Implications!

In a recent post on Victor Reppert's blog, Bob Prokop explodes the common atheistic talking point that critical thinking leads one to embrace atheism --

"I'm curious what you think would be an acceptable demonstration of the claim that critical thinking leads to atheism. (I do think this is true, but I am wondering what you think would demonstrate it to you, and others.)"

It's not gonna happen, because there is simply no conceivable way that honest, critical thinking will ever lead to atheism.

Atheism demands that one close one's mind to the illogic of something coming from nothing (or else one has to redefine "nothing" to the point where it is actually "something").

Atheism demands that one overlook the fact that atheism necessarily means there is no objective morality, that good and evil are nothing more than subjective judgements of a mind that one can't actually trust to make such judgements.

Atheism demands that one ignore the fact that 99.9 percent of humanity since the Dawn of Time have believed in, worshiped, and prayed to God (or to gods). Atheists are required to think their tiny minority are "right" and the overwhelming majority of people are "wrong" about the most important of all imaginable questions.

Atheists must insist that all questions can be reduced to matters of empirical evidence and "science" - that art, literature, history, music, architecture, personal experience, all are somehow defective or fundamentally lacking, not quite worthy of trust, ultimately to be (negatively) evaluated against the one-and-only objective standard given the atheist seal of approval.

Atheists must never, ever allow themselves to realize that atheism means that everything is meaningless, that in the end of ends it does not matter what kind of life one leads, or even whether one is or is not an atheist - because a single microsecond after one's death, it is all as though it never happened, so who cares?

Atheists must never face up to the inevitable implication of materialism that individual identity does not really exist - that we are simply complex bundles of matter and energy, which, if its configuration is somehow altered or destroyed, becomes something else.

Atheists must believe that our noblest traits, our highest aspirations, our sublimest thoughts, are nothing more than electrical impulses and chemical reactions in a soulless meat machine, of no greater significance than combustion or sublimation. The love I feel for my family is simply a Darwinian survival mechanism.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Atheism is the very negtion of critical thinking. To the contrary, a case can be made for its being perilously close to insanity

Exactly!

Both the affirmation of the reality of God and the denial of the reality of God are statements about the very nature of reality, of truth, of reason, of morality, of meaning, of love, of beauty, of personhood, of agency, and of our individual selves (and of much else, besides; that list is not exhaustive). The question of the reality of God is the First Question, because everything else follows from the answer to that question.

At the very least, every one of the demands and entailments of God-denial that Mr Prokop lists ought to give one pause regarding one's God-denial if one really is engaging in critical thinking; and some of them are sufficient to demonstrate the falsity of God-denial. Thus, if one really is engaging in critical thinking, then one simply will not continue to deny the reality of God. So, far from critical thinkng leading a person to atheism, in truth it leads one away.

Consider just a few of the above entailments of atheism --

Atheists must never, ever allow themselves to realize that atheism means that everything is meaningless, that in the end of ends it does not matter what kind of life one leads, or even whether one is or is not an atheist - because a single microsecond after one's death, it is all as though it never happened, so who cares?

This is one of the logical entailments of God-denial that ought to cause one to seriously doubt that God-denial is the truth about the nature of reality. That is, this entailment itself doesn't show that God-denial is false (though other entailments do), but it does show that very few human beings -- including one's own atheistic-professing self -- are actually capable of *really* believing that atheism is the truth about the nature of reality.

No one -- including every self-professed atheist -- really believes that *everything* -- including atheism itself -- is meaningless. No one -- including every self-professed atheist -- really believes that it doesn't matter in the least what a person believes about the nature of reality. No one -- including every self-professed atheist -- really believes that it doesn't matter in the least how a person conducts his life.

Now, of course, the fact that no one -- including every self-professed atheist -- really believes this particular logically inescapable entailment of God-denial does not in itself prove that God-denial is the false view of reality. But it does expose a very serious cognitive dissonance involved in attempting to assert that atheism is the truth about the nature of reality -- if one doesn't believe the logically inescapable entailments of a proposition which one asserts, then one either doesn't really understand the proposition or one doesn't really believe the proposition in the first place. If one asserts that 1+1=2 and yet denies that 2+1=3, then one either does not understand what one is talking about, or one doesn't really believe what one has asserted.

It's a curiosity: atheism is odd, and possibly unique, in this regard -- atheism is a world-view the truth of which matters not in the least were it actually the truth about the nature of reality; the question of the truth of atheism matters only if atheism is not true.

Atheism demands that one overlook the fact that atheism necessarily means there is no objective morality, that good and evil are nothing more than subjective judgements of a mind that one can't actually trust to make such judgements.

