Because I am a guy, therefore shallow
It is illogical to argue thus: Aishwarya Rai is beautiful beyond what any natural explanation can account for; therefore there must be a God. Philosophers have long dismissed the Argument from Aishwarya as insufficient, and rightly so.
On the other hand, those who have sufficient independent grounds for their faith, are free to Thank God (or Laxshmi, as you will) ) that a creature so lovely exists among us. Atheists can only thank the blind forces of natural selection, which are notoriously ungrateful in receiving the same. Agnostics conclude there is insufficient information on which to base a guess on whom to thank. In the theistic world view, this gratitude has a proper place and understandable role; otherwise, this reaction, gratitude for events not controlled by a human actor, is either an arbitrary sentiment, or a false-to-facts reaction programmed by mechanistic forces.
Note that this does not prove the matter one way or another. It merely happens to be the case that the theists have a reason and role for certain typical human reactions that, to atheists, are explained as atavisms, or psychological mechanisms of no particular meaning. The atheist is perfectly reasonable, provided he does not take that last, logical, absurd step into pure materialism or pure behaviorism.
If most things in a man’s mind are merely psychological mechanisms imprinted by evolution for survival value (or, more precisely, imprinted by accident and allowed to continue when and if their anti-survival value, taken as a sum, does not overbalance the summed survival value of the wholeorganism) then a man can believe this with only mild disquiet at his own innate pre-recorded irrationality. He can believe part of his mind is reasonable, and the balance is this machine without a designer that inflicts certain moods and passions on him. He is (in fact, if not in name) a dualist, who divide the world into a mental substance (over which his consciousness and his reason have command) and a material substance (in this case, his subconscious mind, over which his reason has no command).
On the other hand, if he takes the fatal step and believes that all things in a man’s mine are psychological mechanisms, all things without exception, then he has undercut his own capacity to reason and draw conclusions. If all things are psychological mechanisms, he no longer has a logical basis for any belief whatever, including the belief that all things are psychological mechanisms.
However, allow me to post another photo, rather than provoke any esteemed atheist readers of this journal to rage and concept (unfortunately, a reaction more common than merely polite disagreement—it is a rare pleasure to read a rebuttal that does not involve some youth asserting his intelligence and education and general moral character to be superior to mine—an assertion perhaps true, but not one for which the logic of an ad hominem argument serves as a credential).
Question for amateur theologans: is it idolitry to worship a screen idol? What about worshipping a screen goddess?
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
