No Faith for Atheists

Found another silly Christian book on atheists today. This one is called I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist by Norman Geisler. Haven't read it yet, but I managed to flip through it a bit. Nothing much original on the pages I saw. It looks like the standard line that being an atheist somehow requires more blind faith than being a Christian. Supposedly, all the things that atheists "believe" are just so amazing that Christians ought to be scratching their heads at how we manage to pull off this feat of intellectual dishonesty, deluding ourselves so deeply as we allegedly do.

But what do atheists "believe"? Here's a quick rundown of how this atheist sees the world:

First, there is what I acquire by my five senses. That does not mean that everything I think I see, hear, smell, touch, or taste is automatically what I think it is. Rather, it means that anything that can't be seen, heard, smelled, touched, or tasted isn't really there. I can imagine all sorts of things with creative processing of my sensory input, but that doesn't mean it's true.

How can I tell between something real and something imagined? Well, here's how I explain the difference between "fact" and "opinion" to students: Facts are true for everybody; opinions are true for only some people. There is a similar relationship between "real" and "imaginary." That is, multiple concurring observers push perceptions further toward the "real" end of the spectrum, and multiple conflicting observers push perceptions further toward the "imaginary" end of the spectrum.

For instance, every person on the planet can concur with the theory of gravity; any time any of us drops something, it falls to the ground. Meanwhile, if thousands of Latin Americans see the virgin Mary on the trunk of a tree, but the moment a skeptic arrives on the scene, the visage immediately disappears, something is fishy. This is a consistent problem with miracles, by the way, that they never seem to be witnessed by skeptics. Only people who wanted to see miracles in the first place ever manage to see them. This fact alone ought to make miracle-believers wary of their own claims.

Meanwhile, a scientist who makes a new discovery or touts a new theory is required to make that discovery or theory available for similar observation by hordes of skeptics–other scientists.

This is the next level of factual apprehension for atheists (or, what atheists "believe"): consensus-driven reality. That is, we trust only that which can be freely observed by anyone regardless of what that person believed before observing it. (Theists, meanwhile, rest their faith on phenomena that, scandalously, can only be seen by someone who first wants to see them.)

People sometimes compare scientists to priests and claim that atheists like me have just switched to a different "priestly" authority. But if you look to history, and the way science and religion play out, there's a huge, inescapable difference between priests and scientists. Here's how it goes:

Priestly people (like prophets, or anyone else who claims to have spoken with god) are always lone figures who claim to have had a direct experience with the divine. Then, they go and expect other people to trust that they're telling the truth–without offering one shred of proof! Shockingly, people almost always follow these self-proclaimed authorities. Think Paul, Mohammed, or Joseph Smith, for example. Did Paul offer any physical evidence for his claims that Jesus had come to save the world from its sins? Nope. Did Mohammed offer any physical evidence for his claim that the Koran had come to him directly from god? Nope. Did Joseph Smith offer any physical evidence for his claim that The Book of Mormon came to him directly from god (via an angel)? Nope. But have people followed all three of these guys in droves? Yup.

Scientists, meanwhile, although they often work alone, immediately subject all their findings to the scrutiny and criticism of other scientists, who are usually far more skeptical than the general public. When Einstein claimed that space and time are relative, a skeptical scientific community immediately set to work observing the universe to see if he was right. In fact, scientists are still testing relativity today, nearly a hundred years later! The same goes for Darwin's theory of natural selection.

A lot of Christians like to say that scientists have a conspiracy to perpetuate some kind of alternate, anti-Christian mythology. That's ridiculous. Any working scientist today who could upend the theory of evolution by natural selection or supersede Einstein's physics would meet with immediate fame and recognition. In fact, every famous scientist you can think of–Newton, Galileo, Watson & Crick, Einstein, and Darwin, to name a few–is famous precisely because he (sorry ladies, I couldn't think of any female scientists just now) presented a new theoretic structure (or new "paradigm," as Thomas Kuhn would call it) for his field, changing virtually everything about it. These are not people who get together in secret, hush-hush conventions to perpetuate a conspiracy. They are dogged competitors, and many of them have had their egos and lives trampled in the mad rush to find the next great paradigm for whatever field.

Do atheists treat scientists like a different kind of priest? No! Priestly authorities are unquestioned by their followers; scientific authorities are constantly questioned by their peers and followers.

I have gotten a little off track, though. What do atheists "believe"? Well, basically, they believe that there is no god, because they have not come across any evidence to that effect which can be acquired by one or more of the five senses. Can I see, taste, hear, touch, or smell god? Nope. People only talk about "experiences" of god in extra-sensory ways. But unlike the five regular senses, no one has ever been able to discover a mechanism or carrier or any other evidence of any god-sense.

So, to say that atheism requires "faith" is just not true. Atheism removes from life the requirement for faith, because it allows you to rest easy in the knowledge that what you see is what you get, and there is nothing out there that cannot be observed by anyone.