The Atheist Blogger

I’ve spoken about my Christian friend David a few times on this blog, and I’m getting a chance to see his dad preach on Monday at a Christian Union meeting, so I thought I might talk about him and his beliefs a bit more. Out of respect for his privacy, I’m only referring to him by his first name (as is my policy on these things).

When I met David last year, we talked a lot about religion / Christianity / atheism. He came across to me as a very moderate Christian, the kind that never angers and always smiles (i.e. the most annoying kind). There is being nice, and then there is being so nice you constantly come across as an arrogant condescending moron.

When losing an argument about faith or religion, he would always *without fail* resort to his favourite catchphrase:

I tried to be an atheist…I really tried…

As if he thought this argument was actually worth anything. It is of course, a logical fallacy in many ways. Firstly there is no correlation between failing to do something and the accuracy of what you were trying to attempt. I could say “I tried to be a Christian” or “I tried to be a banana”, but my failure to be either of those doesn’t reflect on their actual veracity as subjects. It only reflects on my personal failure, and as we can easily demonstrate, there are people who have succeeded at being Christians, and there are plenty of bananas in the world (although atheists wish that weren’t so true).

Secondly, it doesn’t prove anything other than the inevitability of failure. Since it’s pretty easy to establish that you cannot change your beliefs on will (despite what some people claim), “trying” to be an atheist just by pure will isn’t going to work. Atheism is more of a realisation than anything; it involves reading the arguments and realising that you agree with them. So saying that you tried to be an atheist but always came back to Christianity is as much an argument as saying “I tried to be bald but my hair kept growing back”. If it’s an inevitable event, you won’t be able to change the outcome.

I guess in the baldness metaphor, you could liken becoming an atheist to older people losing their hair, or if you damaged the hair follicles beyond all hope of repair. What I’m trying to say is, that if you really want to take the view that you can “try” to believe / disbelieve in something, it will only work if the conditions are correct. A Christian can no more try to be an atheist and succeed than an atheist can try to be a Christian and succeed. There have to be certain conditions present first (doubt for the Christian, delusion for the atheist).

Another popular argument David uses is “Where did logic come from?” which implies that logic can’t exist without a creator. The obvious problem with this is that logic doesn’t exist…at least not in any material way. It’s a human concept; a way of viewing reality through the human mind. Animals do not have a concept of logic, they merely appear to live by it because everything that exists go through our logic filter before being processed by our brain. Everything we see has a logical reason for happening, otherwise we classify it as a delusion.

Asking “Where did logic come from” is the same as asking “Where did our minds come from?”, and the answer is the same: They evolved. Daniel Dennett has written on the evolution of our conscious minds (many times), and I highly recommend his book, Freedom Evolves, which deals with the concept of free will.

Needless to say, I think Monday’s CU meeting should be a blast. Hopefully I’ll get to meet the man who convinced an extremely intelligent son to follow a delusional fantasy.