8/9/2019 Atheist Talk

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Thank you for having me.

In this presentation, I hope to cover four basic themes. First, Ill discuss what the term

atheist means. From there, Ill move on to a more sensitive area, and Ill touch on whyI and most other atheists feel that faith is over-rated. This will lead us into an exploration

of exactly what we are discussing when we speak of God; believe it or not, its not a

clear-cut issue. Finally, I will briefly discuss the issue of Gods necessity as first-mover,

and whether its possible to have a universe with no deity in it. Hopefully, by the time Ihave completed my presentation, you will have a better understanding of what atheismis, and (perhaps as importantly) what it is not.

The word atheist has its roots in the Greek and Roman world and predates Christianity.It was a word made up of the Greek prefix a - meaning without - and the word theos,meaning god or gods. It was a word that was employed to describe anyone whorejected the godhead of the majority.

In fact, since the Roman pantheon was the dominant religion at the time of Peter andthe early Christian church, Christians were considered to be atheists to the Romantheocracy. It was a pejorative.

Once Christianity came in vogue under Constantine, however, the term came to meananyone who did not follow the Christian faith. Followers of Mithras, Jews, pagans, evenalternate Christian sects such as the Gnostics and the Cathars and later the EasternOrthodoxy came to be called atheists.

Today, however, in our more open civilization, where we recognize that different peoplehave and are entitled to different opinions on the nature of the universe and the

question of its origins, the term has come to mean only people who have no belief inany gods.

Still, if one issaya Hindu, then it follows that one is atheistic toward Jehovah.

If one is Christian, then one is atheistic toward Shiva, Osiris, Jupiter, Odin, Baal,Cthulhu; in fact, a Christian is atheistic toward every other single Godhead including thesonless Jehovah of Judaism and the Abrehemic Allah and his prophet Jesus that theMuslims worship under. You are all atheistic toward some godhead or other, but wedon't call you atheists because you do have the one thing that separates you from whatwe call an atheist today; faith in some god.

Which brings us to the word agnostic: what is an agnostic and how is it different from abeliever and from an atheist? If we ask most people, they will tell us that an agnosticdoes not know if there is a God or not, while an atheist does not believe there is a God.In fact, this is absolutely the correct distinction. But - and there is a butit's adistinction with no real difference in most cases. I'll explain, but first allow me to explainhow we get the word agnostic in our vernacular in the first place.

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Those of you who are historically minded may be familiar with the term Gnostic. TheGnostics were an early branch of Christianity that took their name from the Greek wordgnosis meaning knowledge. That same root is where we get our modern word agnostic.

Agnostic is a word often employed as synonymous with or slightly less committal thanthe word atheist. Unfortunately, this is a bit of a misnomer as I will explain.

In the latter part of the nineteenth century, a biologist named Thomas Huxley coined the

term agnostic from the Greek prefix awithoutand the root gnosisknowledge.

Huxley did not believe in the biblical description of God. In fact, he didnt believe in any

description of God he had ever been presented with. Yet he did not reject the possibilitythat somethingsome moverhad taken a part in the creation of life and the universe.

Huxley acknowledged that he simply didnt know. He was without knowledge he was,he said, agnostic.

The problem with this word, however, is that as I already notedbelief is not about

knowledge. Its about faith. Most atheists who have a decent understanding of

language, philosophy and even theology will acknowledge that they do not know thatthere is no god. Most of us dont even believe that we know there is no god. (In truth,

most of us who are atheists dont actually even believe that there is no god, but I ll get

back to that.) What we as atheists do know is that though we don t know that there is no

god, we dont believe that there is a god.

So since we dont know that there is no god, and we dont know that there is a god, we

areall of usagnostics. But in the same regard, nearly all believers no matter how

strongly they believe there is a godnone who has not personally and directly met god

none knows that there is a god. You believe; you take it on faith; but you don t know;

and since you dont know, that means youre agnostic as well.

