Why is atheism the default belief?

If you were to ask an atheist why he's an atheist, very seldom will you hear a positive answer. That is, you will hardly ever hear “evidence” for why atheism is the correct belief. Instead, the person will likely say he's an atheist because he hasn't been convinced that theism is the correct belief. In other words, he's withholding belief in God until he sees the evidence that God exists. Because of this, many atheists will describe atheism as the “default belief” of any thinking person.

At first hearing, this sounds reasonable. In some ways, I hold a similar view. I don't believe in Bigfoot or UFOs, for example, because I've yet to see any convincing proof that they exist. The anecdotal stories, the grainy video footage, and the dubious trace evidence (like footprints or crop circles) seem better explained as hoaxes or misidentification. I'm sure many atheists look at a belief in God in much the same way as I look at a belief in Bigfoot. But is this skeptical attitude necessarily the correct attitude?

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Pretend, for a moment, that you're walking through a forest and you happen upon a log cabin. It's crude and has only a dirt floor. It has no electricity, plumbing, or glass windows. It's just basically logs, notched and stacked, with openings cut out for the the door and windows. There's not a stick of furniture inside nor any other sign of anyone having lived in it recently. What questions might you ask yourself? I would think your first thoughts would be, I wonder who built this? Does someone live here? Where is he now?

I'm fairly certain no one would ask, “That's incredible! I wonder how these logs fell into the shape of a cabin?”

You see, logs organized into the shape of a cabin show design. Sections having been cut out to allow light and access show purpose. Design and purpose are the characteristics of created things and created things are the proof of a creator. The cabin obviously had a creator. Withholding judgment about the existence of a builder of the cabin is not the sign of a rational, thinking person. It's the stubborn refusal of a fool to acknowledge the obvious!

Life is all about design and purpose. Never mind something as advanced as the human brain – even a single DNA molecule is far more complicated than logs stacked in a square. How can anyone look at a stack of logs and know there was a builder yet see something a million times more incredible and stubbornly withhold judgment about its Creator?

In his book, The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins said, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” There are those words again, “design” and “purpose.” He further says, “The complexity of living organisms is matched by the elegant efficiency of their apparent design. If anyone doesn’t agree that this amount of complex design cries out for an explanation, I give up.” Dawkins clearly sees design and purpose in the creation. Note, too, his use of the term, “this amount of complex design” which suggests it's more than a few examples of design.

What strikes me as most curious about his comment is how he says design cries out for an explanation. What is there to explain? Design and purpose immediately point to a Designer. I don't need any explanation about how some logs in the woods became formed in the shape of a cabin. The answer is immediately obvious. Somebody built the cabin; that's my default belief. The only thing that would need explaining is how so much design and purpose could come about without a Creator. But why would someone look for some other cause for design except that he rejects the most obvious cause a priori?

Dawkins has also said, “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” In other words, people might reject the concept of God but, without evolution, how could they explain the obvious design and purpose visible everywhere in the creation? That question would gnaw at the atheist's intellect making it impossible for him to be entirely secure in his disbelief. This seems a tacit admission that God is the best, first explanation behind design and purpose.

It seems to me that skepticism about God is not the most reasonable starting point. Indeed, it's not the default position at all. Skeptics aren't open-minded people willing to be persuaded if they are presented with compelling evidence. Instead, they have committed themselves in advance to the idea there is no God. They can see the evidence for God in the creation; they simply refuse to believe in the Creator!