The No True Atheist Fallacy

Atheism

I used to be an atheist. That doesn't necessarily mean I was a Hitchens/Dawkins (insert other religion despiser) style atheist, in fact I wasn't anti-religious at all. Yes perhaps I thought it was all a little silly but to be honest it was more out of ignorance than disdain for the religious. Coming from a single-parent, dysfunctional  and working class household I wasn't particularly well read and needless to say I did pretty bad at school, not because I was stupid but because I was lazy and was never really encouraged to see any value in education and learning. However, I considered myself an atheist because I didn't believe a God or gods existed nor did I believe in the supernatural which seems consistent with atheism. I have always been naturally sceptical and atheism just seemed rather normal to me. Although I never thought about it at the time (because I'd never heard of hedonism), I used my atheism to justify my hedonistic lifestyle because it just seemed okay because that's what everyone else in my friendship group was doing. Of course I'm not saying atheism necessarily leads to hedonism but it could just as much as it could lead to humanism.

Arrogance

Yet in the seven years I've been a Christian I can't count the number of times I have been accused of lying, since I couldn't really have been an atheist. I'm constantly struck by the arrogance of some atheists who seem to know better than I do about what I have or haven't believed in the past, rather than accept that people can move from atheism to theism. How dare people accuse me of not knowing what I didn't believe in. One does not have to be a middle-class, Nietzsche read, university educated, Starbucks sipping humanist to be an atheist, one simply needs to have the absence of belief in the gods and the supernatural! There is no atheist disclaimer that states only those that know the Origin of the Species from back to front or those that saw the light after reading The God Delusion are allowed to call themselves atheists. Perhaps it's that it's only some of the arrogant atheists (and atheist celebrities) on Twitter that define themselves by their lack of belief in the gods that feel justified in accusing those less read than themselves as worthy of calling themselves atheists. There is no qualifier for atheism other than that one doesn't believe in the gods or the supernatural, there are no books to read or prophets to obey, just the ones you choose. I'm quite justified in referring to myself as a former atheist whether atheists like that or not and in fact the more atheist literature I read the more I think I'm justified in my decision.

The No True Atheist Fallacy

What this amounts to is a variation of the no true Scotsman fallacy whereby anyone who once considered themselves an atheist but has changed their minds couldn't have been a real atheist. This is because from their perspective anyone that once called themselves an atheist should never become a theist, so you therefore must have been pretending, not properly understood atheism (there's not really much to misunderstand) or just using the story for some ends. This is all very strange since many (not all) atheists view themselves as being the champions of reason and logic yet fail to see the problem of their own erroneous reasoning which I demonstrate below.

No true atheist would ever become a Christian
You said you were an atheist and are now a Christian
Therefore you couldn't have been a real atheist

I suppose all I really want to say is that if you are an atheist please don't keep accusing ex/former atheists of not really being atheists to begin with. Firstly, it makes you look silly and arrogant and secondly, I'm afraid you better get used to it because I think a number of people are starting to see that ultimately atheism does not stand up to scrutiny. As a Christian I have to constantly hear about all the Christian de-conversion stories going around which I read and try and learn from so perhaps extend the same respect to former atheists rather than pretending we don't exist. Thanks.

Forget Dawkins - Derren Brown is now the UK's most influential atheist

I'm a big fan of Derren Brown as an entertainer.  Who could deny his amazing talents as a hypnotist, magician and mind control expert, so often put into practise on his imaginative TV specials screened by Channel 4 over the last few years? He also had amazing stage presence - my wife and I were spellbound when we attended his "Enigma" stage show a few years ago.

As a teenager, Brown reports having been a Christian and part of a charismatic church.  At some point in his late teens, after discovering a passion for stage illusion, he lost his faith and (as far as I know) has described himself as an atheist ever since. 

And what an atheist!

Today Derren Brown wields more cultural influence for atheism in the UK than Richard Dawkins. Why?  Because Dawkins has increasingly been preaching to the choir in recent years.  His cultural capital as a serious scientist has waned, and he's now wheeled on as the "atheist" voice on any topical programme.  Brown, on the other hand is highly respected and sought after in his own right as a magician and entertainer.  His atheism is, to some extent, incidental, but that only make the critiques that he levels at religion all the more forceful when they do appear - and they reach a much wider audience.

