Quote for Great and Holy Monday: Atheist Pride
Quote of the Day for Great and Holy Monday. This is from http://www.peekinthewell.net/blog/no-i-know-no-such-thing/
In answer to a quips from atheists denying the faith-based character of their movement, such as “You know that Atheism isn’t the BELIEF that no god exists, but the LOGICAL CONCLUSION that no god exists, right?” or “Atheism is a religion the way baldness is a hair color”, a writer with the most excellent name of Severian opines:
To say “I have logically concluded there is no God” entails “I am better at logic than Thomas Aquinas.” To say “There is no God, because science” entails “I am better at science than Isaac Newton.” To say “Religion is just a bunch of superstitious hooey” entails “I am a clearer-eyed observer of reality than Thomas Hobbes.”
I am not better at logic than Aquinas. I am not better at science than Newton. I am not as sharp as Hobbes. And I can’t convince myself that I am, no matter how strong my beer muscles get. Even on the internet.
Now, none of that means those guys are right about everything, or anything — I’m not committing the appeal-to-authority fallacy (I think that subject, at least, has been thoroughly hashed out right here on this site). It’s not about right or wrong. It’s about humility. And while declaring myself not-as-smart-as some of humanity’s greatest minds isn’t all that humble, it’s a start. It allows that crucial sliver of doubt, that just maybe the opinions of others are worth listening to, because they might know something I don’t.
My comment: speaking as someone likewise less logical, not better at science, and not as sharp as Aquinas, Newton, and Hobbes, I agree that a pinch of humility is needed before any philosophical inquiry into any topic, shallow or deep, can commence.
(Except the topic of whether Kyle Rayner is NOT a real Green Lantern of course. That is the matter of LOGICAL CONCLUSION of TOTAL FACT not BELIEF !!!)
I confess I am disgusted by the low quality of arguments made in favor of atheism.
Even on the two occasions when I could find an atheist willing to attempt an honest debate on the topic, neither interlocutor was able to avoid monstrously unfair straw-man arguments, that is, neither man was willing or able to understand what we Christians say our teachings are. Both conversations consisted of them trying to convince me, not that Christian teaching is false, but that Christian teaching is not what the doctors of the Church, martyrs and saints and apostles, say it is, but what
a fundamentalist atheist with a bizarre misreading of the Bible says it is.
These two men were rare, and the intellectual honesty, partial though it was, was rare and refreshing. The other countless conversations with atheists were not philosophical debates at all, not honest, and not making any attempt to convince the undecided to adopt atheism.
They were more like psychiatric sessions where an unlettered neurotic poured out his malice and wrath toward father figures in general, and made abortive attempts to disguise a guilty conscience by calling things by wrong names, or by denying the self-evident, or by affirming the self-contradictory.
In sum, most conversations along
Usually the poor man would congratulate himself on his education and his adroit use of the rational faculty after such embarrassing displays.
To be sure, I do not expect everyone to be as skilled in logic as a Vulcan, or as dispassionate in nature as a Houyhnhnm. Such discipline of thought is rare among Earthlings and Yahoos.
But a little humility, a little courtesy, a little honesty, is something even a man of humble accomplishments can achieve. Just stop boasting about being smarter than Aquinas, for starts.
You may indeed wiser than Solomon: but, if so, display it by your careful clarity in your reasoning. Show the reader, don’t tell.
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.