A moment ago, I said that most atheists dont actually even believe that there is no god.When I say this I am talking about what is known as weak atheism. The word weak inthis context does not mean that our commitment to atheism is lax. It simply means that

we recognize that the question of Gods existence is unknowable. Those who assertthat it is knowable and the answer is no-god-exists are strong atheists, and they are few

and far between. Another way to consider this is that if atheists who don t claim to knowthere is no god are agnostic atheists, then those who do claim certain knowledge aregnostic atheists. Similarly believers who dont claim to know there is a god are agnostic

theists, and those who do claim certain knowledge are gnostic theists.

However, at this point I would caution you not to assume that since we atheistsrecognize that the existence of god is unknowable, that it can be assumed we waver onthe question does the god described in the bible exist. When I acknowledge that it maybe possible that something which could be called god may exist, I am as certain as I amthat the earth revolves around the sun that no theistic god concept that has ever beendescribed to me is in any sense realistic, likely, probable or even possibly true.

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Before I move on, one last point about the meaning of the word atheist. In 1905, anatheist named Bertrand Russell wrote a famous essay called On Denoting. In this

essay, he discussed language and words and paid specific attention to predication andother oblique concepts of disambiguation of language. So you may come across anatheist who will say in all certainty that since a theist believes there is a god, and since

an atheist is not a theist, then an atheist believes there is no god. However, I am here totell you that no man be he theist, atheist or emissary of god himself has the right to tellme what I do and do not believe.

My atheism is rooted in skepticism. I lack belief in all things unproven. No one hasproven to me that there is no god, and neither has anyone proven that there is. I do nothave faith in god, so I am by definition an atheist, and that is the limit of the descriptivepower of the word.

So lets talk a little about faith. Faith is frequently cited as a virtue. The early church

concocted a list of seven virtues and seven deadly sins. The lists underwent numerous

revisions, but faith was always included in the category of virtues. I dont think it is too

much of a stretch to assert as obvious that the church relies on faith for its veryexistence; well, faith and charity at any rate.

But what about faith makes it virtuous? Voltaire once wrote "Is it a virtue to believe?Either what you believe seems true to you, and in this case there is no merit inbelieving; or it seems false to you, and then it is impossible for you to believe." He wenton to conclude that, "The prudent man does good to himself, the virtuous man doesgood to mankind. St. Paul was right to tell you that charity prevails over faith and hope."

Faith is belief without evidence. Another word for that is credulity. A third is gullibility.

Consider that the church exalts those who believe on faith alone, yet all of the biblicalheroes; including the twelve apostles, Moses, Noah, Abraham, Adam, all of the mostheroic characters in the holiest of holy books in Christendom, to a man, none believedon faith alone. Why should I be expected to? Why should you?

What makes it wrong for me to question whether the stories might be mere fables and

seek evidence that they cant be. Then, failing to find such evidence, what makes it

wrong to doubt? Gods hidden-ness is only a valid test of my faith if faith has merit. Yetin the case of the biblical god, for me faith is not only belief despite direct evidence, it isactually belief despite evidence to the contrary.

Another issue is the question of what exactly is it that we are being asked to have faithin? There are Young-Earth churches that insist that the planet was created less than6000 years ago, that Adam and Eve were actual living people who populated the world,that dinosaurs co-existed with humans, that Noahs Ark was real and two of every kindof animal including penguins, kangaroos and each of the over 450 thousand species of

beetle went along for the ride because if its in the bible that means God said it, theybelieve it, that settles it.

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On the other hand there are churches which accept that the universe is almost 14 billionyears old, that this planet is about four and a half billion years old, that life began abouta billion years after that, and that humans are the result of gradual evolution with apesevolving from primates 25 million years ago, and the species now known as humanfinally taking shape in the family of apes roughly a half million years ago all under the

guidance and supervision of an all knowing, all seeing god who designed every step ofthe process.