FEAR AND FAITH

Take for instance his most recent TV show, the second part in a series titled "Fear and Faith".

Having established in the first episode the power of the "placebo" effect on helping individuals to overcome their phobias by the power of the mind, Brown goes on to ask whether God is the "ultimate placebo".

During the course of the show Brown purported to demonstrate via various means that the idea of the supernatural continues to be a powerful motivational force to make people behave better, even if they consider themlselves "rational" and "atheist" (because those two terms are practically synonymous, of course).

At one point in the programme, with the help of a cartoon animation, he explains how these instinctive reactions can be shown to have an evolutionary explanation.  The idea of God was a useful notion among our ancestors to allow social harmony and group advancement.  This apparently is "where" the whole idea of God came from.  And the implication is "therefore, we can see its not actually true".

RED HERRING ALERT

Now wait a minute. The explanation given strikes me as "provisional" at best, and probably one among a rivalling number of naturalistic evolutionary explanations of how religious beliefs developed.  But regardless of whether or not the description is accurate, its reeks of that old chestnut (so well known to apologists) - the "Genetic Fallacy".  

Showing how a belief arose (perhaps in some non rational way), does not thereby disprove the belief.  The belief may still be true for other (rational) reasons. So it is with belief in God.  People may believe in God for all kinds of different reasons, even wacky ones.  But the content of the belief can still nevertheless be true.  And of course there are indeed all sorts of good arguments that can be employed to show why belief in God is a rational position.

THE ATHEIST CONVERT

But this was not the real thrust of the programme - the finale of the show was an edited sequence in which Brown appeared to succeed in making an atheist lady have a religious experience, after speaking to her in a church setting for 15 minutes.  Afterwards this was held up as evidence that people's perceived religious experiences (and thereby belief in God) is, in fact, all a trick of the mind.

A couple of things worth noting:

Derren is a highly skilled illusionist and hypnotist - we know this. He had fifteen minutes to "convert" the atheist lady. But it strikes me that it would have been well within his power to make her believe that she WAS god, let alone just IN God. As much as he wanted to present her experience as evidence that religious belief is a product of our own mind, this was much more a demonstration of how good he is at what he does.

Afterwards he explained to her the psychological techniques of association and suggestion he used - at least the ones we were shown. (Even so, before he let her in on his techniques, she didn't seem to have renounced her atheism, just seemed to describe herself as someone one who had undergone a strange experience).

IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE A DELUSION?

So we must ask, just because fake "religious experiences" can be manufactured through suggestion, hypnosis etc. does that mean that all religious experience falls into this category?

That's a big claim, and I suspect that there is a baby being chucked out with some bathwater by those who make it. Of course all religious experience will involve our brain at some level - chemicals, and neurons firing etc - that is just how we experience things generally. But the question is: "is that all that is going on?". That doesn't seem to have been shown at all from this example.

It would be within the power of a hypnotist or mind control expert to induce a feeling of me being in love with Napoleon, or the Prime minister, or my own feet (and such happens on regular basis at stage shows of performers).  But does the fact that my brain can be tricked into experiencing something like that invalidate my experience of actually being in love with my wife?  Is that ultimately reducible to psychology and neurons? 

LESSONS TO LEARN

By all means, let's allow Brown to educate Christians on the importance of recognising when psychological tricks (conscious or not) are being employed to make people "experience" something supernatural.  Evidently, Derren Brown came to see aspects of what was going on in the charismatic church he grew up in as precisely that. Of course we need to be careful of situations that could lend themselves to that criticism.  But I know of many, many Christians who would report experiences they believe had a supernatural origin, very difficult to dismiss in such a fashion (and miles away from the concerted techniques that Brown used on the lady in the show). You can read a very different report of an atheist experiencing a supernatural conversion here http://www.christianpost.com/news/former-dawkins-atheist-richard-morgan-continues-to-praise-god-49558/

Having watched the show I was left impressed (as ever) at Brown's extraordinary skills.  But I was also concerned that showmanship was being passed off as serious religious criticism.  Brown ended the programme stating that he thinks people believe in God "because it makes them happy".  I'm sure many do, but it's far from being the only reason people believe in God. Certainly I believe in God because I believe I have experienced his presence in a supernatural way in my life, but also because the existence of God makes more rational sense of the world I engage with each day and of the evidence I have investigated.  Its both/and.

