I spent several years on a forum dominated by atheists. It was open to all religions as well as atheism, but the forum culture was very atheist-friendly. Atheists' posts were moderated much more leniently than those of Christians. Few believers waded into the section specifically for atheists, but the atheists spent lots of time stirring the pot in the Christianity section.
Bear in mind, atheists span as wide a spectrum of belief and depth of belief as do Christians. Bertrand Russell was one of the premier philosophers and mathematicians of the twentieth century (he died in 1970). He was also a committed atheist and the author of the famous essay "Why I am not a Christian." The atheists at this forum had never even heard of him. They were what I call "internet atheists" and as different from Russell as most "internet Christians" are from the giants of Christian theology and apologetics. They were definitely at the shallow end of the atheist pool.
(You might be interested to learn that studies show a significant number of atheists – 10% to 20% – hold beliefs you might not associate with atheism. Some believe the universe has purpose and meaning, there is a supernatural realm, and personal consciousness survives bodily death. The internet atheists were more typical of what springs to mind when we hear the term: The material universe is all there is, consciousness ends with death, and you're just engaged in magical, wishful, delusional thinking if you believe otherwise.)
Nevertheless, I enjoyed our interactions and found them instructive. Here's what I learned:
1. The atheists are not really anti-god. They don't spend time attacking deism or theism in the abstract. Their target is the God of Christianity as they believe most Christians see Him - basically the God of the Old and New Testaments in the most literal sense. They find a God like this unworthy of worship and even flat-out repulsive. They find it impossible to believe a God such as this could actually exist. As famed atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel candidly admitted, "It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”
The internet atheists thus spend virtually all their time ranting and railing against what I call a Vacation Bible School sort of Christianity. They don't engage at all with the deep philosophical and theological issues that distinguish serious atheism from serious deism and theism. They don't even engage with a deeper understanding of Christianity. Frankly, as I'll discuss below, they don't have the depth of knowledge or understanding to do so. Their supposed atheism is really little more than a visceral reaction against a cartoonish caricature of the God of Christianity.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the atheists. The Vacation Bible School sort of Christianity is troubling and even offputting to me as well. To be clear, it is Christianity and those who are VBS-level believers may be wonderful Christians and highly pleasing to God. It just makes no sense to me. Yes, God's ways are not my ways and don't have to make sense to me, but VBS Christianity is just something I couldn't believe if I tried. I believe it's "true" mostly in a metaphorical sense of expressing deeper realities in human terms, but you are welcome to disagree.
2. The atheists insist that almost all Christian belief is the product of parental indoctrination, cultural conditioning, social pressure, and social and economic expedience. They characterize it as mindless acceptance, not really religious belief at all.
Again, I'm not entirely unsympathetic to what the atheists are saying. Nineteenth century philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard lived in Denmark, where the Evangelical Lutheran Church was the official state church. He asked if it was even possible for someone to become a Christian in a Christian land where everyone was a Christian as a matter of birth, one's Christianity was taken for granted, and the deep questions Christianity attempts to answer never even had to be confronted. Real Christianity, Kierkegaard said, requires a leap of faith "out over 70,000 fathoms of water."
For many of us (not me – see my testimony in my first blog entry), Christianity is indeed something we were pretty much born into and have always accepted and taken for granted without much thought or questioning. Consider a child born into a fourth-generation Baptist family in the Bible Belt. Then consider a child born into a fourth-generation Hindu family in New Delhi. What is the likelihood the former is going to become a Hindu or the latter a Christian? If the latter does become a Christian, he will surely have had to do considerably more thinking and confronting of issues than his Bible Belt counterpart.
What the internet atheists are really attacking is an unquestioning, at-least-pretend-to-believe-everything sort of Christianity that they believe characterizes all Christians. This stereotype is a convenient target for the sort of ridicule in which the atheists love to engage. This is how I came to be called a "fundie" – if I professed to believe any of it, then ipso facto I was just another mindless cultural Christian in their minds. The stereotype is accurate to an extent – it was largely what I encountered in my newbie days with Campus Crusade for Christ and why I quickly felt like a fish out of water – but by no means does it characterize all Christians around the globe. Those turning to Christ in China and Africa scarcely fit the stereotype at all. Many fourth-generation Baptists in the Bible Belt don't fit it either.
