And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Opening Statement
Intellectual atheism, for our purposes, is defined as the modern use of scientific theories or philosophical ideas as proof that God does not exist. We are not commenting on the robust and varied philosophical atheism that the Christian faith has suffered throughout history. Atheist like Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertrand Russel or even the agnosticism of Robert Ingersoll are not the target here. Here we are examining the ideas championed by people like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and other farmers of the crop of today’s populist atheism. On most days you can detect the general bouquet of their fertilizer carried loftily on the winds of popular culture.
However, the commentary and general tone contained in "The Myth of Intellectual Atheism" is not intended as an insult to the scientific abilities or personal intelligence of these atheists but are tools to establish that populist atheistic views originate from somewhere other than the intellect. Yes, there are a certain amount of intellectual gymnastics, along with the commensurate backflips and flourishes, attached to the doctrines we hear from atheist but if these intellectual gymnastics were an Olympic sport, they would not score above a 3.5, except of course for the Russian judge.
I am Vernon L. Harper, a Christian writer and minister but what you are about to read is not strictly speaking a Christian work. It is my intention to objectively challenge the idea that today’s populist atheism is primarily intellectual. This challenge will not be made by making arguments defending the Christian faith but by questioning the nature of atheism itself.
Populist atheism is much like an alternate on a great intellectual gymnastics team, not good enough to appear on the mat based on its own merit but instead must cause the star of the team to fail and only then by default can it perform in the arena of human ideas. The star of the team is religious faith and many of today’s atheistic arguments are always only negative arguments against religion’s ability to perform, but where are the affirmative reasoned arguments explaining how atheism performs as an intellectual alternative?
This anti- religious emphasis is the first and most prominent clue that intellectual atheism arises from a place other than scientific inquiry. The idea that God does not exist cannot be supported or discrediting by examining religion. Using attacks on religion to disprove God is like using attacks on gym membership to disprove the idea of fitness. The emotional, even angry, attacks on religious experience in general, and the Christian faith in particular, do nothing to contribute to a scientific inquiry into the existence of God. Admittedly, many of these atheists are brilliant scientist so the fact that they do not see this very unscientific conclusion is at once frightening and hilarious in the three stooges teaching our children kind of way.
It should be obvious that even if you could somehow prove that every religion and religious experience that has ever existed in the history of the world was false, it would not be scientific evidence against the existence of God. From a strictly scientific perspective it is possible, even probable, that God exist without humanity having an accurate understanding of His nature or purpose. (The Christian idea of God revealing himself through Jesus Christ and the Bible not withstanding) So, from this strictly scientific point of view religious experience could be all over the world, as it is today, and humanity could still be completely unaware of the nature and purpose of God. Religious experience would have little to offer to a true scientific inquiry into the existence of God. The fact that so many atheistic arguments begin and end with some type of attack on religion is an indication of just how emotional the thinking has become. Although, many of these attacks do betray a singular wit, and by singular wit I mean one braincell.
The reality is Christian believers could not have scripted the scientific discoveries of the last hundred years any better if we had decided what they should be at the council of Nicaea. For instance, scientist now believe that the entire universe expanded from a singularity smaller than a sub-atomic particle roughly fourteen billion years ago and that the universe did not expand in a generic way that science would have predicted, but instead expanded in a very unlikely way that just happened to be perfect to support life as we know it, and even the simplest form of life assembling itself randomly is so mathematically unlikely that the atheist astrophysicist Fred Hoyle likened it to a tornado spinning through a scrap yard a constructing a perfectly functioning 747 jumbo jet.
It is not my claim that these and other scientific discoveries prove the existence of God, but it is certainly not a stretch to claim that these various findings are consistent with the idea of a creator. No, the idea of populist atheism arises from somewhere other than scientific enquiry. And, if this is true then today’s concept of intellectual atheism should be examined, and their true origins explored.
We will use the Ideas of "The Jordan Doctrine", "The Cool Table Atheist", "The Atheist Buffet" and more to take intellectual atheism through its paces and judge its intellectual performance not as the default alternate to religion but as a stand-alone belief and first team performer in the life and death competition of philosophical worldviews.
Once upon a time...
As fairytales go atheism based on science is very effective. One way fairytales can be described is narratives filled with make believe to convey an idea or moral. The plausibility of the narrative is not important but the truth of the moral that the narrative conveys is all important.
The fact that wolves don’t huff and puff and blow houses down or pigs do not construct houses is not important to the moral or truth of the story of the three little pigs. The moral of the story is working harder to build your house with bricks is always better than taking shortcuts and using lesser materials. If this moral is true of pigs and houses, then it is also true of people and their life pursuits.
This is the genius of the fairy tale. It conveys complex important ideas to children in ways that they can absorb them, if only subconsciously. This is also the genius of the narratives of intellectual atheism, they convey atheistic ideas without the hearers having to understand all the details or even being aware that they are being taught. The plausibility of a particular philosophical or scientific idea presented as an atheistic narrative is not important but, like the fairy tale, the moral or lesson that the idea conveys is all important.
