![\"At](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/169\/2015\/10\/faithreason.jpg\")
<\/a>At any point when I engage with village atheists (not professional philosophers) my students will often respond: what is wrong with these people? A simple way to get philosophy students who are religious to relax about \u201call powerful\u201d atheists is to have them attempt dialogue with Internet (or village) atheists.<\/p>\n
It goes about as well as if philosophically acute atheists tried to go to a fringe church and talk to laypeople. Students if they are not careful will dismiss atheism out of hand.<\/p>\n
The usual strategy in dealing with \u201csmart people\u201d who believe dumb things (or things I think are dumb) is to explain away their\u00a0\u201cdumb\u201d beliefs in a variety of ways. I am sure that\u00a0some of these are even true of some people sometimes. Atheism\u00a0or anti-religious views are popular in certain fields and there is peer pressure to accept them. Traditional religious\u00a0belief is unpopular in fields where people know little about philosophy, but a great deal of science.\u00a0I have personally known people who rejected religious\u00a0truths, because they conflicted with\u00a0certain desires and then looked for\u00a0intellectual reasons to justify those immoral decisions.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think that covers most thoughtful atheists.<\/p>\n
Internet atheists, most\u00a0of them anyway, remain\u00a0atheists even though their arguments are mostly ad hominem mixed with tu toque, almost total ignorance of philosophy of religion,\u00a0\u00a0and Richard Dawkins\u2019 talking\u00a0points, because atheism is fundamentally plausible.\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0Christians should never <\/em>dismiss atheism, even the most popular sort, or other religious traditions by assuming they are obviously wrong.<\/p>\n They are not. When large numbers of smart people believe a thing, the obviousness of the error should be questioned. Assuming some sociological answer to\u00a0\u201cwhy my smart neighbor doesn\u2019t see the world they way I do\u201d is insulting and intellectually lazy. Let\u2019s be plain: atheism is an old (Lucretius!) and important intellectual tradition. It might be the way to go. I don\u2019t think so, but this is not so self-evident intellectually that all opponents are obviously stupid or lazy or controlled by immorality or smart in one area and not in another.<\/em><\/p>\n When something that seems obvious to me isn\u2019t to a person who seems to care about truth, charity commands me to take them at their word. They don\u2019t agree with me: that doesn\u2019t mean they are stupid, deceived, immoral, groomed, or even wrong. I must always consider the idea I might be wrong. <\/em><\/p>\n We can see why we should do this when \u201coutsiders\u201d make the same uncharitable and foolish mistake in talking to us. They assume they know what we believe better than we do!<\/p>\n Nothing is more frustrating than when the opponents of Christianity will insist on defining our terms for us in ways that are unrecognizable. For example, I meet atheists all the time that think for a Christian, \u201cfaith\u201d is believing something against the evidence or despite the evidence. Now since one can simply look up the Catechism<\/a> of the Catholic Church<\/a> (I am not Catholic, but most of the world\u2019s Christians are), or the writings of John Calvin\u00a0or an Orthodox\u00a0discussion\u00a0 of faith and reason\u00a0and see this wrong, it is odd this isn\u2019t done. Shouldn\u2019t one at least take the definitions of Saint John Paul II in a document on faith and reason as a starting point?<\/p>\n Instead, one will get someone with no Biblical training using a Bible verse to define what he thinks we think faith is. If that seems foolish, it is. Let\u2019s not do the same. Should we then move from this epic fail to our own wrong idea about atheism? By no means! One could just assume the atheist is a dullard, hiding something, or deceived. I think not.\u00a0I think they are getting intellectual strength from the best reasons for atheism<\/em> (the problem of pain and an all perfect God, the hiddenness of God, and other issues). People are atheists because atheism might<\/em> be true, just as I think so many people are Muslims because it is plausible.<\/p>\n I think both Islam and atheism false, but am not arrogant enough (or should not be) to say they are obviously false or smart people who are atheist or Muslim are in denial. Thinking a person wrong, even seriously wrong, is not the same as knowing<\/em> their views are foolish and mine are not. When I am sure that all my opponents, even the nice ones, are na\u00efve, arrogant, or fools, then I am almost surely na\u00efve, arrogant, or a fool.<\/p>\n Instead, we recognize the limits of argument. As far as it goes, a man can be rational and be an atheist. A man can be rational and be a Muslim. I have yet to meet a rational man that is \u201cflat earth\u201d so this is not saying every view meets this standard! Some religious views merit and have received serious philosophic defense . . . Santa . . . not so much. Some secular views have active and noble defenders. . . .\u00a0 Lucretius . . . not so much.<\/p>\n So what should a Christian assume? A Christian should assume that their neighbor with another view is wrong<\/em> and dialogue with him or her. We should not assume they are always immoral, perverse, stupid, or deceiving themselves. We are all wrong about something. Instead, charity demands we look first to ourselves (where are we cocksure?) and then to our neighbor?<\/p>\n One good way of looking at Biblical faith is: my belief, based on evidence of experience, revelation, and reason, of things not yet seen. I believe that something I cannot know for certain is probable enough to base my life on it. This gives an opening for reasonable<\/em> people to read the evidence (and their own experience) differently. I must accept this and pray God to reveal Himself to those people. We can dialogue and argue in good faith.<\/p>\n Usually at this point, my secular (or more liberal religious friends) will say that this is all well and good, but I assert their mistake will damn them. If I did assert a sincere intellectual mistake would damn them, this would be bad. I do not assert this. Since God is just and loving, I assume that every person will have the truth made plain to them, at the very least at the moment of death<\/em>, and that this truth will be accepted or denied. Nobody will be damned for a calculative error or a sincere mistake in epistemology.<\/p>\n We must<\/em> be born again and Jesus is the only way to Paradise, but any individual is complicated and I have no way to judge the state of their soul, what will happen to them at the moment of death, and what they have or have not heard. My own soul is enough work for me!<\/p>\n And so I reject any foolish Christian belief that those who are not<\/em> Christians are just smart people believing stupid things. That isn\u2019t just stupid, it is un-Christian. The just will live by faith . . . not Cartesian certainty and so we must allow that all of us make mistakes . . . and that the one making the mistake may be me and not my neighbor!<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At any point when I engage with village atheists (not professional philosophers) my students will often respond: what is wrong with these people? A simple way to get philosophy students who are religious to relax about \u201call powerful\u201d atheists is to have them attempt dialogue with Internet (or village) atheists. It goes about as well […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1007,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apologetics","category-pop-culture"],"yoast_head":"\n