But here's the real kicker: The mindless Christianity the internet atheists attack is the mirror image of their own atheism! As I used to tease them, they are "atheist fundies." They have never even considered the deep questions that serious atheism, deism and theism attempt to address. Their atheism is largely a fad, a rebellion against Christian values and societal norms, rather than a deeply held, well-informed set of convictions. It's much more the product of social (peer) pressures and lifestyle (e.g., LGBTQ) choices than sincere belief. This is surely why they had never even heard of Bertrand Russell, who should've been one of their patron saints, why they lap up the shallow and embarrassing (even to serious atheists) tirades of Richard Dawkins, and why the New Atheism is now fading from the scene just as the "Jesus freak" phenomenon of my college days once faded.
Alas, they never see the irony in their own uninformed fundamentalism.
3. The internet atheists love word games. Atheism, they insist, isn't an affirmative claim that there is no deity. No, no, no. Their position, they say, is simply that they "haven't seen enough evidence" to convince them there is a deity. Hence, they have no burden of proof to defend their position or convince believers of atheism – the burden of proof is on believers to establish the existence of a deity to their satisfaction.
If you look up "atheism" in something like the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, you'll discover that there is indeed considerable confusion at to what the term atheism actually means. For meaningful dialogue to be possible, atheism has to be an affirmative claim that there is no deity. The atheist has to be saying, "I have reached a conviction that there is no god and here's why." The "just waiting to be convinced" game the internet atheists play is more akin to agnosticism than atheism.
The game does serve a useful purpose for the atheists. It absolves them of any responsibility for articulating why they believe there is no god. It insulates them against challenges to their position. The sole issue, they say, is whether you can convince them there is a god. They have no corresponding obligation or burden of proof at all. How convenient, eh?
This is fundamentally misguided. If I were a proselytizing Christian in a roomful of atheists, I'd agree the burden would be on me to convince them. And vice-versa: Send a militant atheist to a Southern Baptist church and the burden will be on him. But the only real burden of proof is the internal one we impose on ourselves: What will it take for me – not you or Joe Atheist – to reach a conviction that there is or isn't a deity? This is why I speak in many of my writings of the importance of a sincere and diligent quest, one that will eventually lead to strong and well-informed convictions. I'm not waiting to be "persuaded" by some atheist, Hindu or even some other Christian, for that matter.
As Christians, of course, we also believe that God calls and the Holy Spirit convicts. I believe this is a real phenomenon, one that occurred in my own life, and I emphasize it in my interactions with atheists: Open yourselves to this possibility, don't harden your hearts and minds or wait to be persuaded by what I or someone else has to say.
The reality, of course, is that most atheists have no interest in being persuaded. They are atheist fundies and often mindless atheist fundies. They have no more interest in being persuaded by a Christian than I have in being persuaded by a Scientologist. Indeed, some of the more thoughtful internet atheists admitted they had no interest in theism or Christianity at all; it was beneath them, too silly even to be considered. Since Christianity has been and is believed by some of the greatest minds in philosophy, science, academia and all other areas of human endeavor, this dismissive attitude seems weirdly short-sighted to me.
Which brings me to my last point: Not only do the internet atheists insist there is insufficient evidence for the existence of a deity, but they define "evidence" in such a narrow way that there could never be any such evidence. It's called scientism – the worship of science. The only meaningful answers are those provided by science. And not just science in the broad, dictionary sense of the term but science very narrowly defined as falsifiable laboratory science – a definition that would exclude huge disciplines of actual science at the highest level, such as cosmology and physics.