As stated above intellectual atheism for our purposes is the use of scientific theories or philosophical ideas as proof that God does not exist. These scientific and philosophical proofs are expressed as narratives and appear throughout our intellectual cultures like items in a cafeteria buffet and at every point these narratives are the replacement of religious beliefs. This atheistic buffet was created to be consumed by the masses and is the primary source from which populist atheism draws its ideas. Access to this buffet begins in elementary school and being exposed to the atheistic buffet of narratives is inescapable. From the theories in our grade school science textbooks to the stories in our college English textbooks the buffet of narratives is ever present and the moral served in every narrative worthy of the buffet is; "There is no God and if you believe there is a God you are unscientific, backward thinking and something less than enlightened."
For this atheistic moral to thrive, however, it must be diligently defended, and the buffet of ideas held unassailable. For the atheistic moral to not be preeminent and unquestioned in intellectual circles is for it to lose all its power and influence because the idea that atheism equals enlightenment and rational thought cannot survive on its own intellectual merit. If examined too closely the atheistic moral contained in the buffet of narratives collapses of its own weight.
In today’s intellectual culture to examine any of the ideas of the atheistic buffet objectively is to stand accused of doing violence to all that is reasonable and forward thinking. For example, the orthodoxy of Darwinism is as plausible as huffing wolves and building pigs in a nursery rhyme. When the evidence is examined objectively Darwinism does not rise to the level of a scientific theory but is better described as a fairytale in training pants. Yet Darwinism is defended and accepted as fact as if it where Euclid's geometry and anyone who questions it is accused of giving their reasons in an unknown tongue.
The evidence is not the basis for the defense of the theory. The fact that it is from the atheistic buffet and is a linchpin in the overall moral is what makes its defense an imperative not the evidence. It does not require an advanced degree to challenge Darwinism’s central claims. Any middle school student armed with their science textbook and the right questions can do it in ten minutes.
"Teacher, is Darwinism supported by the fossil record?
Yes Sir, but I didn't ask why the fossil record doesn't support it I just wanted to know if it supports it or not? No? Ok.
Teacher, have mutations ever been observed changing the fundamental nature of a species either in the laboratory or in nature? No? Ok.
Teacher, do we have any scientific evidence that random variation and natural selection, which is the central idea of Darwinism, can account for fundamental changes to any species or is capable of creating the current level of the world’s biological complexity and diversity? No? Ok.
Teacher, is there any evidence that animals change beyond limited variations in response to their environment? Yes, I agree, it could explain why a frog's rear end is watertight but is that evidence for fundamental changes in the nature of the frog? No? Ok.
When Intellectual atheist claim that their atheistic beliefs grow out of a cool intellectual pursuit of the truth through the available science, they misrepresent the truth, the science and what it means to be cool. To state it plainly, the only difference between a traditional fairy tale and much of intellectual atheist doctrine is, “Once upon a time...” and “Science has discovered...”
In the natural sciences atheist are not objectively examining evidence of scientific theories but are creating and supporting theories that defend their moral. Heaven help the scientist who wants to examine the evidence without regard for how it affects the atheistic moral, they are either force fed from the buffet or offered a suspicious looking apple from a wicked witch.
In line at the buffet
To be part of popular atheism is to be in line at the “Intellectual House of Atheism Buffet”, seeing what's being served and sometimes looking at what other people are having, then grabbing the overly fingered tongs or spoons and acquiring your chosen selections. “I’ll take one of those everything is relative, two of those if God exist why is there evil, one of those tasty “science tells us how life really began....” We rarely examine these ideas beyond the superficial, not caring how it makes our intellectual butt look in our philosophical jeans. We ingest a lot of information, but we don’t do the exercise of making this information useful by examining it for ourselves. Our personal world view has become flabby and it is not a good look.
It has become popular to embrace atheistic ideas not for their own merit but because embracing these ideas somehow magically makes you a part of the enlightened culture. Calling yourself an atheist these days is the equivalent of sitting at the cool table in any high school lunchroom and takes about the same amount of thought. These cool table atheists look down on all they survey with a measured arrogance that comes from knowing you are superior but not having quite worked out how or why. This arrogance is not based on knowledge but is based on an agreed upon standard of what is acceptable to believe.
These agreed upon ideas are wide ranging and to an increasing degree include popular atheism and its first cousin functional atheism. This category of ideas is known generically as political correctness and if you do not ascribe to it you are viewed as unsophisticated, backward and perhaps even unintelligent.
The idea that a set of questionable ideas cannot be questioned is a dangerous proposition. The worst parts of human history are for the most part the story of such unquestionable ideas, the Spanish Inquisition, the Nazis, Stalin’s purges and the killing fields of Cambodia to name a few. All these tragic chapters in human history started quietly with a set of agreed upon unassailable ideas.
