The Illogic of Atheism

While secularists style themselves as champions of logic, there are many aspects of secularist thought that rest on fallacious reasoning. A thorough reading of the Humanist Manifesto will yield several examples of illogic, most of which consist of espousing a certain principle while advocating a public policy that is directly opposed to that same principle.

For the moment I considering only one very specific idea, that of atheism. By that term I mean the certainty that there is no God. This is to be distinguished from agnosticism, which is the belief that the question, of whether this is a God, cannot be settled with the evidence at hand. Whether agnosticism is a tenable idea is left for another time.

Atheism, as I am using the term, is an idea claiming certainty. It is my intent here to show that such certainty can never be attained, but only declared.

For this, I will draw on the work of an avowed atheist, Leonard Peikoff. In his work Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, he set forth the threshold of certainty: We may be certain of an idea when denying that idea contradicts the evidence. For instance, we may be certain that Nazi Germany had a program to exterminate Jews, because to deny the Holocaust brings us into direct contradiction with the records kept by the Nazis and the extensive physical evidence as well. We may be certain that Bill Clinton had sexual relations with "that woman," because the denial of that conclusion contradicts the evidence.

So what would be the threshold of certainty for atheism?

Simply enough, the evidence for atheism would consist of any observation that is incompatible with the existence of God, thereby bringing into contradiction the person who claims that there is a God. While this appears easy on the surface, there are two problems with meeting this threshold.

First, there is no observation or combination of observations that is incompatible with the existence of an omnipotent being.
Second, and more severe, no such observations are even possible. This goes beyond the sloppy catch phrase "you can't prove a negative" (which phrase is easily rebutted, because there are innumerable negatives which are easily proven); it is impossible to even conceive of something that would disprove God's existence.

This should come as no surprise. If it is postulated that God is omnipotent, we can no longer say about any observation "God couldn't have done that."

The obstacle, that there is nothing observable that is beyond God's ability, is so clearly insurmountable that few even bother to try. The next resort is to offer up some observation, and while (possibly) admitting that it was within God's power, hold that an omniscient God would have done things differently. Reduced to its essentials, the argument goes "If I were God, I would have done X. The alleged God did something else. Therefore, there is no God."

The Problem of Suffering and the Problem of Evil are chief examples of the if-I-were-God line of reasoning. Others have argued that DNA, which stores genetic information, could have been constructed to be less prone to mutation, and thereby reduce the prevalence of genetic disorders. It has also been argued that this-or-that protein could have been made to be more efficient, leading to more bountiful crops, richer forests, or what have you.

While each of these arguments can be dealt with in turn and in detail, they can all be dealt with together. The error in the argument is that the person making this argument is by no means omniscient, yet claims to know exactly what an onmiscient being should have done. Having a few meager fragments of information, he presumes to know what a vastly greater being, with full knowledge of every detail and every consequence, would have done. He says, "if I were God, I would have done this," but his state of knowledge is more appropriate to the statement "if I had commanded the genie, I would have commanded this." (This is not an ad hominem attack; if a person makes an assertion about himself, it is not fallacious to address that assertion.)

The atheist's final resort (or for some, the first) is the assertion that there is no evidence for the existence of God. Having a plethora of explanations, drawn from scientific principles, for everything he sees, the atheist claims no positive reason to believe in God. However, professing complete open-mindedness on the issue, he confesses a complete willingness to change his viewpoint, provided we can show him something for which he cannot find an explanation drawn from the science he knows. In short, he wants to see a miracle.

It can first be answered that the atheist is still caught in the previous error, of assuming what God would do if He really existed. In this case, he merely says, "if I were God, I would be doing up miracles left and right. There are no miracles, therefore there is no God."

It can be secondly answered that there is evidence for the existence of God, and it is evidence which the atheist accepts on a host of other issues: The testimony of witnesses.

This testimony is recorded in the Bible. Of the writers of the New Testament, several (including, but not limited to, Matthew, John, Peter, Luke, and Paul) claim to be first-hand witnesses of the events of which they write. This necessarily means that they either knew these things to be true, or they knew the same things to be fabrications. Either they saw the miracles or they lied when they said that they did.

Now how do we tell whether they told the truth or lied? It's quite simple. We know from history that Matthew, Peter, and Paul were given this choice: Recant your teachings or die. Essentially, the atheist position holds, as its consequence, that these men willingly died for teachings they knew to be utterly false.

I don't have enough faith to believe that.