Science investigates and attempts to explain the natural order – the universe and all it contains. For good reason, scientists operate on the basis of what it is called methodological materialism. This is the assumption that all answers will eventually be found within the natural order; hence, scientists keep seeking those answers and don't jump to non-natural explanations like God. Where science goes awry and becomes scientism is when it operates on the basis of philosophical materialism. Philosophical materialism is the position that there can't be any answers outside the natural order – such as a deity. This is the objection of the scientists in the Intelligent Design movement: They can't even get a fair hearing because a designer outside the natural order is simply not allowed by philosophical materialism, even if this is where the best scientific evidence points.
Metaphysical questions such as the existence of a deity or the truth of Christianity aren't scientific questions. Science can never prove or disprove the existence of a deity, let alone the God of Christianity. As I described in my own testimony, many branches of science are highly relevant to metaphysical questions. The scientific work of the Intelligent Design movement, encompassing numerous scientific disciplines, is a perfect example.
In interacting with internet atheists, you find that vast realms of philosophy, theology, science, human experience, anecdotal and testimonial evidence, and reasonable, plausible inferences are simply disallowed. They aren't "science" and thus aren't "evidence" in the narrow, self-serving way the atheists want to define these terms. It makes real dialogue impossible.
Scientism is an intellectual straitjacket. You can certainly choose to confine yourself in this straitjacket if you wish, as I always told the atheists, but the rest of us have no obligation to do so. We are free to bring to our quest for God everything we consider relevant in reaching other important convictions and making other important decisions in our everyday lives. No atheist lives within this straitjacket in choosing a college, career or spouse or making any of the other important decisions we all have to make. The straitjacket is brought out of the closet only when the question is the existence of God. It conveniently ensures the answer will be, "There is no evidence for the existence of God. Those who believe, even if they are Nobel laureates in one of the hard sciences, are delusional magical thinkers insofar as their religious beliefs are concerned." Yep, Nobel laureates in biology and chemistry can no longer think rationally or critically when the question is the existence of God.
I no longer interact with the atheists because it's a dead end. They don't have the depth of understanding, even of atheism, to tell me anything I don't already know and they operate within such a closed-minded fundamentalist paradigm that real dialogue is impossible.
But it was fun while it lasted.
Bear in mind, atheists span as wide a spectrum of belief and depth of belief as do Christians. Bertrand Russell was one of the premier philosophers and mathematicians of the twentieth century (he died in 1970). He was also a committed atheist and the author of the famous essay "Why I am not a Christian." The atheists at this forum had never even heard of him. They were what I call "internet atheists" and as different from Russell as most "internet Christians" are from the giants of Christian theology and apologetics. They were definitely at the shallow end of the atheist pool.
(You might be interested to learn that studies show a significant number of atheists – 10% to 20% – hold beliefs you might not associate with atheism. Some believe the universe has purpose and meaning, there is a supernatural realm, and personal consciousness survives bodily death. The internet atheists were more typical of what springs to mind when we hear the term: The material universe is all there is, consciousness ends with death, and you're just engaged in magical, wishful, delusional thinking if you believe otherwise.)
Nevertheless, I enjoyed our interactions and found them instructive. Here's what I learned:
1. The atheists are not really anti-god. They don't spend time attacking deism or theism in the abstract. Their target is the God of Christianity as they believe most Christians see Him - basically the God of the Old and New Testaments in the most literal sense. They find a God like this unworthy of worship and even flat-out repulsive. They find it impossible to believe a God such as this could actually exist. As famed atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel candidly admitted, "It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”
The internet atheists thus spend virtually all their time ranting and railing against what I call a Vacation Bible School sort of Christianity. They don't engage at all with the deep philosophical and theological issues that distinguish serious atheism from serious deism and theism. They don't even engage with a deeper understanding of Christianity. Frankly, as I'll discuss below, they don't have the depth of knowledge or understanding to do so. Their supposed atheism is really little more than a visceral reaction against a cartoonish caricature of the God of Christianity.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the atheists. The Vacation Bible School sort of Christianity is troubling and even offputting to me as well. To be clear, it is Christianity and those who are VBS-level believers may be wonderful Christians and highly pleasing to God. It just makes no sense to me. Yes, God's ways are not my ways and don't have to make sense to me, but VBS Christianity is just something I couldn't believe if I tried. I believe it's "true" mostly in a metaphorical sense of expressing deeper realities in human terms, but you are welcome to disagree.