And yet we are still at the atheistic buffet and all those who decline its delicacies are looked upon with a polite disdain at best and at worst are categorized as potentially dangerous to the future of humanity.
And so, it starts.
In case you think this is an overstatement let’s hear some of the language being used concerning religious faith and those who do not partake of the atheistic buffet....
“The days of our religious identities are clearly numbered. Whether the days of civilization itself are numbered would seem to depend, rather too much, on how soon we realize this.”
― Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
“I want to put on the table, not why 85% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences reject God, I want to know why 15% of the National Academy don’t.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson
These sentiments trickle down from scientific atheist and other framers of intellectual atheism to the general public and express themselves as the watered-down version of intellectual atheism which is populist atheism. Though watered down the ideas of popular atheism are still potent enough to plant the seeds of disdain in its adherents for anyone who does not eat from the atheistic buffet.
In my years of serving in ministry I have had the privilege of encountering people of many ages, education levels and cultures. I have had many conversations about God and during many of these conversations I am given what I call “The Look”. It would start with a discussion of one of the many scientific, social or philosophical subjects dealt with in the atheistic buffet, let’s say, a conversation about God’s creation of life. This look says, "I know you believe that a God created life and I am sorry for you but I have become enlightened beyond such childish thoughts, and I don’t want to embarrass you by telling you how life really began and how foolish your little beliefs really are so I will just sit here and stare at you with my knowing sympathetic smile." When I would get “The Look” it was almost impossible to get "the looker" to say what they were really thinking, so I might ask a couple of questions about the origins of life.
"I'm wondering, by what mechanism, even theorized mechanism, an inanimate object like amino acid strings becomes alive and animated enough to respond to its environment and survive." “The Look” would then turn into “The Smirk” and I would hear some version of, "Amino acid strings were nourished in the primordial soup and energized by ultraviolet energy and that was life's origin." Then I might tell them that they misunderstand the question and ask, "Exactly how does ultraviolet energy and nourishment change an inanimate substance into a living one." Then I would be looked at like a German shepherd when you make an odd whistle. You know, head cocked to the side, confused attentive expression. "Nothing inanimate has ever been observed becoming alive in nature or in the laboratory under any conditions. Science doesn't have a guess as to how this could happen. This fact is fairly easy to know and understand by anybody with a library card or a willingness to ask the next question.
Please don't misunderstand me. I am not unsympathetic because I too have a similar belief. I believe in the nineteen sixties a teenager was bitten by a radioactive spider and as a result acquired amazing Spidey powers. Yes, it’s true I don’t know of a mechanism, even in theory, as to how this could take place, but that fact doesn't stop people from teaching and learning the primordial soup ultraviolet energy version of life being created so I figure I'm ok."
By now “The Look” would usually be gone having been replaced by "the scowl" which says "I don't care if you made a point, I am not going to accept what you are saying because your answer is not from the buffet and so it has to be wrong, and more importantly, I would lose my seat at the cool table if I believed it
This level of arrogance about and commitment to an idea that is not supported by the facts rises to the level of what is common practice in Congress. This fact alone should be enough to frighten even the atheist into frequent diligent prayer.
The cool table atheist.
The cool table atheist can be divided into two groups, populist atheism and functional atheism.
Populist atheism is made up of the general public who are led and fed by scientist and other members of the atheistic intelligentsia, who write books, publish articles, do interviews, teach at universities and do the work of preparing all the intellectual delicacies for the atheistic buffet. This is the atheism that is talked about at the water cooler, argued over at drinks and has quickly invaded popular culture.
Functional atheists on the other hand are people who may or may not intellectually acknowledge that there is a God but live their lives as if God does not exist. Unfortunately, this group includes an increasing number of professing Christians.
Such Christians claim Christ but have little knowledge of the Christian faith. You can recognize these Christian by their ignorance of the Bible which is the only repository of knowledge for the Christian faith. All Christian knowledge draws its wealth from the Bible and if its wealth derives from a different source it is not Christian knowledge. It is as likely for a person to live as a Christian without reading the Bible as it is to be an Olympic swimmer but never enter any water.
For these Christians Christianity is primarily a function of social interaction not personal faith. They attend church when it is convenient because they think they are supposed to, especially on Easter and Mother’s Day. They do not enjoy the preached or taught Bible unless it is in some way entertaining or emotionally stimulating. These Christians can be heard commenting on how much they enjoy the Sunday morning sermon but if you ask them how it influenced their lives, they struggle in expressing anything beyond the superficial, emotional and entertaining. If the given message contains anything of Christian value it is summarily ignored.
Ironically these Christians can be very fanatical and annoyingly obtuse especially in pushing their beliefs on others. This fanaticism derives from their devotion to their denomination or church because their denomination or church is the sole source of their faith. Basing their faith on their church or denomination frees these professing Christians to live their lives by any arbitrary standard that they choose, separate from any biblical standard of Christian devotion. If they remain in good standing with said denomination or church, they feel they are Christian enough. For these Christians a relationship with Christ or study of the Bible is not relevant for their day-to-day Christian walk.
