Reasons to Reject Atheism
Insurmountable Obstacles to Embracing a Godless Worldview
Many critics of Christianity stubbornly cling to the notion that there is no God. This article takes a look at why atheism is unworkable and unprovable.
Popular atheist thinker and publisher Emmett Fields wrote: "As an Atheist I have a very special reverence for truth, real truth, truth with fact and proof behind it." As such, Fields has been on a crusade of sorts to establish atheism as the most credible social science worldview for today's thinking society.
The idea of open-ended "thinking" is highly prized by Fields as it is by many atheists and agnostics. According to Fields, atheism "is the human mind in its natural environment, nothing is too holy to be investigated, nor too sacred to be questioned. The Atheist Bible, it could be said, has but one word: 'THINK.'"
With that in mind, as thinking, reasoning people contemplate atheism with all its premises and its ramifications, they are confronted by some insurmountable obstacles to embracing it. This article can only touch on two:
Atheism is Unprovable
Atheism, at its most basic level, represents a proposition that there is no god. The observable universe is all that there is. No supernatural. No deity. No god of any kind, except that which the human race has conceived.
This, however, sets up atheism's biggest problem. How can you prove a negative?
Religion and philosophy professor Winfried Courdan explains: "The atheist would have to show that he or she has control over all potential avenues of knowing that God exists and that all of them come up empty. No human being could make that claim, for our knowledge is finite."
An atheist simply cannot cover all those bases. Most atheists concede this, and instead argue that the very concept of God, as expressed by Christians (the focus of this particular site) or Jews or whatever other faith, is unworkable or contradictory. They contend that an unworkable or inconsistent hypothesis must be discarded. Therefore, the idea of a god must be discarded.
This creates new problems for atheists, because it compels them to establish premises from which to argue the implausibility of the divine. For example, some atheists argue that the presence of evil in the world is a contradiction to the idea of a god. But this begs a number of questions and presupposes a line of thought that stems from various interpretations of religion.
The atheist must borrow or create premises that are highly suspect and debatable in order to argue for the non-existence of the divine. It's a highly problematic exercise in logic, to say the least. Nevertheless, this is the method of choice for atheists who believe that pointing out conflicts and discrepancies with other faiths credits their own rejection of faith.
Putting out contradictions in the Bible (the subject of future articles) or shooting holes in a faith system do not and cannot establish atheism. Such an approach may discredit alternatives to atheism. But atheists can't possibly address all the conceivable alternatives to their worldview. It's a losing strategy from the get-go.
What's more, they end up victimizing their own school of thought with this approach. If a hypothesis must be discarded for being unworkable, well, as we shall see, that doesn't exactly help atheism.
Atheism Contradicts Human Nature
"There is good evidence that there is a universal need for God," writes Corduan. Some may quibble with Corduan's use of the word "need." However, if one were to change "need" to "yearning," the quote cannot be contested. Religion and worship of gods can be traced back to the dawn of humanity.
What's the relevance of this? Simple. As Corduan explains: "A real need demands an objective reality to fulfill it. Thus the burden of proof that the reality does not exist lies with the atheist..."
The atheist answer to this dilemma is typically the "projection theory" -- the human impulse to create God and "project" it (or Him or Her, some would say) onto human history.
Corduan devastates this flawed reasoning, pointing out that the projection theory "pivots on the assumption that because the idea of God can be a projection of human aspirations, it is nothing more than a projection." In other words, the fact that people want something doesn't and shouldn't be construed to translate into their collectively imagining the very existence of that something. Rather, the ability of people to conceive of such a "thing" is strong evidence that there is some reality behind the idea itself.
Human nature also suggests a deep-rooted, universal concept of right and wrong. While humanity disagrees stridently on the specifics of this moral view, there is widespread consensus that "right" and "wrong" exist as objective realities.
Denials of this truth are often comical. Most people who argue against the notion of a universal morality will then loudly proclaim, in the very next breath, the virtues of "tolerance" and the need for freedom of thought and expression. In other words, they are appealing to some sense of universal fair play - some sense of universal morality.
As the great thinker C.S. Lewis observed: "Whenever you find a man who says he doesn't believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later."
The universal presence of a Right and Wrong, at least in concept, is strong evidence that someone or some thing put it there.
Certainly, these obstacles to atheism, while discrediting that worldview, do not constitute proof for Christianity.
Nevertheless, if Fields and other atheists value thinking and "truth," they must concede that atheism faces some serious problems in these departments.
Next week's article will address additional reasons to reject atheism, including the worldview's failure to explain the universe.