2. The atheists insist that almost all Christian belief is the product of parental indoctrination, cultural conditioning, social pressure, and social and economic expedience. They characterize it as mindless acceptance, not really religious belief at all.
Again, I'm not entirely unsympathetic to what the atheists are saying. Nineteenth century philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard lived in Denmark, where the Evangelical Lutheran Church was the official state church. He asked if it was even possible for someone to become a Christian in a Christian land where everyone was a Christian as a matter of birth, one's Christianity was taken for granted, and the deep questions Christianity attempts to answer never even had to be confronted. Real Christianity, Kierkegaard said, requires a leap of faith "out over 70,000 fathoms of water."
For many of us (not me – see my testimony in my first blog entry), Christianity is indeed something we were pretty much born into and have always accepted and taken for granted without much thought or questioning. Consider a child born into a fourth-generation Baptist family in the Bible Belt. Then consider a child born into a fourth-generation Hindu family in New Delhi. What is the likelihood the former is going to become a Hindu or the latter a Christian? If the latter does become a Christian, he will surely have had to do considerably more thinking and confronting of issues than his Bible Belt counterpart.
What the internet atheists are really attacking is an unquestioning, at-least-pretend-to-believe-everything sort of Christianity that they believe characterizes all Christians. This stereotype is a convenient target for the sort of ridicule in which the atheists love to engage. This is how I came to be called a "fundie" – if I professed to believe any of it, then ipso facto I was just another mindless cultural Christian in their minds. The stereotype is accurate to an extent – it was largely what I encountered in my newbie days with Campus Crusade for Christ and why I quickly felt like a fish out of water – but by no means does it characterize all Christians around the globe. Those turning to Christ in China and Africa scarcely fit the stereotype at all. Many fourth-generation Baptists in the Bible Belt don't fit it either.
But here's the real kicker: The mindless Christianity the internet atheists attack is the mirror image of their own atheism! As I used to tease them, they are "atheist fundies." They have never even considered the deep questions that serious atheism, deism and theism attempt to address. Their atheism is largely a fad, a rebellion against Christian values and societal norms, rather than a deeply held, well-informed set of convictions. It's much more the product of social (peer) pressures and lifestyle (e.g., LGBTQ) choices than sincere belief. This is surely why they had never even heard of Bertrand Russell, who should've been one of their patron saints, why they lap up the shallow and embarrassing (even to serious atheists) tirades of Richard Dawkins, and why the New Atheism is now fading from the scene just as the "Jesus freak" phenomenon of my college days once faded.
Alas, they never see the irony in their own uninformed fundamentalism.
3. The internet atheists love word games. Atheism, they insist, isn't an affirmative claim that there is no deity. No, no, no. Their position, they say, is simply that they "haven't seen enough evidence" to convince them there is a deity. Hence, they have no burden of proof to defend their position or convince believers of atheism – the burden of proof is on believers to establish the existence of a deity to their satisfaction.
If you look up "atheism" in something like the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, you'll discover that there is indeed considerable confusion at to what the term atheism actually means. For meaningful dialogue to be possible, atheism has to be an affirmative claim that there is no deity. The atheist has to be saying, "I have reached a conviction that there is no god and here's why." The "just waiting to be convinced" game the internet atheists play is more akin to agnosticism than atheism.
The game does serve a useful purpose for the atheists. It absolves them of any responsibility for articulating why they believe there is no god. It insulates them against challenges to their position. The sole issue, they say, is whether you can convince them there is a god. They have no corresponding obligation or burden of proof at all. How convenient, eh?