This entire group of Christian functional atheist acknowledging God but not accommodating God within their day-to-day existence is like a person who acknowledges that there is a thing called gravity but will not take the time to know what gravity means for their life or adjust their life to accommodate its reality. If this person enjoys the gravitational thrill of the down slope of a roller coaster, they might jump off the top of the Empire State building for the short-lived thrill, not recognizing the inevitable consequences.
This group of professing Christians is not doing much thinking either way, so they don't eat from the buffet nor do they read the Bible. For this group, being able to defend or even have a basis for a life philosophy is unimportant. What is most important to the Christian functional atheist is to be able to live your life however you choose and apart from any Christian accountability and have a seat at the cool table even if it is an honorary one based on lifestyle.
The functional atheists that are not professing Christians are simply living their own lives without much thought to any of the larger questions of existence. Where do we come from? Where are we going? What happens when you die? Does God exist? The fact that they do not seriously consider these questions should not be a measure of their ability to do so. To think deeply beyond the superficial aspects of a potential spiritual life is simply not a priority for this group. These functional atheist's approach to life is some variation of eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we wear dentures.
If the professing Christian functional atheist are like the person who acknowledge gravity but ignore its implications these non-Christian functional atheists are like the person who won't acknowledge that there exists a thing called gravity. Things fall simply because they fall. If the professing Christian takes a leap of misplaced faith from the Empire State building these non-Christians simply stumble off.
And as we witness both these groups
Accelerate past the various windows
Flowing toward gravity enlightenment
And the inevitable sidewalk overdose
They are heard to whisper
As they exchange the sweetest smile,
“I believe everything will work out
In the end."
The Jordan Doctrine
“God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance.”
Neil deGrasse Tyson
There is a rudely arrogant attitude towards religious faith in general, and to the Christian faith in particular, displayed by atheist. Scientific atheists provide most of the cooks for the buffet and serves up the lion's share of fundamentalist atheism. This atheism may go under the guise of various names, secularism, agnosticism, humanism, but its true nature is revealed in its actions, those actions are to do violence to the notion of God at every turn.
Religion is portrayed by intellectual atheists as the opposite of rational thinking so any conclusions that are perceived by them as having been influenced by faith are invalid and therefore must be eradicated. To get rid of faith-based conclusions the cooks for the buffet have not only fought hard against any ideas that suggest that there may be a God but have also replaced these ideas with those that are consistent with atheistic beliefs.
For example, the cooks have replaced the idea of God creating life with the idea of all plant and animal life descending from one common randomly occurring ancestor as stated by Darwinism. The cooks have also replaced the idea that the universe had a singular beginning with ideas like the multiverse or landscape and all the various versions of string theory. In fact, there are so many versions of string theory around they have become a type of landscape themselves. These multiple string theories together do manage to support this one hypothesis, if you give some scientist enough string, they will hang themselves with it.
Throughout the scientific world the ideas that are in vogue are atheistic because these are the necessary theories by which the idea of God can be eradicated. I will not attempt to examine the scientific arguments expressed by intellectual atheism, or the sometimes-brutal slave barge like control exercised over the scientific community that preserves the preeminence of those arguments with all their cracking of the whip and beating of the drum. That is best left to scientist like Dr. David Berlinski in his books, “The Devil's Delusion" and “The Deniable Darwin” or Dr. Jonathan Wells in his book, "Icons of Evolution" or documentaries like, "Expelled No Intelligence Allowed". What we will do here is examine the nature of the arrogance and ignorance that permeates intellectual atheism and leads to the rejection of all things relating to the idea of God.
Science is the tool for studying the material world and the material world is its limit. The question, "Does God exist?", is among those questions that science is not equipped to answer, questions like; "Why is the universe here", “Why did life start?", " and "Why are boy bands not extinct?"
It is impossible to prove or disprove God through any intellectual discipline including any of the disciplines of the natural sciences. The notion that scientific study should naturally lead to atheism is not a rationally defensible idea but that is the exact assumption that underlies popular atheistic beliefs. There are brilliant scientist on both sides of the question of God and that fact alone should lead us to believe that the decision to believe in God or not to believe in God comes from somewhere other than science or personal intelligence and scientific inquiry is not sufficient to dismiss matters of personal faith.
Using your expertise in a scientific discipline to speak to matters of personal faith is as logical as using your skill as an NBA basketball player to inform your skill of hitting a Major League Baseball curveball. A scientist should have no expectation of competence in matters of faith simply because they are scientist in the same way a basketball player should have no expectation of being a competent baseball player simply because of his basketball skill. I call this idea "The Jordan Doctrine".
For those of you who may not know by all accounts Michael Jordan was a very good baseball player before he committed completely to basketball and went on to be the best basketball player to ever play the game. If he had chosen baseball instead of basketball as a career, he might have become a great baseball player but to return to baseball near the end of his basketball career was too much to expect even for him.
