Another Case of Padded Atheist Argumentation

As I pointed out in Padding the Case for the New Atheism, the New Atheists seem to have difficulty to sticking with the only two really good arguments there are for atheism: 1. Life sucks and 2. Things work fine without God. So they lard on a bunch of fallacies, sleight of hand and rubbish to make their arguments appear more solid, which have the effect of alerting thoughtful people to the fact that the New Atheists either don’t really trust their two good arguments or are just too dumb to see that their padding is lousy reasoning.

I outlined a few of the more popular forms of padding in the piece, but it was not intended to be an exhaustive list and sometimes new ones pop up. Such is the case with the New Scientist, which is mining the promising (for New Atheists) vein of “religion as evolutionary artifact” mythmaking that is au courant. The piece is called “Born Believers: How Your Brain Creates God” and the title says it all despite the disclaimer of the researchers that “none of this says anything about the existence or otherwise of gods: as Barratt points out, whether or not a belief is true is independent of why people believe it”. Yeah right. But (wink, wink) just between us truly true Rational People, we know what it all really mean: religious believers are just responding to their programming. We Rationalists have risen above that programming and escaped into higher realms of Freedom. Yes, it looks like a certain percentage of the population will always be believers, stuck with their crude genetic programming just as a certain percentage will always have IQs below average. But we are the New Men and Woman of the Future! The Ubermenschen who have escaped the shackles of our primitive forebears and stepped out onto the plateau of Reason! We know the truth: that “god” is simply an illusion created by the pattern-making device called the brain. We see through the veil to the reality of a meaningless universe that is simply time, space, matter and energy. Dick Dawkins has been banging this drum for quite sometime.

It’s a *very* gratifying creation myth for Atheism, not unlike Christopher Hitchens’ entertaining creation myth about the progress of the human mind from theology to philosophy (as though philosophy has not been practiced next to theology since the dawn of time). How fun to be smarter than all those stupid people.

The argument of “Born Believers” mythmaking borrows what promise it has from the second of the good arguments for atheism (“Things work fine without God”). But as is the usual case, the mythmakers cannot restrain themselves from padding. They also cannot restrain themselves from refusing to think.

The first place in which there is a refusal to think is in the neglect of the question “How does the existence of a brain that is (alone in the animal kingdom) prepared to receive relationship with God show that we “create” God. Yes, the brain *can* create patterns where none exist (canals on Mars, for instance). But the brain can also perceive patterns that are really there. That is, after all, what science does, including the science of brain research. So how do you know the brain is “creating” God and not perceiving him?” Indeed, if the brain is the creation of a God who seeks relationship with us, should we not expect our brains to be enabled to perceive him and desire relationship with him?”

None of this seems to be considered by the Dawkins types as they congratulate themselves on their ubermenchen status over the herd still enslaved to mere genetic programming. Which raises another question: If you can’t tell whether the herd is creating or actually perceiving God, how can you tell that you are an ubermensch and not just a doomed genetic freak. Blind cave fish have no eyes. That may be a fine adaptation for a specialized enviroment, just as being an atheist may be a fine adaptation for working among similar flukes in the special environment of Cambridge. But take the blind cave fish out of his cave and toss him in a big tank with a bunch of predators and he will not have much time to boast that his lack of sight makes him superior to his fellows.

The curious thing about the whole “It’s all in your genetic programming” explanation of religion is the odd way in which the Rationalist Mythmaker seems to be blind to his own argument. Suggesting that religious believe makes us prisoners of our animal nature while rationalism is a step toward liberation seems to me to get things backwards. Precisely what animals (with one stark exception) do not do is worship or think transcendent thoughts about something beyond nature. Human beings are utter flukes in the fact that they are not driven by their appetites and are seized by a passion for transcending the mere animal and physical. The atheist is a highly sophisticated jailer, laboring by every means at his disposal to cage human beings in an ideological prison that tells him there is nothing but the physical. We do not need to do with with our dogs. But atheist regimes must do this (and consequently treat men like dogs.)