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Things I Don't Understand About Atheists

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016023



Things I Don't Understand About Atheists


One of the many things I don't understand about atheists is their
curious insistence on saying the religion is a purely natural
phenomenon, coupled with their great outrage at religion. It seems to
me to be like getting angry at a hurricane or a crocodile.

Things I Don't Understand

Things I Don't Understand About Atheists


One of the many things I don't understand about atheists is their
curious insistence on saying the religion is a purely natural
phenomenon, coupled with their great outrage at religion.

http://www.markshea.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_markshea_archive.html#116594277848016023



Things I Don't Understand About Atheists


One of the many things I don't understand about atheists is their
curious insistence on saying the religion is a purely natural
phenomenon, coupled with their great outrage at religion. It seems to
me to be like getting angry at a hurricane or a crocodile. If religion
is simply "what the brain of homo sapiens naturally generates" then
what is the point of being angry about it? You might as well get angry
that the pancreas of homo sapiens generates insulin.

Things I Don't Understand About Atheists

http://www.markshea.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_markshea_archive.html#116594277848016023



Things I Don't Understand:

One of the many things I don't understand about atheists is their
curious insistence on saying the religion is a purely natural
phenomenon, coupled with their great outrage at religion.

And, of course, the big question is: if religious thought is simply the
product of preordained biochemical programming (given that all thought
is simply caused by the movement of molecules in the brain and is not
the product of a rational created spirit which is linked to, but not
bound by, the brain), why should we think that the thoughts of Dennett
and Dawkins and Harris are not just as much the irrational epiphenomena
of their particular brain molecules doing their irrational thing?

http://www.markshea.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_markshea_archive.html#116594277848016023



Things I Don't Understand

http://www.markshea.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_markshea_archive.html#116594277848016023



Things I Don't Understand About Atheists


One of the many things I don't understand about atheists is their
curious insistence on saying the religion is a purely natural
phenomenon, coupled with their great outrage at religion. It seems to
me to be like getting angry at a hurricane or a crocodile. If religion
is simply "what the brain of homo sapiens naturally generates" then
what is the point of being angry about it? You might as well get angry
that the pancreas of homo sapiens generates insulin.

Of course, I don't think religion is the pure creation of the human
brain. I think it is a human response to the actual presence of the
divine (and the demonic, and the purely natural). In short, I think it
an enormously complex phenomenon that cannot possible be explained
without recourse to the supernatural. But since atheists have set
themselves the task of trying to pretend the supernatural does not
exist, and of ignoring all data that might suggest--sometimes extremely
strongly--that it does, they have to play by their own weird rules and
bide the consequences. One of the consequences of their view is that
all human thought is, at the end of the day, purely a consequence of
irrational biochemical forces in the brain, not of Reason. Yet they
have staked their claim on a faith in Reason, and most particularly, in
Reason vs. Religion. Their dilemma seems to me to be summarized by
another conflicted atheist, JBS Haldane who, when he wasn't fudging the
data to fit with his faith in Stalin, was observing, "If my mental
processes are determined wholly by the motion of atoms in my brain, I
have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true... and hence I have
no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms."

This seems to be a fairly consistent problem. On the one hand, the
atheist has to take a sort of "La de dah! Religion is completely
transparent and soluble to the Rational Mind" attitude in order to
maintain the appearance of Modernity's Vast Superiority to the
Barbarous Ways of Our Ancestors. And so we get the yakkity yak about
religion as a "meme" (cool pseudo-scientific sounding word!) and the
self-designation of guys like Dennett as "Brights". But at the same
time, it does not seem to occur to these guys that the moralism that
underlies this avenue of attack is undercut by their own insistence
that religion is a naturalistically evolved epiphenomenon of the brain
that can no more be eliminated than the heart's naturalistically
evolved tendency to beat. Are we angry at the heart for beating? Do we
berate the heart for having so much in common with our barbaric
ancestors? Why then, are Brights so ***** at ordinary human beings
for having brains which, by their own account, can hardly resist the
impulse to see Somebody at work behind the natural order, just as our
(allegedly) Dim ancestors did?

