Sometimes atheists and agnostics who are non-academics* call themselves skeptics, but they really should not. They are not generally skeptical, but reserve their skepticism for supernatural or religious claims. Like anybody else, they believe a great many things provisionally that might be wrong: ideas about the world, their neighbor, or even their fantasy football team!
In fact, skepticism is good. Everyone, including religious people, should be skeptical. After the twentieth century and our experiences in the twenty-first century, the Orthodox are right to be skeptical about claims that a good society can be based on atheism!
An atheist, remember we are talking about the “street-level” atheist, often will make four basic assumptions about knowledge:
Assumption 1: Reason is primarily about skepticism.
Assumption 2: History shows that strong religion hurts science.
Assumption 3: “Extraordinary Claims Need Extraordinary Evidence.”
Assumption 4: Religious Faith is not based on or even cannot be based on evidence.
These assumptions are wrong, but without them, much of the atheist attack on belief would be silenced.
The Problem with Assumption 1: Reason is NOT Skepticism
Few people want to be unreasonable. If religion is contrary to reason, not just the appearance of reason, but reason, then it is unworthy of belief. Atheists often will attempt to define faith for Christians as “belief in the absurd!” It is not, but repeat an error often enough and it starts to get an aura of seriousness it does not deserve.
Sadly, many believers do not understand that faith is deeply reasonable. Of course, the wisdom of God may appear to be folly at first glance, just as a student told that a table contains mostly empty space thinks this foolish. Hard ideas or different ideas are not irrational, just hard or different! Even when a fool for Christ, the jester of an ancient court, uses folly, it is to demonstrate the deeper folly around the fool! He or she demonstrates absurdity in others by pushing their materialism or social rules to absurdity.
Jesus Christ is the Divine Logos of God and the Word of God is not just reasonable, but Reason incarnate. Orthodoxy may appear irrational to those who accept theories alien to reality, but to those who embrace all of reality, Orthodoxy will not just seem reasonable, but lead a man to reason!
Skepticism is a tool in the rational man’s arsenal, but not reason. No one lives like a skeptic most of the time. A rational man begins in belief and only begins to doubt for sufficient reasons. This is true of all our experiences unless we warp our thinking with the preconceptions that some experiences must be treated differently. It is certainly true that if we go to a used car lot we have experiences or have had true stories that will increase our skepticism. I see no reason to approach my own religious experiences at Saint Paul’s with the same degree of skepticism!
In most cases, we do not doubt what seems true even without very good reasons. If we do not take this approach, skepticism will consume itself leading to total doubt. I once heard an excellent epistemologist confronted by a freshman who wanted to know how this philosopher knew he was not a brain in a vat controlled by an evil scientist. He forcefully replied, “Why the (insert strong word here) would anyone believe that?”
The philosopher was right. If we require proof for everything, or begin to doubt even our most basic experiences, we will end up in an unproductive place or go mad! We accept our experiences, take most of our explanations from the wise people around us, and only when we must (and sometimes we must!) do we examine them.
The unexamined life is not worth living, but endless examination of everything will prevent us from living! A properly functioning human will be skeptical, but only for good reason. The default position is faith: believing an idea because there is no good reason to doubt it.
Whenever I explain this to an atheist, his first thought is of things that appear true, but are not. “What of the flat earth?” The reply is: “What of it?” The earth superficially appears flat and as the center of the cosmos. Earth is not flat, the Sun certainly does not go around the Earth, and yet we can live good lives speaking as if both things are true. When I say “sunrise,” only a pendent would rebuke me, because the Sun does appear to rise! We do not discover that our experience is unreal; the sun appears to rise, but that our first explanation for the phenomena, geocentrism, is false.
In fact, we stopped believing in a perfectly flat earth very quickly as our experience showed humans the Earth could not be flat. Ships sink below the horizon as they sail away from the observer and a perfectly flat Earth could not explain this experience.
Science is as much a product of belief as skepticism. To make progress, scientists are conservative. They will accept a theory, even with some contrary data, if it works best and has worked well in the past. They will revise their ideas or thinking only when pressed by a better explanation that fits more of the data.
—–
*The atheist I am addressing is “street level” or lacks academic sophistication in his or her training. Philosophically trained atheists make much more nuanced and sophisticated claims and require more nuanced and sophisticated responses!
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In