In flouting the Jordan Doctrine intellectual atheist go beyond the brash confidence of Michael Jordan's attempt to return to his former discipline of baseball and arrogantly try to apply the principles of natural science to the completely unrelated discipline of personal faith.
It is not only the height of arrogance, but it is irrational to believe that your expertise in a scientific discipline, or any other intellectual discipline, automatically entitles you to claim proficiency in matters of personal faith. In truth Michael Jordan had a better chance of hitting the curveball because of his basketball skill than a scientist has of accurately speaking to faith because of his scientific expertise. Michael Jordan at least used the same type of perception that he used in basketball as a baseball player. The scientist cannot apply his scientific discipline to faith not only because they are different disciplines but also because the nature of scientific inquiry uses a different type of perception than is used in personal faith. Attempting to perceive matters of faith through scientific study is like trying to perceive color through your ear. The organ of perception is not appropriate for the task.
This idea of perceiving an experience through the wrong organ of perception can be illustrated by a major league batter and a scientist facing that big-league curveball. The major league batter perceives the speed and trajectory of the ball in a totally different way than a scientist would through scientific observation. Major League baseball teams don’t teach their batters the physics of linear motion, air density, trajectory, rotation, torque, inertia, momentum, friction and the many other scientific observations involved in perceiving and physically interacting with a big-league curveball. This is just the physics behind the perception. Major League baseball teams also do not teach their batters the complex biology of perceiving and acting on the curveball, but the scientist would use all these scientific observations as well as other observations to perceive the curveball.
Would any major league baseball team spend an inordinate amount of money on a big-league contract to sign a scientist who has studied all the physical and biological and statistical parameters of hitting a big-league curveball so they can have him pinch hit with two outs in the ninth inning of the World Series? Well, maybe the Yankees but most teams would not spend that money on a scientist to swing away at the curveball because his organ of perception is not appropriate to the task.
The scientist's organ of perception is reason through scientific observations and is not adequate to the task of hitting a major league curveball. The baseball player's organ of perception is experience through interaction and is uniquely tailored to the hitting of the curveball. The curveball is the same for both scientist and major league hitter but the way of perceiving that curveball is completely different for each of them. The hitter perceives all the physics and biology that the scientist perceives but from an experiential perspective. He is not using the academic disciplines of physics, biology or math to experience the curveball. His is a different organ of perception.
In the same way the scientist cannot perceive matters of faith through the intellectual disciplines of physical science because matters of faith are perceived and expressed through the human spirit, and the organ of perception is faith.
Faith
Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.
Richard Dawkins
The human spirit using faith to perceive the material world is as common to human beings as swings of the bat are to big league hitters. What makes a hitter believe that he will be successful at hitting that curveball? Experience and statistics tell a major league hitter that he will fail to hit the ball at least two out of three at bats. The statistics becomes far worse for the hitter if you measure hits per swings of the bat. Science itself says that the act of hitting a round ball with a round bat with both traveling at surprising velocities and angles is an unlikely prospect. The faith of the human spirit gives hope to achieve an outcome when the material world says probably not.
What makes us believe in love, our children's safety or our long-term health, the strength of the roof over our head or the sturdiness of the floor beneath our feet, that the drivers on the road with us are not dangerously impaired, that the food we buy is not tainted? Is it because humanity is safe from mishap and it is logical and scientific to presume mishap is an unlikely prospect? No, it is because we are creatures of faith and to live without the hope that faith provides is to invite madness.
Faith is the subscription to a set of agreed upon ideas. Faith operates much like the tracking number on an online purchase. We make a purchase, and we have faith that our selected item will eventually arrive at our door. We have no material evidence that this is true other than belief in what the company represents to us. When a given company provides a tracking number it is a type of promise, a promise that your item does exist, is being fulfilled and will be delivered. We use this promise as evidence that our item is on its way to us. We do not see the actual item, we do not see it removed from some distant shelf, we cannot see the delivery company carry it from truck to distribution hub to the next truck, yet we have confidence in the tracking number because we have confidence in the company who gave us the tracking number. For Christians, the tracking numbers are the promises and narratives of the Bible. For atheist, the tracking number is atheistic doctrine. Neither the Christian’s nor the atheist’s faith can be proved by material science, but both of their faiths originate in the human spirit and are expressed as a set of spiritual beliefs.
Scientific atheists have the same proclivity to act spiritually through personal faith as the rest of humanity. When personal faith is applied to the question of God the faith of the atheist and the faith of the Christian are but two sides of the same coin. The ones faith is directed toward God the others away from God. Neither atheism nor Christianity is proved by scientific perception and inquiry. To believe in either populist atheism or biblical Christianity the organ of perception is always faith.