Beyond this, of course, are other questions, including "What basis do
we have for thinking that Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett have
accomplished some evolutionary feat that has altered the structure of
their brains from that of the common herd?" Might it not be that such
abberations from the gene pool that makes most human beings religious
are not the Next Phase in Evolution but rather mutants who will shortly
prove themselves unable to pass along their genes as they march to
extinction? Suppose their problem is not that they see better and
therefore possess an evolutionary advantage, but that they are blind to
what most humans can see and are therefore doomed mutants?

And, of course, the big question is: if religious thought is simply the
product of preordained biochemical programming (given that all thought
is simply caused by the movement of molecules in the brain and is not
the product of a rational created spirit which is linked to, but not
bound by, the brain), why should we think that the thoughts of Dennett
and Dawkins and Harris are not just as much the irrational epiphenomena
of their particular brain molecules doing their irrational thing?

posted by Mark at 8:30 AM

http://www.markshea.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_markshea_archive.html#116594277848016023



Things I Don't Understand About Atheists


One of the many things I don't understand about atheists is their
curious insistence on saying the religion is a purely natural
phenomenon, coupled with their great outrage at religion. It seems to
me to be like getting angry at a hurricane or a crocodile. If religion
is simply "what the brain of homo sapiens naturally generates" then
what is the point of being angry about it? You might as well get angry
that the pancreas of homo sapiens generates insulin.

Of course, I don't think religion is the pure creation of the human
brain. I think it is a human response to the actual presence of the
divine (and the demonic, and the purely natural). In short, I think it
an enormously complex phenomenon that cannot possible be explained
without recourse to the supernatural. But since atheists have set
themselves the task of trying to pretend the supernatural does not
exist, and of ignoring all data that might suggest--sometimes extremely
strongly--that it does, they have to play by their own weird rules and
bide the consequences. One of the consequences of their view is that
all human thought is, at the end of the day, purely a consequence of
irrational biochemical forces in the brain, not of Reason. Yet they
have staked their claim on a faith in Reason, and most particularly, in
Reason vs. Religion. Their dilemma seems to me to be summarized by
another conflicted atheist, JBS Haldane who, when he wasn't fudging the
data to fit with his faith in Stalin, was observing, "If my mental
processes are determined wholly by the motion of atoms in my brain, I
have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true... and hence I have
no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms."

This seems to be a fairly consistent problem. On the one hand, the
atheist has to take a sort of "La de dah! Religion is completely
transparent and soluble to the Rational Mind" attitude in order to
maintain the appearance of Modernity's Vast Superiority to the
Barbarous Ways of Our Ancestors. And so we get the yakkity yak about
religion as a "meme" (cool pseudo-scientific sounding word!) and the
self-designation of guys like Dennett as "Brights". But at the same
time, it does not seem to occur to these guys that the moralism that
underlies this avenue of attack is undercut by their own insistence
that religion is a naturalistically evolved epiphenomenon of the brain
that can no more be eliminated than the heart's naturalistically
evolved tendency to beat. Are we angry at the heart for beating? Do we
berate the heart for having so much in common with our barbaric
ancestors? Why then, are Brights so ***** at ordinary human beings
for having brains which, by their own account, can hardly resist the
impulse to see Somebody at work behind the natural order, just as our
(allegedly) Dim ancestors did?

Beyond this, of course, are other questions, including "What basis do
we have for thinking that Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett have
accomplished some evolutionary feat that has altered the structure of
their brains from that of the common herd?" Might it not be that such
abberations from the gene pool that makes most human beings religious
are not the Next Phase in Evolution but rather mutants who will shortly
prove themselves unable to pass along their genes as they march to
extinction? Suppose their problem is not that they see better and
therefore possess an evolutionary advantage, but that they are blind to
what most humans can see and are therefore doomed mutants?

And, of course, the big question is: if religious thought is simply the
product of preordained biochemical programming (given that all thought
is simply caused by the movement of molecules in the brain and is not
the product of a rational created spirit which is linked to, but not
bound by, the brain), why should we think that the thoughts of Dennett
and Dawkins and Harris are not just as much the irrational epiphenomena
of their particular brain molecules doing their irrational thing?

posted by Mark at 8:30 AM