Respect for Atheists
The good Mr. Torbjørn takes me to task with these words:
“I don’t feel he has a lot of respect for people with different views from his own – I often feel he has no respect for the atheist viewpoint. He is entitled to voice his opinions, but I often feel that his reasoning is flawed – he’s more concerned with “lawyerly” logic than than with reason… He is “not at all interested in persuading the opposition,” and that’s what I don’t like about him.”
I am startled by the harshness of the judgment, for I thought I was being punctiliously polite to those who disagreed with me. Anyone who is interested can look back over my journal entries and count the times I have used the words, “I respectfully disagree” or “I respectfully demur” as opposed to “You ignorant fool! Quail before the immensity of my coffee-table-sized brain! Quail, I say!”
Such expressions of scorn are the rule rather than the exception on the Internet, where the anonymity of remark brings out the worst in people. (I even try to call people by their last names as a sign of respect, which is difficult in a nameless environment.)
So I regret that my journal has created a misleading impression to Mr. Torbjørn, for I have respect for the atheist viewpoint, even great respect.
Their world is one of cold, heroic stoicism. Atheists live in an unforgiving inanimate universe, haunted by no devils, plagued by no jealous gods, bowing to no authority save their own conscience, all alone and needing nothing but the lamp of reason to guide them: doomed to death and oblivion in a world where nothing is eternal save the reign of all-consuming entropy, and where all human history is to be swallowed up in endless cosmic nothingness, and yet the atheist stares into the abyss and is unafraid. All his friends and gullible neighbors see ghosts and hear voices, or believe in those who do, and he alone is immune from their dark fantasies and hallucinations. These are the creatures of Prometheus: what is not to admire?
I do however hold atheists to the standard of logic freethinkers must meet, if they are to be worthy of the name. One cannot be a thoughtless freethinker. It burns my spleen to see what should be logically airtight argument uttered instead as flabby screeds devoid of reasoning and riddled with ad Hominem.
I have no respect for unreason, either from theist or atheist: but I hold atheists to a higher standard, for the theist, by his own admission, lives in a mystical universe were some things stand outside the eyesight of human reason: the atheist cannot make this excuse. The Theist who believes in Christ for an unreasonable reason he cannot put into words is at least self-consistent, for Christian theology allows for intuition, inspiration, revelation. The atheist who disbelieves for an unreasonable reason has nothing to say.
Atheists who have not read Tom Pain and James Ingersoll, Bertrand Russell or Ayn Rand earn my displeasure. How does one expect to win a battle if one does not go to the arsenal? Atheists who do not know the history of Rome, or how the Empire became Christianized earned my displeasure, for then they make foolish historical errors that detract from the glory of their cause.
Atheists who cannot make a crushing argument against in the Watchmaker Argument, the Argument from First Cause, the Ontological Argument of Anselm, or point out the paradoxes of the Problem of Pain, have not done their homework.
An atheist should be able to score a touch on a theist in his first stroke, and put the believer on the defensive in one sentence: “Everyone in the world is an atheist to all gods but his own, O Christian, for you do not worship Zeus or Thor or Vishnu, or pay honors to Susa-no-O or Mumbo-Jumbo; therefore explain to me why I should not hold your God in the same disregard as you hold all these other gods? What means do you use to distinguish true claims of God from false?” Or “Explain the divine justice of sending a pagan from the antipodes to hellfire because he knows not Christ. If you do not believe in hell, tell me why Jesus did. If you think means of salvation other than through Jesus can be extended this or any man, then why did Jesus claimed otherwise?” Or “An omnipotent benevolent God cannot permit evil in the world, for if He permits it, He is not benevolent, and if it exists without His permission, He is not omnipotent.”
Instead of any sort of manly or bold argument, what I get from half the atheists I read is mere craven blather, paradox, pure nonsense.
“The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference…DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music”.
This from Richard Dawkins, a “famous” atheist. I should say rather, a famous humbug. This is a mere admission of non-thinking. If we dance to the music of DNA in a world without good and evil, on what grounds are we to treat this statement itself? If the statement is produced by a rational mind able to contemplate the laws of logic and the categories of a priori thought, then it is not true, for we have found a human activity, namely reasoning, not produced merely by a dance of DNA. If it is produced by a dance of DNA and not by a rational mind, the statement is neither true nor false, but as meaningless as the noises on a phonograph record running in a room where there is none to hear. A statement that there is no truth, if true, is false. A statement that there is no good or evil, no standards of honesty or dishonesty, if made honestly, is an admission of dishonesty. One almost needs a special terminology to refer to this brand of pure illogic: the self-impeaching statement.
I have more respect for the atheist viewpoint than most atheists do. If they cannot voice a rational argument to uphold the philosophy the Age of Reason, they are not showing respect for it.
The other half of atheists I read, of course, are just swell guys. I hope they fight the good fight. I did, when I was in their ranks.
As for persuading the opposition, there is no other honest way to do it but with logic. The rules of logic are the same for lawyers, philosophers, and all other fashion of rational beings.
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.
February 20, 2007 @ 12:40 pm
