Re: Manifestestations of a more confident atheism
Because man is a rational creature, he wants to understand the universe in which he lives. Both religion and science are ways for man to pursue this quest for truth.
I don’t understand how Ricky’s testimony, while honest, is convincing. He doesn’t give any reasons for this conversion other than the fact that his older brother asked him, “Why do you believe in God?”, and he felt that neither he nor his mother had a satisfactory answer. I suppose he was saying that if his mother didn’t have a satisfactory answer, then one must not exist? Nothing against his mother, but just because you can’t explain something with 100% certitude doesn’t mean you can’t believe in it. Most scientifically-aware people would agree that the speed of light is the fastest that anything can travel in our universe, but would be hard pressed to explain why.
So, I would invite you to investigate why other people have decided that atheism just doesn’t make sense, and how faith and reason can and should complement one another. Religion, if true, can stand up to inquiry and criticism.
Great authors and thinkers such as C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton have made this discovery.
More recently, Jen at Et Tu? has a written a very moving story of her conversion from atheism, as well as a piece on why she believes in God in the first place.
I made this discovery myself about three years ago now. Part of the reason was that I realized that the natural sciences can’t explain the “why” of things. At the time I didn’t think that there was necessarily a purpose to life, the universe, and everything…but the more I thought about it, the more I wondered why it was that the scientific method worked at all? We rely on our reason, logical and mathematical principles to explain the phenomena of the world around us. But why do our reason, logic, and math have any capability to explain? Math and logic cannot be explained by science, rather, they form the foundations of science. So why are math and logic true?
At the same time I was coming to the realization that there is a limit to human knowledge. I figured that since there is an infinite amount of knowledge to know (e.g. the set of transcendental numbers or the digits of pi), and since no person or group of people will ever live for an infinite amount of time, then some things will always remain outside the realm of knowable things. This meant to me that I could never disprove the existence of God…but could I prove it? This is the position of the agnostic: that we can’t really know one way or another.
The position of the Christian is that not only does God exist, but he wants to tell us about himself; so much so that he became one of us. I began reading more about what the Catholic Church had to say in the matter. The Church’s bold claim is that it is the earthly institution that was founded by none other than God, the Creator of the universe who became man. To my surprise, I found it to be an intellectual treasure trove. The Catholic Church is, and always has been, a great defender and promoter of reason and the sciences. Nothing in Christianity is contrary to reason. At the same time, it reminds us of the limits to human knowledge, and reveals truths to us that our reason could have never reached on its own.
All of this is my long-winded way of saying to you, and to all people of good will, that Christianity is not the enemy of reason, nor of science, nor of any legitimate human endeavour. It deserves a serious and honest analysis before it is discarded as logically fallacious or as merely an emotional crutch.
Cheers
You’re entire post amounts to an assertion that God is “God of the Gaps in Our Knowledge”. But you seem to be willfully naive. In every way, you make it demonstrably clear that faith is the enemy of reason. You throw your hands in the air in tacit frustration and shrug: “We simply cannot understand math and logic’s underpinnings, so why try?”
In reality, while you have given up, every single thing that you cite as being of limited human understanding has astounding hypothesis pushing the envelope of the boundaries of our understanding in those subjects. And none of those advances being made have anything to do with supernaturalism. Those advances being made are by people whom refused to accept that our capacity for understanding is limited by God and continue to pursue answers to the deep questions that astound us.
For example, in the field of philosophy the seemingly magical ability for logic and math to transcend time and space is being picked apart in field mathematics and manifold interaction hypothesis. Not surprisingly, the most extreme boundaries of physics are pointing to a deeper understanding of the fundamental nature of the universe that we inhabit. Far from permanently ignorant, we are continuing to expand our understanding.
Also, you completely whitewash the Catholic churches sorted history with science. Even today it is killing people with it’s asinine anti-contraceptive policy.
You can continue being willfully ignorant if you want to, of course, but don’t blame scientists for your ignorance. It’s your faith and unwillingness to seek out unbiased answers to your questions that is the cause of your not knowing what you want to know. There are answers out there, you just need to spend as much time looking for them as you do reading books that pat you on the back and shore up your beliefs.
Hi Chris,
Thanks for taking the time to reply to my blog entry. I read through Jen’s blog and my first wonderment was if this girl really ever was a atheist, her writing make it more sound like she was a deist. Also not sure if touching is a good word to describe her journey which seemed to be summarized as ‘I decided I wanted to be a Christan and find Christian arguments for my convictions, at first I realized that you could argue for almost anything based on the bible, but then I found the Catholic church who would make all judgments and thinking for me, so now I am happy….’
