10 More Atheist Arguments I No Longer Defend

One of the first articles I wrote for this blog was a list of ten common, or not so common, atheist arguments that I used to defend during my militant atheist phase but that, in recent times I've come to sort of abandon. At first I thought the title I chose for the article was a bit weird, but now I think it's actually quite apt. That's because, while I now see some arguments as uncharitable at best and dumb at worst, most of them are arguments I can't wholly refute but also can't quite use in a discussion anymore. I've come to realize they're full of holes, they don't often tell the whole story, and quite a few of them seem to have an underlying psychological component that atheists elect to ignore when marching under the banner of logic and skepticism. And I say that because I look back on my reasoning from those days and I find in my past self those exact same idiosyncrasies.

Now, having said that, do I remain an atheist? I do, just not a militant atheist anymore. Because in many ways atheism is a philosophy with its own beliefs, and before you come at me with some variation of that old Bill Maher joke, you can find a brief explanation here. In that one, the man of the hour was the late, not-so-great Christopher Hitchens, whom I admittedly heroized, but now I dunno... Every now and then I catch myself remembering one of his tirades and, underneath all the eloquence, I find quite a bit of sophistry... The man who inspired me to write this second round of arguments was the man depicted below, and you'll see why in due time.

My ninth-grade biology teacher

What else?... I guess I could preface this here article by noting that the militant atheist movement has run its course for me, as it has for many other people, I believe. It doesn't seem to be in fashion anymore to go on about the same old tired discussions, the paradigm has simply shifted. Obviously that don't mean God exists, but it does mean we ought to take some time to reflect on the movement as a whole. Because if you remain a full atheist but haven't wrestled with some of the weird existential questions, then I'd wager you're as lukewarm in your atheism as most christians are lukewarm in their christianity.

Let's begin.

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10. Atheist countries are the best ones.

Politics... Why did it have to be politics?... Let's just get this one out of the way first so we can talk serious afterwards.

I guess back in the day we looked at religious countries and found some problems, then we looked at nordic countries, which were reported to be very atheistic, and when we saw they were doing much better we concluded – voilà, atheism works! I suppose the argument is that religion weighs us down, it makes us bogged down in petty squabbles when we could instead be pragmatic and actually set out to fix the problems in front of us. In other words, nordic people don't wait around for magic to happen nor do they eagerly wait for a good life in the hereafter. They instead aim to create that good life right here because they have no second chances. Places with religion are bad, places without religion are good, therefore, religion is bad. But even further than that, perhaps the conclusion was the positive statement that places without religion are good.

The main reason I don't find this argument convincing anymore is because the whole thing, though interesting in its own way, is all political rhetoric. And where politics abound, lies abound there too. If you think your political house is all pure and pristine, well... I admire your innocence. The first issue at hand would be to call into question the atheism of nordic people. Are they all militant atheists? Unlikely. Are they all hard atheists? Unlikely as well. Are they all people who have abandoned the church life whilst retaining a general belief in God or in a higher purpose to this weird thing that is existence? Bingo... I've come to believe the atheism of nordic countries wasn't exactly what I was led to believe in my militant atheism, a time when I claimed to be skeptical of everything, a phase when I claimed I didn't believe the smallest thing without careful scrutiny, and yet I unknowingly found myself automatically believing a ton of stuff and taking sides in politics. And people still claim atheism is just a lack of belief...

With political arguments like these, there are always the spats that inevitably ensue. If atheists would attribute the good aspects of nordic countries to atheism, then why wouldn't they claim responsibility for the bad aspects of the USSR? You'd rattle off your best Hitchens impression and go on about how the USSR promoted a religious-like worship of the leader. Back then, I would too, but now I find the argument to be wholly fallacious. Having no religion in good countries is proof that religion is bad, but having no religion in bad countries is proof that those countries are actually super religious? Very strange. If religion is defined as the highest value that a collective people hold, then whenever things go wrong in an atheistic country, religion itself will always be to blame one way or another... You really can't win.

And lastly, what if an atheist country starts to not do so well? If an atheist country's good aspects were a result of their atheism, then are the bad aspects a result of it as well? Politically-minded atheists will always say no because they define atheism in such a way that nothing unpleasant can ever stick to it.

9. Christians cherry-pick the Bible.

The Bible says some things that christians want to practice and preach, but it also says some things that christians no longer want to practice or preach. To square that circle, they would often defend some verses of the Bible whilst ignoring others, because much like with the previous point, nobody wants to claim responsibility when their own team fumbles. For example, the ten commandments were always held in high regard, but those weird verses about not wearing mixed fabrics or not eating shellfish sorta fell by the wayside. This has to be wrong because either the Bible is the inspired word of God or it isn't. And since God can't change his mind all that easily, either it's all divine truth or it isn't. The conclusion would then be that religion is just the result of a group of people trying to do the best they can to govern society peacefully, yet all the while refusing change, a change that, in our modern times, is wholly necessary, hence the cherry-picking.