Have you ever wondered why the scientific atheists spend so much time opposing the notion of God? If they are right, and of the enlightened culture, why do you need to constantly oppose the idea of God? Why not state the facts of scientific evidence and let the science speak for itself? If the facts of science are so overwhelmingly in favor of an atheistic view what more do you need? If science is not overwhelmingly in favor of atheism, then scientific inquiry demands open discussion and reasoned observation.
Why attack religion at all if it is not part of scientific inquiry? If people believe God exist, so what? How could believing in God possibly affect the findings and evidence contained in the sciences? Atheists like to cry wolf and say that religion is dangerous. The same could also be said of the communistic atheism of Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong who murdered tens of millions. Yes, there are many reasons given for their vitriol against religion but none of them are adequate to explain the level of vow like dedication and emotional earnestness given to the denying of the existence of God by atheist. The atheist doth protest too much, methinks.
Faith toward or away from God resides deep in the spirit of a person and spiritual matters find their most pure expression emotionally. The denying of God is faith based and therefore is expressed emotionally which explains the passion with which scientific atheist deny the existence of God. The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question is what creates this strong personal faith which is channeled toward denying God?
The human spirit is the repository for all that makes humanity unique on the earth and what our spirit expresses can be shaped and affected by our experience. Our experiences in this cruel, painful and seemingly arbitrary world full of crass, vindictive and spiteful humanity can, if we allow it, change the nature of our spiritually expressed faith.
When we see things like children suffering, populations starving or cruelty flourishing or when we experience our own individual tragedies that result in personal loss, personal suffering or personal despair; when we feel powerless and impotent to affect change or rescue for ourselves or others in this cold and seemingly random world, there can be birthed out of this cauldron of disappointment and spiritual anguish a deeply seething quiet rage. When this rage is turned inward and buried because it lacks a specific target to blame for the world's general condition or our own life’s tragic chapters our spirit can despair. If our spirit surrenders hope for ourselves personally or for humanity in general the target for this rage can evolve into an invisible God.
This is not true of every atheist, but it is true of populist atheism's most passionate core. The impetus behind the rapid growth of the worldwide atheistic movement is this growing quiet surrendering of hope and the accompanying unacknowledged rage. This rage against God and his perceived lack of care for the affairs of humanity in general and individual humans specifically is manifested as atheist faith.
This begs the question how can atheist have rage toward God if for them he does not exist? The answer is the same way atheist can express so much passion and energy opposing what they say is a figment of the Christian imagination. The simple answer is this rage is directed at the idea of God not directly at God himself. I can rage against the idea of an indifferent uncaring God and deny his existence at the same time; in fact, my denying of his existence can be fueled by my rage at the idea of an indifferent uncaring God. Therefore, atheism cannot be strengthened or weakened through rational discussion because rational thought is not its foundation; its foundation is rage fueled faith.
Expressed faith is a belief that originates from beyond material perception and is at its core the expression of deeply felt emotional sentiments. The most important sentiment in atheist faith is "No matter what we observe or experience in the world around us God had no part in it because God does not exist." For the intellectual atheist the idea that God does not exist becomes the controlling passion of their lives and then all other ideas, narratives, and conclusions proceed from this statement of faith. You can never persuade the atheist that the scientific evidence is as inadequate to disprove God’s existence as it is to prove God’s existence because his belief is not reason based through the evidence, but it is emotion based through faith.
For the atheist neither the evidence nor belief in any scientific theory is as important as expressing the quietly emotional rage fueled faith.
This puts scientific atheist in a bit of a quandary. When the evidence is less than compelling, which it is, and the buffet is less than intellectually appetizing, which it is, then the scientific atheist resort to their last line of defense; "The point is that I'm smart, I am educated, I am respected in an respected field so you should believe what I tell you to believe."
This is the well from which scientific atheist draw the arrogance and ignorance to ignore the Jordan Doctrine, a deep well labeled bleakness and emotional despair, a deep well overflowing with smoldering rage fueled faith.
Atheist faith
Atheist faith is the surrendering of all hope and the belief in nothing. Everything is hopeless and means nothing because everything comes from nothing and everything is headed towards nothing. The love of a child, noble gestures and acts of sacrifice, goodness toward your fellow human, the opposition of evil, the concepts of good and evil themselves and everything else is nothing, just an accident of an accidental universe and without intrinsic value, destined to disappear forever.
In fact, for the true atheist the universe is less than an accident. An accident implies that there is such a thing as purpose because an accident is a deviation from an intended purpose. If there is no purpose behind the creation of the universe then the universe cannot rise to the level of an accident. The entire universe is something less than an accident, a completely purposeless event called the hopeless universe.
Here is where atheist face their largest problem. If the universe is a Godless and therefore purposeless event, then humans are Godless purposeless events, and all our behaviors and choices are just products of undirected purposeless evolution and we have no intrinsic value, and our morality has no intrinsic value. Our moral choices are only what undirected purposeless evolution says is necessary for survival.
If what atheist believe is true, then why not kill other humans if our survival is at stake. Can humanity stand to carry the weak and less valuable? Can we really tolerate the existence of those who jeopardize our existence by being a drain on resources and not contributing enough to the common good? The only hope we have for the future is in cold Darwinist survival of the fittest.
