so I don't think your charge of hasty generalization is true of Nietzsche -- though, again, you are in any case arguing with Wickstrom).
And Dawkins doesn't, that I recall from my reading, much concern himself with the motives for Christian doctrine and belief; he seems to treat religion as running off of sheer intellectual inertia.
But as for "why would a religion invented to console and encourage invent Hell," I can think of a couple of reasons. On the one hand, Hell is the promise that the enemies who persecute us, who escape justice in this life, will receive condign punishment in the next. The tormentors will become the tormented; one can readily imagine the attraction of such a doctrine to the currently tormented.
On the other hand, Hell is a threat to potential defectors: leave the faith, and face not merely the hostility of your former companions but the unrelenting horrible punishment from an omnipotent Creator. Especially since the main rewards of Christianity are deferred, and since humans tend to discount against the future (not valuing a reward in the future as highly as the same reward now), very terrible punishments must be threatened for this purpose.
I have long noticed that the letters of Paul nowhere mention Hell, or any sort of punishment after death. The synoptic gospels speak of Gehenna, but also speak repeatedly of "the second death" -- the most literal reading of this is a simple cessation of existence for the wicked after the general resurrection at the end of the world. The doctrine of Hell appears most clearly in the latest books of the New Testament, and even more clearly in post-biblical Christian writings, suggesting that the doctrine was added to the original Christian teachings as Christianity developed.
In addition to the fallacies you mentioned, misotheists also are fond of not only redefining words to suit their purposes, but also in making arbitrary assertions. From the start, they essentially define "reality" as "atheistic naturalism". This is very similar to calling themselves "freethinkers" and "rational" simply because they are atheists. I reckon these are forms of the genetic fallacy, and they filter their irrational arguments through their fallacies. Then they try to put us on the defensive.
ReplyDeleteCowboy Bob,
ReplyDeleteThanks for visiting and your comments.
You’re right that many skeptics are expert wordsmiths. It’s funny too, because they claim to be the ones who want precise definitions.
I wrote an article some years back highlighting this problem. If I defined “mountain formation” as “any change in the elevation of a point of ground” then I could use mountains eroding as examples of mountains forming!
Their word games are red herrings. They want to seem like they want to be clear with their terms but they’re intentionally muddying the waters.
Thanks again for your comments. God bless!!
RKBentley