Still others believe that God merely set the events along their inevitable course, and thatHe has had no further input since the initial moment of creation; or as Omar Khayy m

(as translated by Fitzgerald) put it in his Rubaiyat, The Moving Finger writes; and,

having writ, Moves on. Such people are distinguished from theists as their view of God

is an impersonal first cause alone, unmoved and unmovable by our prayers. We callthem deists, and among their numbers we count Thomas Jefferson and BenjaminFranklin.

In fact, the entire question of what do we mean when we saygod

is very ambiguous.

In human history, we have worshipped any of a number of discordant concepts andcalled them all god; golden calves, volcanoes, cargo ships, living men, dead men, theearth, all of nature, even induced hallucinations. So what do I mean by God when I say Idont believe it?

As Richard Dawkins wrote in his book, The God Delusion, "[I]f the word God is not tobecome completely useless, it should be used in the way that people have generallyunderstood it: to denote a supernatural creator that is appropriate for us to worship." ButI personally feel that an extra qualifier is required.

As Thomas Aquinas once argued, "It is impossible to go on to infinity in necessarythings which have their necessity caused by another."

Aquinas was referring to the law of causation. He was basically saying that if we goback in time far enough, all things have a first cause, but that first cause cannot have

been uncaused. Aquinas thus determined that, there must be presupposed somethingnecessarily existing through its own nature, not having a cause elsewhere but beingitself the cause of the necessary existence of other things. Thus Dawkins tells us that a

god is a supernatural creator that is appropriate for us to worship, and Aquinas addsthat it must be a necessary thing. I think we can all agree that such a being would be agod.

So, is there a necessary supernatural creator that is appropriate for us to worship? Well,speaking for myself, I feel that if I can imagine a universe that can exist without asupernatural creator then the idea of such a creator becomes unnecessary. If I canimagine a moment of creation which is entirely accidental or incidental, then whatever

the cause its unworthy of worship. In other words, if the universe exists because it must

exist then there is no reason to call any first cause whether imaginary or real, natural

or supernatural God.

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In Islam, there is a theological philosophical discipline known as kalm. Theologians

practicing kalm seek knowledge about the nature of Allah through debate. InChristianity, there is a practice of pro-theistic argumentation known as apologetics.

Christian apologists sometimes employ an argument from kalm known as the

cosmological argument. This argument basically says in three parts that there had to bea first cause. 1Everything that begins to exist was caused to exist. 2The universe

began to exist. 3 Therefore the universe has a cause.

The problem is that because of physics this argument basically falls apart at the firstpoint. Einstein tells us that energy is equal to the square of the speed of light timesmass. This equivalence means that mass and energy are interchangeable. Onebecomes the other and nothing is ever destroyed, it simply changes form. All mass isenergy at rest. This is the first law of thermodynamics.

Burn a log, and it seems that the log is gone, but it isnt. Some of it is ash, some is

smoke, most is dissipated as energy in the form of heat and light, but none of it is reallygone from existence. It simply ceases to exist as a log.

Along that same line, even though the log once came to exist as a log, before it was alog it was a branch, and preexisting energy was incorporated to bulk it up. Before it wasa branch it was a twig. Before it was a twig it was a knot on a tree trunk. The trunk wasonce a sapling. The sapling was once an acorn. The acorn came from a flower onanother tree, and so on all the way back to the beginning of time. Energy is brought intothe system, converted, and eventually re-released back into the universe where it hasalways existed since the beginning of time. Everything has a cause, but nothing trulybegins to exist; not even the universe.

So the real question is if there is no God, then why is there a universe? Why is there

life? As G.W. Leibniz asked, Why is there something rather than nothing? The honest

answer: I dont know. I dont claim to know. But I could just as easily ask, Why is there

a-god-to-create-something rather than nothing-to-create-anything? However, I see noreason to complicate the question.

Thank you.