There are entire countries whose populations are increasing beyond the capacity for them to be fed and these countries contribute little to the survival of the species of humanity, yet we continue to feed them, provide them with medical care and come to their aid when natural disaster strikes. Why should we continue to spend dwindling resources to aid these countries?
There are diseases that can be cured much more quickly if we used our medical technology to experiment on humans who have no other value. We could also use useless humans as organ donors. Should we really allow a valuable schoolteacher to die when a pickpocket from a dangerous neighborhood could be made to donate their heart?
If you find these ideas chillingly familiar as, I certainly do, please tell me what in atheistic philosophy prohibits them? Nothing.
What you hear from atheist is that we don't need a God to tell us to do good. Humanity knows what is good and we have always known what is good and there is nothing a God can contribute to that knowledge.
This answer fails because it ignores the obvious problem. On what philosophical framework is atheistic goodness based and who decides its standard? Who decides which human being's or group of human being's philosophy and standard of morality is better than another's? Certainly, the Nazis had a philosophical standard of morality. Torquemada and the Inquisition had a philosophical standard of morality. Po Pot had a philosophical standard of morality for his killing fields. Stalin's purges had a philosophical and moral standard. Throughout history the only consistency about the standard of the morality of humanity is that the people in power get to set it. If there is no Godly standard beyond what the most powerful humans deems as valuable, then there is no standard at all because it changes with whoever seizes power. One can argue that humanity has ignored or deformed a Godly standard of morality in the past but is the removal of any moral standard beyond what is expressed by human philosophy and power an improvement?
The only way atheistic faith can be an acceptable belief is to stop it well short of its logical conclusions. The fact that highly intelligent people still profess it is further proof that beliefs pertaining to the question of God comes from somewhere other than the intellect. It does not take much imagination or intellect to picture a world governed by a pure and unadulterated atheism so it would take a blind irrational faith to continue to work toward creating such a world. It is a very unappetizing idea to eat the fruit of the logical conclusions of intellectual atheism. I'm guessing most of us, including most atheists, do not want to.
Intellectual atheism
Intellectual atheism is a mythological construct that never existed in the real world. The fundamentalist zeal with which atheist faith is defended and expressed is at its heart emotional not intellectual. Reason is a secondary consideration when applying atheistic doctrine to social, political and scientific policy; therefore, the logical conclusions of applied atheistic ideas are rarely considered when they are introduced to the culture.
A wide range of our societal ideas are heavily influenced by, if not originating in, atheistic rage fueled faith and so the arguments for these ideas are emotional ones. These emotional arguments disguised as rational ideas descend upon the population like wolves in “cheap” clothing without logical foundation or reasoned argumentation. They are immediately controversial but lack the substance to be discussed rationally and resolved.
The life blood of democracies is the ability to express, discuss and incorporate ideas but when what is being expressed, discussed and incorporated are emotions disguised as ideas the people will ultimately lose their way.
This is the current danger that intellectual atheism presents, the introduction of an entire class of ideas that cannot be logically resolved but only passionately fought over. Once enough of these emotions disguised as rational ideas have been introduced it helps contribute to the dumbing down of the intellectual dialog by common practice. Yes, there are other considerations contributing to the trend of crowning emotions as king and the manipulation of emotions has always been a part of the public discourse but an intelligentsia that introduces and defends emotions in place of ideas smooths out this slippery slope and becomes a major contributor to this larger trend of the emotionalizing of aspects of the culture that should be dominated by reason.
The political climate has become so shrill and unreasonable that even presidential campaigns rarely mention issues beyond the point that it allows them to appeal to the public's emotions through attack ads. Discussions in Congress contain so little substance because it is generally understood that it is much more effective to solicit an emotional response from the public and fellow politicians than present a reasoned argument. The legal branch of government is not immune to this trend. We may disagree on the level that emotion-based thinking has entered the judicial branch but who would argue that the various opinions given across the bench are always only reasoned and logical. How we as a populace are made to feel by a law or political policy has become more important than the difficult rational work of building, adjusting and preserving a free democratic society.
Feelings are king and are the driving force in everything informational from how our news is presented to how we structure our education system, and everything philosophical from how we decide public policy to how we establish our personal morality. Emotions become the shaper of our body of knowledge when feelings and not reason becomes the governor of what we know. The emotional stimulation of celebrity gossip is more newsworthy than death from war, famine or epidemic combined if the death remains on foreign soil and does not become too entertaining. Teaching students a wide range of ideas and theories is good except for those ideas that compete with the emotional ideas contained in the atheistic buffet.
