Tuesday, 7 October 2014

No Atheist Lives Consistently With Their World-view

First up, I can already hear the cries of "atheism is not a world-view, it's just a position on the question of the existence of God".

Right... atheists believe that God does not exist. Theists who believe that God exists see the world with the knowledge that he has an effect on things and there are consequences to his being around. An atheist would have to be the opposite of that and so (whether they realise it or not) believing that God is not real or not accepting his existence is going to shape their world-view.

So having dealt with that, let's get to the point: no atheists live consistently with their world-view.

Without God there is no objective moral standard. There's no thing that is defined as 'good' that we can compare other things to beyond our own opinions. Which actually means that doing the washing up is morally equal to torturing people.
No one believes that. No one behaves that way. Everyone agrees that some actions are morally better than others.

Monday, 6 October 2014

Argument From The Balance Of Evidence

Philosophers best arguments are usually put together in the form of premises that lead to an inescapable conclusion. If the premises are true, then the conclusion must also be true.

They look like this:

P1: All fire engines are red.
P2: Kevin is a fire engine.
C: Kevin is red.

If both of those premises are true, then the conclusion must be true. There's no way out.

So, here's an argument I'm throwing out. Judge for yourself.

P1: There is no evidence or sound argument for the truth of atheism.
P2: There is lots of evidence for God's existence.
C: God exists.

You know what? I actually don't think the conclusion necessarily follows, there's a hidden premise somewhere, but there's definitely something to this.

"If You Need Religion, That's Fine, I Don't, So Leave Me Alone!"

 So here's a problem that we run into a lot with atheists. There's a massive misunderstanding of what religion and faith is about.

What it amounts to is the preconception that religion is for people who need some kind of safety blanket to make the world feel more safe and comfortable for them. They need a big daddy in the sky to be watching over them and stopping bad things happening to them.

Christianity isn't that. Book of Job tells us that bad things will happen to good people and there are a lot of reasons why!

So in the mind of the confused atheist, someone who wants a safety blanket can just check out the selection of religions and choose one based on what they fancy.
They can look at Judaism or Islam and decide they don't want to drop everything and pray several times a day. They can look at Hinduism and decide they don't want to give up beefburgers. Christianity is a great religion for safety blanket seekers because it doesn't ask anything except maybe getting dunked in a paddling pool.
But the brave atheist is happy in the world and doesn't need a safety blanket to protect them from harm and to let them survive death. So religion is not for them. Other people can get on with it, but they better not try to share the sheet. (sheet... double entendre? No? Ok...)

Fortunately, here's another quote from a different atheist that actually gets it right!