Which all goes to show why apologetics is more important today in the Christian church than it ever has been.  Because when someone, having watched Derren Brown on TV, asks you where the hope of Christ in your heart comes from, how will you answer?

With thanks to guest blogger Justin Brierley is the presenter of the apologetics discussion show Unbelievable? on Premier Christian Radio www.premier.org.uk/unbelievable

Atheism, Theism, and Noetic Structures

A popular claim on the Internet is that atheism is merely a lack of belief in a deity. Furthermore, this lack of belief does not influence or inform other aspects of their lives, and that atheism does not require anything more than lack of belief in a deity. I wanted to explore this issue, since this "argument" is often employed in discussions as a kind of 'gotcha.' For example, when atheists argue that religion is the biggest cause of violence and war, and that Hitler was an atheist, the moment the Christian brings up the example of the atheist states of the 20th century, then you can usually expect this "argument" to be deployed, ultimately de-railing the argument. (As a side note, I may take a look at these named arguments in the future for those interested.) Regardless of the context in which it occurs, this argument tends to surface frequently in online discussions. It is typically invoked as a sort of 'get out of jail free card' whenever an atheist is confronted by inconsistencies in their system of beliefs. I wanted to discuss these issues: the definition of atheism, and the relation to atheism to one's noetic structure, or system of beliefs.

Let's consider the oft-repeated claim that atheism is a 'lack of belief.' As such, you do not need to hold to the position that God does not exist, just as long as you don't hold to the position that God exists. The problem with this, is that this simply does not describe atheism. It describes a position of agnosticism; a withdrawal of judgement on an issue, either through lack of awareness of the topic itself, or lack of data to come to a judgement. As such, babies would be atheists, along with dogs, trees, and rocks. Some people laughably actually accept this reductio of their position by actually claiming that babies are indeed atheists. I find this a very self-defeating move, since they are more or less admitting that no thought whatsoever is necessary to become an atheist, since, according to the argument, we are born atheists. If this is the case, then atheism is a position held not by evidence, or by argument. I find it hard to believe that this is a position that intellectual atheists would want to hold to.

Indeed, it seems as if the sole purpose of such an argument is to get out of actually having to defend the truth of atheism. Whilst we could probably go into the philosophy of language and deconstruct the meaning of the term 'atheism,' it would perhaps be more profitable to consider things in purely logical terms. Both theism and atheism are positions on a topic, namely that of the existence of God. When asked the question: "Does God exist?" then there are three possible answer, yes, no, or I don't know. In other words, theism, atheism, and agnosticism. Moreover, if the question posed is: "do you believe that God exists?" then there are only two possible responses, yes, or no. You could combine views by believing that God exists whilst admitting that you don't know if God exists or not. You can also hold to nuanced positions whereby you believe that God probably exists, or very probably exists, etc. There is, however, no magical position where you actively go around claiming that there is no God, whilst at the same time admitting a position of agnosticism.

This leads me to the subject of the relation of atheism to noetic structures. A noetic structure is simply a person's network of beliefs. Some beliefs will be based upon other beliefs, whereas other beliefs will be foundational or basic beliefs not inferred from other beliefs. Atheism, whether or not it is a basic belief or an inferred belief, it is still a part of the atheist's noetic structure. Furthermore, in order to be rational, our noetic structure must not be incoherent, or contradictory, that is to say that is must not contain any flaws. Thus, if an atheist holds to a position that contradicts or is contradicted by the truth atheism, they are irrational since their noetic structure is flawed. So, when an atheist remarks that something cannot be inferred from their atheism, they are speaking a falsehood.

