Round 2: Atheist vs Christian

In the second round of this ongoing discussion, LA Atheist Examiner, Hugh Kramer and Methodist Examiner, James-Michael Smith will each offer their rebuttals to the other's answer to the question "Whis the main reason you reject theism/atheism as a valid worldview?" You can find JM's rebuttal to my opening salvo here.

 

My learned opponent's main objection to atheism is that it doesn't explain the most fundamental questions of life. If you use the narrowist definition of atheism (IE: the belief that there are no gods), this is true. The most that can be ascribed to such a definition is the negative proposition that gods aren't the answer to these questions either. For most atheists though, what's important isn't just the conclusion we reach, but how we get there. We may not offer "ultimate"  or "absolute" explanations for Life, the Universe and Everything, but what we do offer is a way of evaluating explanations: critical thinking. Logic is one of the tools we use but it's not our exclusive property. Theists use it too. It's a pretty good tool for making arguments but, Iike all tools, it has it's limitations. Any argument, regardless of whether it's scientific, philosophical, religious or magical can be made logically consistant provided you accept the assumptions (in math these are called axioms) upon which it is built. It is here that the skeptical or critical thinker comes into his (or her) own by asking questions like "What are the assumptions underlying the argument? Are the assumptions warranted by evidence or observation? Is there a logical relationship between the assumptions? Do they justify the argument's conclusions or can they be interpreted some other way as well?"

 

Some ideas come off pretty good when looked at critically; the assumptions that underlie science, for instance. The resulting advances in knowledge and technology derived from it certainly make it's assumptions about how relationships in nature can be measured and modeled, seem justified. Even if it can't be used on unobservable, purely supernatural things like, say, the temperature variation between Heaven and Hell, it can be used to judge the validity of any claims of the effect the supernatural has on the natural world.

 

Other ideas don't fare so well when looked at critically; Kalam's cosmological argument, which my esteemed opponent brought up, for instance. This is the Islamic philosophical name for an argument better known to most as the "first cause" or "uncaused cause" argument. I am going to quote SASnSA's post from the comments section of round 1 of this debate since he explained the argument so concisely. I put his final comments in bold print since they illustrate some of the problems a critical thinker has with this argument:

 

The three premises of the Kalaam cosmological argument:
1. The universe either had (a) a beginning or (b) no beginning.
2. If it had a beginning, the beginning was either (a) caused or (b) uncaused.
3. If it had a cause, the cause was either (a) personal or (b) not personal.

Does this seem familiar to anyone else?

1. Every finite and contingent being has a cause.
2. Nothing finite and contingent can cause itself.
3. A causal chain cannot be of infinite length.
4. Therefore, a First Cause (or something that is not an effect) must exist.

Nothing anywhere shows that a complex living being (or) even a supreme living being could possibly (I would have used "must" here instead of "could possibly") be that first cause. You have to go out of your way to believe such a being exists in advance and was not itself created to accept either argument. And if you claim that God always existed, you fall against the wall of "An actual infinite cannot exist."

 

 I think what offends my opponent the most about the atheist worldview is that most of us don't embrace what he calls ultimate causes, ultimate purposes and "ultimate objective source of justice and morality." Because of this, he says that we should "stop trying to embrace (an) intrinsic (or maybe he meant "intrinsically"), objective purpose to life," follow our worldview to its logical conclusion and admit our nihilism. While it's true that atheists aren't big on "ultimates" and absolutes when it comes to the meaning of life, etc., it doesn't mean that our only other choice is to think that nothing has any meaning. Like most human beings, we're quite capable of providing our own meanings to life (I address this more fully in this essay). In my opinion, this is exactly what theists do too except that they are making a leap of faith over a vast gap in evidence to do so. I would rather try to look at the world as it is instead of trying to rationalize away the problems inherent to a worldview I might prefer.