Scratching My Head About Atheism

I don't get Atheism, intellectually.  And the more shrill the Atheist, the less I understand the intellectual aspect of that belief.  Here are a few of the most confusing things to me about Atheism:

What Does it Mean to Believe in a Metaphysical Being's Non-existence?

 

It’s not that I buy the ontological argument; as an explanation for reality, I’m perfectly happy to include “there is no god” as one of the potentialities.  What I don’t get is the positive assertion of no-god.  No example of this is more puzzling to me than materialists – those who assert that all we can know is that which is observable with one or more of the physical senses.  If you can only know what you can touch, see, taste, hear, or smell, then how can you know something about anything that does or does not lie behind the physical?  It strikes me that Agnosticism, not Atheism, is a more honest response for the materialist.  

 

Like it or Not, We All Have Faith

 

In the instant before the Big Bang, you either had God alone, preparing to create, or you had an infinitely dense point of energy / matter which was about to explode.  I suppose you also could have had a prior, imploding universe, shrinking right up to the point where it could no longer continue imploding, and therefore about to reverse its course.  It really doesn't matter what your view is: in that one instant, either there was an agent or there was not.  

What makes either of those explanations, on the surface, more believable than the other?  I’m not talking about indications of divine design in nature or the Problem of Evil yet.  All I’m saying is in that one moment before the beginning of our space-time continuum, either explanation should strike the modern mind as equally outlandish and plausible .  And, heck, if Euclid was wrong and there really are many more than four dimensions, that would make the possibility of additional immaterial planes all the more reasonable, not less so.

Yet, we’re all confronted with the wonder of existence, aren’t we?  Stop and think for a minute about how amazing it is that I’ve written this blog post, and that you’re now reading it. Either God or No-God is behind all of this.  If we’re honest, we have to say that however we come down on that dichotomy, we’re all stepping out in faith.  

 

The Good Atheist

 

Apart from God, there are no ethical imperatives.  Seriously: what keeps the atheist from stealing his neighbor’s Jag?  He may say that it would be “wrong” do so, but why would it?  Why is it better for the atheist to suppress his selfish urges to defer to his neighbor? 

I’m talking about right and wrong, here, not about laws and mores.  There are all sorts of reasons why the Atheist might not steal the car:

he might get caught and lose his freedom;

he might not like the social ramifications of being known as a thief;

he might worry that if he could easily steal his neighbor's car, then others could likewise steal his

- each of which is totally rational, but none of which rises above the level of personal preference.  That's not to say that ethical choices resulting from a desire to follow God's law aren't often selfish, too.  But a transcendent moral code makes objective right & wrong possible.

RANDOM INTERJECTION ALERT!  Here's an interesting dissertation topic for all those of you  contemplating graduate research in religion or sociology: do Secularists hold democracy in higher regard than Theists because the former tend to believe that the majority's opinion carries a greater-than-the-sum-of-the-parts moral authority?  

Finally, what about the guy who chooses not to steal because he wishes to avoid a feeling of guilt from violating the moral code which was either a) emblazoned on mind by his Sunday School teacher, or b) inherited from distant ancestors, who developed a loyalty to other humans for the sole purpose of protecting the species against extinction?

This last one’s a bit trickier, but not much so: the thoughtful Atheist should realize that neither the influence of childhood Bible teachers, nor evolution can explain why he should continue to treat others unselfishly, once he becomes enlightened to the origin of those feelings. In other words, it's no more "wrong" for the Atheist to make purely selfish choices than it is to make noble choices. 

Of course, the Theist may suggest that the persistent drive to uphold fairness as objectively good, for example, simply points to a divinely authored moral standard.  But that's a horse of a different color.

 

I’m Also Sympathetic

 

I know that many Atheists are such because they’ve been so put off by hypocritical, self-righteous religious people and that they can’t bear the idea of associating with them – even to the extent of common belief.  Those of us who are believers have some serious fence-mending and repenting to do in that area.

I also respect that Atheists find the stories of miracles in ancient holy books too far removed from their current experience to make any sense out of the idea.  I’ve often thought myself, about how neat it would be to see a big miracle.  I see small miracles from time to time – often as a result of something my wife is praying about – but I can’t prove that those are miracles; skeptics could certainly offer alternative explanations to what I take as answered prayer.  But as to whether miracles could occur, I come back to the miracle of existence.  Whether the stuff of the universe just exists and, given 15 billion years, can fashion part of itself into a guy typing out a blog post at a computer, or whether that guy was created by God - either way it’s a miracle.  Any God that could pull that sort of thing off surely ought to be able to bring a man back to life. 

I’m most sympathetic to those who have been hurt to the point where they can no longer square an all-powerful God with a God who is also all-loving.  The philosophical Problem of Evil is far easier to confront than is the religious one.  

Where I’m totally unsympathetic is when I encounter smugness and arrogance – whether on the part of the believer or the non-believer. And, maybe I'm unsympathetic in those cases because I've spent so much of my own life being smug and arrogant about these things.  Now, though, and for me, the wonder of existence brings about a deeply humbling, quieting sense - one which I happily call "the peace that passes all understanding."  Sure, I have doubts about my beliefs from time to time, but I'm totally content that my belief in the reality of God's peace is no less reasonable than is the belief which denies it.