This is fundamentally misguided. If I were a proselytizing Christian in a roomful of atheists, I'd agree the burden would be on me to convince them. And vice-versa: Send a militant atheist to a Southern Baptist church and the burden will be on him. But the only real burden of proof is the internal one we impose on ourselves: What will it take for me – not you or Joe Atheist – to reach a conviction that there is or isn't a deity? This is why I speak in many of my writings of the importance of a sincere and diligent quest, one that will eventually lead to strong and well-informed convictions. I'm not waiting to be "persuaded" by some atheist, Hindu or even some other Christian, for that matter.
As Christians, of course, we also believe that God calls and the Holy Spirit convicts. I believe this is a real phenomenon, one that occurred in my own life, and I emphasize it in my interactions with atheists: Open yourselves to this possibility, don't harden your hearts and minds or wait to be persuaded by what I or someone else has to say.
The reality, of course, is that most atheists have no interest in being persuaded. They are atheist fundies and often mindless atheist fundies. They have no more interest in being persuaded by a Christian than I have in being persuaded by a Scientologist. Indeed, some of the more thoughtful internet atheists admitted they had no interest in theism or Christianity at all; it was beneath them, too silly even to be considered. Since Christianity has been and is believed by some of the greatest minds in philosophy, science, academia and all other areas of human endeavor, this dismissive attitude seems weirdly short-sighted to me.
Which brings me to my last point: Not only do the internet atheists insist there is insufficient evidence for the existence of a deity, but they define "evidence" in such a narrow way that there could never be any such evidence. It's called scientism – the worship of science. The only meaningful answers are those provided by science. And not just science in the broad, dictionary sense of the term but science very narrowly defined as falsifiable laboratory science – a definition that would exclude huge disciplines of actual science at the highest level, such as cosmology and physics.
Science investigates and attempts to explain the natural order – the universe and all it contains. For good reason, scientists operate on the basis of what it is called methodological materialism. This is the assumption that all answers will eventually be found within the natural order; hence, scientists keep seeking those answers and don't jump to non-natural explanations like God. Where science goes awry and becomes scientism is when it operates on the basis of philosophical materialism. Philosophical materialism is the position that there can't be any answers outside the natural order – such as a deity. This is the objection of the scientists in the Intelligent Design movement: They can't even get a fair hearing because a designer outside the natural order is simply not allowed by philosophical materialism, even if this is where the best scientific evidence points.
Metaphysical questions such as the existence of a deity or the truth of Christianity aren't scientific questions. Science can never prove or disprove the existence of a deity, let alone the God of Christianity. As I described in my own testimony, many branches of science are highly relevant to metaphysical questions. The scientific work of the Intelligent Design movement, encompassing numerous scientific disciplines, is a perfect example.
In interacting with internet atheists, you find that vast realms of philosophy, theology, science, human experience, anecdotal and testimonial evidence, and reasonable, plausible inferences are simply disallowed. They aren't "science" and thus aren't "evidence" in the narrow, self-serving way the atheists want to define these terms. It makes real dialogue impossible.
Scientism is an intellectual straitjacket. You can certainly choose to confine yourself in this straitjacket if you wish, as I always told the atheists, but the rest of us have no obligation to do so. We are free to bring to our quest for God everything we consider relevant in reaching other important convictions and making other important decisions in our everyday lives. No atheist lives within this straitjacket in choosing a college, career or spouse or making any of the other important decisions we all have to make. The straitjacket is brought out of the closet only when the question is the existence of God. It conveniently ensures the answer will be, "There is no evidence for the existence of God. Those who believe, even if they are Nobel laureates in one of the hard sciences, are delusional magical thinkers insofar as their religious beliefs are concerned." Yep, Nobel laureates in biology and chemistry can no longer think rationally or critically when the question is the existence of God.
I no longer interact with the atheists because it's a dead end. They don't have the depth of understanding, even of atheism, to tell me anything I don't already know and they operate within such a closed-minded fundamentalist paradigm that real dialogue is impossible.
But it was fun while it lasted.
