Very Insightful

A reader responds to my post on the Ten Questions for Christians video by noting:

All arguments against God’s existence from the occurrence of evil suffer from this ambiguity. A critic who claims that unhappiness and evil disprove the existence of God is really just saying that the critic would do a better job than God.

Of course the critic might respond that if he or she can be a better God than God, God does not exist. But since the critic cannot do as much evil as he or she claims God does, it is apparent that the critic is ontologically less powerful than God, and differences between God’s and the critic’s ethics and aesthetics are just quibbles. There is a God, and God does evil and will give you cancer, so there.

Arguments from the existence of evil are not arguments against the existence of God. They are arguments against the existence of the Christian God. The fact that atheists are congenitally incapable of grasping this point indicates, at least to me, that atheists are not unhappy with the idea of God. They’re just unhappy with the idea of a God they don’t happen to like very much, largely because He won’t let them play with their privates whenever and however desired.

It’s true that the video (and virtually all such Fundy Atheist arguments) are arguments against the existence of the Christian God (or more specifically against the Catholic God since some species of Calvinist God are quite at home with doing all sorts of monstrous things under cover of “It’s not monstrous when Absolute Sovereignty does it”). What makes all these fundy arguments possible is that Christianity says that God is not merely all powerful but all good. Arguments like the videos basically boil down to arguing, not that God is not there, but that he’s evil. That’s why you get odd and superstitious arguments like “Starving people are caused by the non-existence of God”. What he really seems to mean is that “A bad God who will not listen to prayer causes people to starve.”

Oh, and while the “God interferes with my sex life” motivation does, no doubt, explain an awful lot of this sort of woolly mindedness, I also think that Daddy Issues go an awful long way too. JPII remarks that the distinguishing mark of original sin is loss of apprehension of God as Father. This leaves us, not with nothing, but with the apprehension of God as *Master*. After that, you have the choice of allying yourself with the Master (as in Islam) or of revolting against the Master (as happens in the sundry forms of secularism and, most acutely, among the New Atheists, who all sound that curiously contradictory note of rebellion against somebody they insist is not there.

Another reader asks:

Why does this man assume that people with college degrees are smart? And does he assume that anyone without a degree is too feeble-minded to grasp the level of ignorance he himself has risen to?

Because he is a classic example of somebody who worships the intellect rather than using it. Such people are endemic among the New Atheists. I think it goes back to the fact of a curious personality disorder whereby they imagine that their ineptitude in grasping certain affective skills in ordinary human interactions is a sign that they are not suffering from stunted social skills but are, in fact, Special and Chosen to be smarter than the unwashed herd. Classic compensation stuff.

Another reader wonders why the guy doesn’t make more use of Thomas’ Objection #2. The main reason is that he is not proposing the naturalist counter-narrative of “Everything works fine without God”. Objection 2 is what undergirds all the attempt to press evolution into service as “proof” that there’s no God. It’s also what lies behind the old “People thought lightening was caused by God, but now we know it’s electricity” schtick.

The video, in the end, was not about arguing, critical thinking, and rationality but about trying to create a *feeling*. That feeling was supposed to take the form of “I am a weird rationalizer. Golly! He’s right.” It was, in fact, ham-fisted emotional manipulation. But that’s kind of to be expected from people who are not very socially skilled, as the New Atheists constantly show themselves to be.