This is another of the logical entailments of God-denial that ought to cause one to seriously doubt that God-denial is the truth about the nature of reality -- even the people who explicitly and publically assert that there is no such thing as objective-and-transcendent morality continuously demonstrate by their own behavior that they don't really believe what they have asserted!

Consider just one common example of their behavior belying their assertions --

Richard Dawkins (along with many other famous 'atheists') is on very public record of affirming the logical entailment of atheism that there are no such things as 'right' and 'wrong', that is, that there is no such thing as transcendent morality, and of affirming this as a logical entailment of atheism. Richard Dawkins (along with many other famous 'atheists') is *also* on very public record of asserting that this or that (e.g. rearing one's child as a Christian; being a "creationist"; punishing criminals because they have chosen to be criminals; being sexually jealous of one's spouse; and on and on) is 'wrong'. Richard Dawkins (along with many other famous 'atheists') constantly asserts that there is no "way things ought to be" ... and also constanly asserts that this or that "ought not be" -- this is a blatant self-contradiction: either he (and they) does not really believe the former assertion, or does not really believe the latter assertion(s).


Now, consider this immediate topic in light of the prior one.

Suppose it really is the case that there are no such things as 'right' and 'wrong', that is, that there is no such thing as transcendent morality. And after all, this really is a logically inescapable entailment of atheism.

And, suppose it really is the case that that *everything* really is ultimately and utterly meaningless, and thus it doesn't matter in the least how one conducts one's life. And after all, this really is a logically inescapable entailment of atheism.

Now, suppose those two propositions simultaneously -- for, after all, if atheism really is the truth about the nature of reality, then both propositions are true.

Does one now see how it is that so many 'atheists' constantly seek to shape public opinion by means of asserting self-contradictions?

Atheism demands that one overlook the fact that atheism necessarily means [that all our thoughts/judgements/conclusions are nothing more than the output] of a mind that one can't actually trust to make such judgements.

Atheists must believe that our noblest traits, our highest aspirations, our sublimest thoughts, are nothing more than electrical impulses and chemical reactions in a soulless meat machine, of no greater significance than combustion or sublimation. The love I feel for my family is simply a Darwinian survival mechanism.

If atheism is the truth about the nature of reality, then you cannot reason -- you cannot *know* anything ... including that you cannot know anything ... and including knowing that atheism is the truth about the nature of reality.

Everything that is coheres, and it cohers in God, and God alone: to deny the reality of God is to deny the coherence of reality. This doubtless explains why 'atheists' so readily retreat into irrationality as a means to protect their God-denial from rational critical evaluation -- contrary to their constant self-promotion, they are not committed to reason/rationality, but merely to refusing to acknowledge God.

Atheists must never face up to the inevitable implication of materialism that individual identity does not really exist - that we are simply complex bundles of matter and energy, which, if its configuration is somehow altered or destroyed, becomes something else.

This is one of the logically inescapable entailments of God-denial which shows it to be absurd, and thus shows it to be false, and thus shows its denial to be true.

When one encounters a God-denier saying such things as "Consciousness is an illusion" or "The 'self' is an illusion" or "There is no such thing as 'free-will'", that isn't just some blow-hard blowing hard (however much that 'atheists' tend to be blow-hards). These claims and other such claims are logically inescapable entailments of atheism.

And when one encounters a God-denier saying something like, "Well, I am an 'atheist', and *I* don't believe that consciousness is an illusion", then one simply is dealing with a blow-hard -- what this or that 'atheist' is willing to affirm does not alter the set of propositions which are logical entailments of atheism.

When one denies the reality of God, then logically and inescapably one has also denied the reality of one's own self: but this is absurd. Since one *knows* that it is absurd to deny the reality of one's own self, and since this absurd denial is logically entailed by the denial of the reality of God, then one *knows* that the initial or grounding absurdity is in the denial of the reality of God.

This is why I say that every 'atheist', as an 'atheist', is intellectually dishonest. This isn't just me being "mean"; this is me "following the logic where it leads" -- atheism is absurd (and thus is false); atheism entails obvious absurdities (and thus is seen obviously to be false); not a single one of the 'atheists' one will ever encounter has any rationally exculpating excuse for continuing to ignore the absurdity of God-denial; that is, every single 'atheist' one will ever encounter asserts the absurdity of God-denial knowing it to be absurd, and thus knowing it to be false.

As the Apostle Paul wrote 2000 years ago: men are without excuse in denying (and failing to love-and-worship) God. Pace Bertrand Russell, men do not deny the reality of God because they have "insufficient evidence". Rather, they deny the reality of God because they refuse to acknowledge the truth they already know.