Emotional expediency is the mother of philosophical choices when there is no God and how we feel emotionally has replaced rational ideas. Killing a newborn is wrong unless I drop him unprotected in a dumpster to continue to hide my pregnancy from my parents because I am terrified to be discovered. Allowing large groups of people to be poisoned is wrong unless it will give me a political advantage and make me rich with profits from certain large companies and the regulatory agencies are not likely to find out. Godless emotions disguised as ides may be good for connecting with daytime talk shows but are dangerous when used as a tool for acquiring knowledge or establishing a moral worldview that is applied in the real world.
The fact that you can find large swaths of our population of atheist supporting in principle some of our most controversial ideas, because they have been presented as emotionally stimulating, should be a warning to what may become possible in our not-too-distant future.
Intellectual atheism is not a benign alternative to the belief in God. Intellectual atheism and its underlying assumptions are the foundation for a future human condition devoid of any moral standard or the philosophical protections for the concepts and ideas that, for the most part, have protected us from the chaos of human action. Atheists want to do away with the idea of God and tell us that society will be the better for it.
Yes, it is true that atheist can point to religiously based wickedness and use these examples to argue against the idea of God in society. Everything from the ancient pagan sacrificing of innocent children to the current day murdering of innocent people in the name of religion are pointed to by atheist as arguments for doing away with God and establishing an atheistic society.
Atheist do not however present reasoned arguments that sustain their own world view because intellectual atheism is nothing more than the shadow cast by religious beliefs and has no sustainable philosophical framework to address the human condition or replace the moral infrastructure offered by the Judeo-Christian tradition. It is not enough to just oppose the idea of God without having a competent alternative philosophy for our role in the universe and for human interaction.
No reasonable person will deny that superstition and misinterpreted views of God have had tragic consequences. No reasonable person can also deny the positive influence of the Judeo-Christian tradition on our most fundamental concepts of education, treatment of the ill, our law, our morality, our government, our ideas of freedom etc. The sweeping away of these foundational societal pillars by an atheistic faith would be devastating. Yes, atheists can point to negative influences in religion currently and in our recent and distant past but to throw the baby out with the baptism is not a reasonable or prudent response.
As I write this Western society is most probably safe from a repeat of the humanistic terrors of Nazi doctrine, Torquemada’s religious torture and oppression and a Stalin's atheistic disregard for life, liberty and freedom, but what is next. What is the next challenge to human quality of life and who armed with what reasoned moral argument will oppose it?
War is but the outward expression of irreconcilable worldviews concerning an issue or set of issues, but such worldviews exist in a state of opposition well before they result in physical conflict. Within societies all-out war is usually not the result of these battles of worldviews but the intellectual conflict is not any less intense or the results any less sweeping and final on the battlefield of human ideas. You and I will have our lives and our children's lives shaped by the winner of such intellectual battles.
Populous atheism is the fastest growing faith in the world and intellectual atheism is tenaciously battling everything that does not agree with it for the power to frame the important issues of our day. As we face the issues of world epidemics, world hunger, controversial scientific advances in various disciplines, population explosions and the other seemingly endless important subjects that we will address as a world society, every free thinking person will have to ask: Is intellectual atheism equipped to provide a sustainable moral framework to address these crucial issues or is it a mythological faith without consistent philosophical or moral substance that can only lead to a downward spiral in the quality of life for individual and corporate humanity?
To answer this question however is not necessarily to choose between Intellectual atheism and a reasoned religious argument. Intellectual atheism must be judged as a stand-alone idea although atheists always tie it to religion by using arguments against religion as arguments for atheism. The truth is one can be without religious conviction, a skeptic or have arguments against religion and still reject the current mythology of intellectual atheism. Intellectual atheism must be judged on its own merit, not accepted as the default belief for anyone who has not embraced the idea of God.
What is required of all of us as citizens of the world no matter what our lot, religious beliefs or education, is a rational, objective and informed assessment of this competing worldview. This is the crucial question of our time for we will shape our future world after the fashion of our answer, this question of intellectual atheism.
Epilog
At 3am I am still staring at the screen
Seeing of the show that will never conclude.
The school,
"The Karl Marx Institute for the
Intellectually Atheist."
And their baseball
Coach Mr. Darwin,
his mascot,
"Missing Link."
Only the basketball players are allowed on his team and though swinging and hitless
always end up on base.
At the main entrance and over the door
There appears the credo for the entire school.
"THERE IS NO GOD AND I HATE HIM FOR IT."
As I look through the door, I can clearly see the
cool table atheist in every incarnation.
Some rub their chins trying hard to look so smart.
Some pray loudly to no one in particular.
Some blankly relate to the screen of their smartphone.
As the science teacher closely monitors the table making sure that everyone is fed.
And the scene is closing on this happy little school
the narrator can now be heard to ask,
Will the cool table atheist survive their latest meal?
Will the science teacher keep everyone at the table?
Will the baseball coach ever find his mascot?
We will get the answers to these and other questions on the next episode of...
"Buffet the Intellect Slayer".
The remote stays in my hand
and I keep pressing the button
but the show just won't stop.
This is our lot.
This is our punishment.
This is the myth we have chosen to deserve.