Reflex
Active Member
Even though it has nothing whatsoever to do with the OP, atheists here are like children on a playground yelling, “Prove it! Prove that there is a purpose behind evolution!” Do they have any idea, any idea at all, of just how inane that is?
Ravi Zacharis tells an amusing story about a visit to the Wexner Center for the Performing Arts at Ohio State University whose confused outside architecture intensifies when you enter the building, for inside you encounter stairways that go nowhere, pillars that hang from the ceiling without purpose and angled surfaces configured to create a sense of vertigo. The architect, we are duly informed, designed this building to reflect life itself—senseless and incoherent—and the “capriciousness of the rules that organize the built world.' Zacharis had but one question: Did the architect do the same with the foundation?
For a theist, God, properly described, is the foundation; God is the reason why things are the way they are. That is not to say anything about God, but only to indicate a way of making sense of the world. The theist is by no means bound to declare he knows with empirical certainty exactly who God is or what his nature is. Far from being a “failed hypothesis,” God is anything but retreating before science as many critics would have us believe. On the contrary, the God hypothesis has expanded and evolved over the centuries because of science, and until someone can provide a satisfactory alternative, the God hypothesis will not go away.
There is a crucial difference between believing something that works but may be wrong and denying it for no reason at all. It is not sufficient to simply reject the hypothesis; the rejection must be justified by either proving the explanation to be logically incoherent. Failing in that ('you can't prove a negative' is the oft used excuse), the atheist must substitute another hypothesis in place of God in order to justify his rejection of God, and furthermore he must provide evidence for that hypothesis or be dismissed as someone living in a senseless and incoherent world.
Atheists never tire of trying to dismantle theistic beliefs, but when their feet are held to the fire, the untenability of atheism is so obvious that atheists will often conveniently sidestep the claim with a fallacious equivocation of atheism to the agnostic position. “I dunno,” becomes a convenient escape route. To say “I dunno, but I’m really, really sure it isn’t God” is what atheist Richard Dawkins calls ‘the argument from personal incredulity.’
Atheism and agnosticism are functionally identical. Agnosticism is mere confabulation designed to circumvent the effort it takes to seriously consider the actual question or to dispose of the understandably irritating task of justifying one’s beliefs. The only mindset that can possibly justify agnosticism, as the word suggests, is one of absolute ignorance. There is no absolute middle, just as there is no absolute ‘true’belief.' The correctness of “I dunno” does not change the fact that it is a meaningless epistemic state. Nor does it change the fact that an open mind, like an open mouth, is designed to clamp down on something. Dogs are agnostic, humans merely pretend to be. For human beings, there is no such thing as no believing at all. By saying “I dunno,” the atheist/agnostic forfeits the debate. As Soren Kierkegaard remarked, “To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one's self. … And to venture in the highest sense is precisely to become conscious of one's self.”
Ravi Zacharis tells an amusing story about a visit to the Wexner Center for the Performing Arts at Ohio State University whose confused outside architecture intensifies when you enter the building, for inside you encounter stairways that go nowhere, pillars that hang from the ceiling without purpose and angled surfaces configured to create a sense of vertigo. The architect, we are duly informed, designed this building to reflect life itself—senseless and incoherent—and the “capriciousness of the rules that organize the built world.' Zacharis had but one question: Did the architect do the same with the foundation?
For a theist, God, properly described, is the foundation; God is the reason why things are the way they are. That is not to say anything about God, but only to indicate a way of making sense of the world. The theist is by no means bound to declare he knows with empirical certainty exactly who God is or what his nature is. Far from being a “failed hypothesis,” God is anything but retreating before science as many critics would have us believe. On the contrary, the God hypothesis has expanded and evolved over the centuries because of science, and until someone can provide a satisfactory alternative, the God hypothesis will not go away.
There is a crucial difference between believing something that works but may be wrong and denying it for no reason at all. It is not sufficient to simply reject the hypothesis; the rejection must be justified by either proving the explanation to be logically incoherent. Failing in that ('you can't prove a negative' is the oft used excuse), the atheist must substitute another hypothesis in place of God in order to justify his rejection of God, and furthermore he must provide evidence for that hypothesis or be dismissed as someone living in a senseless and incoherent world.
Atheists never tire of trying to dismantle theistic beliefs, but when their feet are held to the fire, the untenability of atheism is so obvious that atheists will often conveniently sidestep the claim with a fallacious equivocation of atheism to the agnostic position. “I dunno,” becomes a convenient escape route. To say “I dunno, but I’m really, really sure it isn’t God” is what atheist Richard Dawkins calls ‘the argument from personal incredulity.’
Atheism and agnosticism are functionally identical. Agnosticism is mere confabulation designed to circumvent the effort it takes to seriously consider the actual question or to dispose of the understandably irritating task of justifying one’s beliefs. The only mindset that can possibly justify agnosticism, as the word suggests, is one of absolute ignorance. There is no absolute middle, just as there is no absolute ‘true’belief.' The correctness of “I dunno” does not change the fact that it is a meaningless epistemic state. Nor does it change the fact that an open mind, like an open mouth, is designed to clamp down on something. Dogs are agnostic, humans merely pretend to be. For human beings, there is no such thing as no believing at all. By saying “I dunno,” the atheist/agnostic forfeits the debate. As Soren Kierkegaard remarked, “To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one's self. … And to venture in the highest sense is precisely to become conscious of one's self.”
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