Yes, I am being a bit harsh on Jen’s blog entry, but to use your own words I don’t understand how Jens testimony, while honest, is convincing.
Both she and you fail to even come close to answer my biggest misgivings about religion which is that no religion so far has managed to present a good case for why they have some real knowledge. And the argument is not about if a person called Jesus existed or not, that is a quite secondary question to me. There has been many people throughout history saying some great and insightful things like Jesus, Budha and Zoroaster and while many of them have chosen to make those statements in the context of religious belief, there is nothing that proves their insights and moral teachings to have supernatural origin.
A lot of discussions about the existence of God comes down to basic deist vs atheist arguments, but I think Christians, Muslims, Jews etc. have an even bigger problem. They do not only have to make a convincing case for deism, but they also have to go beyond that and show that their holy books, which are full of self contradictions, moral depravity and obvious cut and pasting from other religions actually have any real clue whatsoever to what the will of any supernatural being or beings are.
Why (Christian) do you say the Bible (a holy book) is full of self contradictions? I can take any book, interpret it (maybe erroneously), and say it’s full of self contradictions.
I am catholic and contrary to what you said, I think Bible is not full of self contradictions when texts are not taken out of the context, and you can place these texts in the correct historical context (sorry for my English).
Cheers.
Christian,
You’re correct in that it comes down to basic deist vs atheist arguments: does God exist or not?
I used to think the way that you’re describing. I thought that the teachings of Jesus, the Church, the Bible, or even of Buddha or Zeus were secondary to the question of if God existed or not. If God doesn’t exist, then we should free ourselves from superstitious religions. But if God DOES exist…well, I figured I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.
It took me a long time to answer that question to my satisfaction. I’m not trying to present irrefutable proof here, just a piece of my own journey. Some people find God through art, music and beauty. Others through philosophy, or even science. Everybody has his own story. I don’t think belief in God makes them (or me) willfully naive, as Jason mentions above. From my perspective, it is the atheist who is willfully naive
If one reason for denying the possibility of God’s existence is that the Bible is full of self contradictions, then I think one should investigate how the believers in it explain the contradictions. One doesn’t go to the English department to get an explanation for quantum physics, one goes to the physics department: the authority on the question. If you really care to know why it is that more than a billion people believe in this seemingly contradictory book, go ask the Catholic Church.
As for how can you show that the Catholic Church, has some real knowledge? I just finished reading G.K. Chesterton’s book Orthodoxy, and I think he said it best, “I [believe in it] it because the thing has not merely told this truth or that truth, but has revealed itself as a truth-telling thing. All other philosophies say the things that plainly seem to be true; only this philosophy has again and again said the thing that does not seem to be true, but is true.”
But, if you reject God, then you won’t accept this to be true either.
So, I invite you to continue the search for truth, and for God. Don’t just listen to one side of the story, listen to what believers have to say for themselves.
Jason,
If you understood me to be saying that my reason for belief is that God exists in the “Gaps in Our Knowledge”, then I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood what I was trying to say.
The essential point was that the realization that we can never know everything marked an important change in my perspective. If we can never know everything, then there is a limit to human reason. Does this mean we should stop trying to understand our world? Of course not, we’d be stuck back in the stone ages if that were true. But it does mean that we can never claim to know everything that there is to know, which for me, allowed the possibility for the existence of God I had previously denied the possibility of. Is this an irrefutable argument? Probably not. But it was the point at which I started asking, “What if God DOES exist? How does that affect the universe? What would God be like if he existed? Do claims by various religions make any sense?”
Advances in mathematical research and pushing the boundaries of physics are wonderful. They do advance our knowledge of the universe, but in a way, we’re no closer to answering our question. Why is (assuming it is…) “manifold interaction hypothesis” true? This begs the question, what is truth? And that is something that empirical science, no matter how advanced, simply cannot answer. The nature of truth is in the realm of philosophy and metaphysics, and (if you believe in God) theology.
I fear we’re going to have to agree to disagree on the contraception issue. The Church has many reasons for rejecting contraception, not least of which is that condoms are NOT a good way to prevent sexually transmitted disease.
As for the Church’s “sordid” history with science, can you back that up? Most people cite Galileo or evolution as arguments that the Church is against science. Read some history, read what the Church says about evolution, and science in general, and then we can talk.
everyone is an atheist, i mean people don’t believe in zeus.
your example, the speed of light, is ridiculous. studies have proven that people with lower IQ are more likely to believe in god. that should tell you something.