Of course, ascertaining whether or not a position is incompatible with atheism or not might take a bit of work, but the principle remains. In addition to this, a person who holds to a belief not inferred from their atheism runs the risk of being irrational. Obviously, atheists can come to beliefs regardless and apart from their atheism. But in order to be rational, they need to check to see if the beliefs they arrive at are compatible with their atheism. Of course, it is also true that many atheists have a hard time understanding when a belief they hold to is incompatible with their atheism. The atheist who believes that humanity is special, or that objective moral values and duties exists, does so entirely apart from their atheism. In order to be consistent, they would need to jettison either these beliefs, or their atheism. Many people are so committed to the palpably untrue, however, that they would rather discard true beliefs than a cherished worldview, and so remain irrational. Many politicians are die-hard Keynesians despite the fact Keynesian economics has provably destroyed Western economy.

Thus, to conclude, any singular belief is part of a noetic structure of beliefs that must be coherent, and consistent to be considered rational, and atheism is a belief whether those who hold to it would care to admit it or not. In the end, I doubt whether or not the atheists who make these sorts of argument will ever have the intellectual wherewithal to actually be cognisant of this reality, or ever bother to check the consistency of their noetic structures if they do. At least we can remain sure, however, of their utter irrationality until they do so.

Are these atheists and agnostics really covert creationists?

This article was originally published at Uncommon Descent.

We’ve all heard it before. Time and time again the somewhat tiresome and predictable Darwinian propagandists, in a fit of florid indignation, assert that intelligent design will be the death of science and the dawn of theocracy. The claim that ID is nothing more than warmed-over creationism is one that has been thoroughly addressed by ID proponents, yet, the vacuous claim continues to be thrown around.

Over at Evolution News And Views, John West recently highlighted the upcoming release of Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False (Oxford University Press, 2012), a new book by New York University’s atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel. Those immersed in the debate over ID and Darwinism will be familiar with Nagel’s open scepticism towards neo-Darwinian theory and his sympathetic attitude towards ID theory. Though Nagel does not accept ID, he goes as far as to say that it has much merit and that it is science. Good on him! Nagel’s views on this issue can be found in his 2008, Philosophy & Public Affairs article Public Education and Intelligent Design. It will be good to read more about his views as they are further expressed in his new book Mind and Cosmos. West includes a couple of delicious quotes from chapter 1 of Nagel’s book:

Collision - The Movie

This is a must watch for those interested in the God debate, from whatever side of the fence you reside you'll enjoy Hitchens at his best and find someone in Doug Wilson who can give as good as he gets. They both seem to genuinely disagree with each-other but seem to forge a real friendship which is a great example for all of us. We can disagree agreeably.

Let us know your thoughts.



The book that came as a result if their interactions is available here.

How The New Atheists Misrepresent Christian Faith

Richard Dawkins Attacks Agnostic Philosopher Sir Anthony Kenny

Response to the New Atheist Rosa Rubicondior - Christians! Be Sensible Now And Tell Me This.

 I recently found myself reading the blog of a UK based  New Atheist who blogs and Tweets alot about problems they have have with Christianity here. Most of the content is actually pretty good and the author seems pretty well read in the atheistic literature from what I can see. I subsequently stumbled upon a post that posed several questions for Christians to respond to. So being Christians, a few of us got together and offer a few brief points in response to Rosa Rubicondior. They are not exhaustive responses, and some of the questions touch upon very similar points so it wasn't necessary to go over them again. Anyway, below are our thoughts on the questions posed to Christians, hopefully the response will be helpful for both Christians and Atheists.

 Hopefully these questions are genuine and if this is the case I hope that these short responses help to correct any misunderstandings, and help people to better understand what Christians actually believe. There is often a tendency for many New Atheists to come up with questions about theism or Christianity specifically that are meant to rock the theistic boat. However the answers are usually a little thought or book away. I think its important as a Christian to better understand the New Atheism and see where their coming from so I take the time to read their books. Perhaps if I can humbly suggest that the New Atheists occasionally pick up a book on the basics of Christian Theology (I know after reading Dawkins you think its a non-subject). Stranger things have happened. Most of us are products of the books we read, most atheists read books that support their case or assumptions and the minority of Christians who do pick up a book generally do the same. Its good to mix it up a little.

The New Atheism: old arguments, new attitude - Greg Koukl

Found this via Wintery Knight , great talk by Greg, If you've got the time give it a listen.