I hope I did the argument justice because I actually think it's a silly one, and that is because it essentially uses islamic theology to argue against christian theology. The christian claim isn't that the Bible is the direct word of God on every single page, it's the claim that God revealed himself unto the world, and then various men, inspired by the event, wrote books detailing their experiences, the history of their people, their prophetic dreams, and so on. If it makes you respect the Bible a little less, then so be it. But the truth is that some measure of “cherry-picking” is in order because the books are all quite different. You can't read Revelation the same way you read Leviticus, nor can you read the red-letter text of the Gospel the same way you read Proverbs, and so on. Each book needs to be taken on its own merits because some are historical, which does call into question issues of their own, but others are metaphorical, which means that morality has to be derived from interpretation, and others still are legal documents which state the actual, specific laws of the people. Those last ones are perhaps the most contentious one, but for christians they aren't as much of a problem since the mosaic law is considered to have been a temporary code to follow, now seemingly abolished – He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. [Matthew 19:8]

Regardless, no, the Bible doesn't have to be perfect and eternal to the very letter. That is a claim muslims make about the Quran, and this kind of mishmash atheists make about the two religions is something I've come to see as a recurring fallacy.

8. We can derive religious teachings from non-religious sources.

Some two thousand years ago, a brilliant man was wondering through the city, meeting countless people along the way, arguing with them in the public square, professing his own ignorance and humility though in reality he was smarter and loftier than all of them combined. Some people loved and followed him, while others vehemently hated and persecuted him. One day, his persecutors had him arrested and sentenced to death for the crime of blasphemy. Though that man defended himself brilliantly, and though he had the chance to escape his punishment, he chose not to. He argued that what is meant to be is meant to be, and that to commit an injustice is forever greater than suffering one, for the suffering is only of the body, this temporary and ultimately meaningless shell, this tomb wherein the soul lies. And though that man was indeed executed, we still remember him to this very day. That man's name was Socrates.

Weirdly similar, isn't it? Even the teaching is similar. Jesus' commandments of turning the other cheek, forgiving our enemies, giving away our possessions, and so on, they all echo the same sentiment that all we really have in this life is forever pointless – For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? [Matthew 16:26] The crucifixion is then proof that no matter what happens to you, no matter what suffering your flesh has to endure, it is nothing compared to the torment of your soul, in this life and the next. And though Jesus and Socrates suffered in their flesh, their souls were at peace... Atheists would then ask – if we can derive this meaning from the life and death of Socrates, why do we need christianity?... Christopher Hitchens said more or less the same, going so far as to say that it didn't even matter to him whether or not Socrates really existed because his teachings stand on their own merit, whereas if Jesus never rose from the dead, then all of christianity is pointless – And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. [1 Corinthians 15:14]

But how true is that statement? Where's the actual flesh behind it? Because Socrates, though he perhaps had different religious beliefs than his contemporaries, still maintained spiritual beliefs, precisely the kind of beliefs that hard atheists refute. So can we truly live our lives with the belief that some things matter more than this world, more than our bodies and possessions? If you don't believe in anything beyond this world, how can you value something not of this world? How can mere rationality in the world give you the strength to allow your body's destruction for the good of your soul? And to make it more personal, would rationally agreeing with Socrates give you the same peace of mind he had if you ever found yourself in a similar situation?

7. Why two thousand years ago? Why then?

In John 14:6 Jesus famously, or infamously said – I am the way, the truth, the life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by me. That means everyone who didn't accept Christ goes to hell. But what about people who never got word of him? Or worse, what about people who lived before he even appeared in the world? That means they all died in ignorance, and therefore, they were sent to hell as a result. All the pre-christian pagans, including our very own Socrates, they all got sent to hell for not believing in Christ. Pretty gnarly indeed... If that assumes purgatory I dunno, I'll leave that for another day.

The question here is this idea that religion has this pesky tendency to work within human means. That is to say, it seems like God coincidentally only sends his revelations through dreams or visions, both unfalsifiable because you can't enter the guy's brain to know what he actually saw. Additionally, God also seems to communicate through words and books which exist within man-made and ever-evolving languages, and more importantly, it all seems to happen within a certain sociopolitical framework. The atheist logic is to say that religion is just a huge confusion of tribal conflicts and war propaganda, but of course, the believers see it differently because if God exists, then our actions are more than merely physical, which means there is something about all of this that has its own “power” which explains why God “has to” intervene within human works, and not parallel to them. It seems that atheists, in seeing God as a tyrant, also ironically see him as a weakling when he doesn't flex his power however he wants...

This is all a big sidestep to explain that maybe, the “two thousand years ago, in a galaxy far, far away” isn't all that random. Because I mean, if a god exists and if he's meant to reveal himself, then the revelation has to happen at some point in time, if not in space, and it has to happen in a way that human minds can comprehend it. As to why God would have chosen that time and place, I have no bleeding idea and it's one of the odd aspects of religion, but then again, what would be a timely way for God, if he exists, to reveal himself?

6. The Bible lacks scientific knowledge.

This one I recently came across when watching a little bit of Bill Maher lightly discussing religion with Stephen Colbert. I hadn't heard the argument in a while so it resonated with me. Basically, Stephen was presenting the usual christian invitation, almost in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way, and Bill, not in the mood for it, decided to just throw the jab that whoever wrote the Bible had no knowledge of basic science, implying we shouldn't believe them on bigger issues if they couldn't get the basic ones right. I used to think similarly and, to try to steelman the argument, it's yet another coincidence of religion, namely this recurring theme whereby the writers of allegedly holy books had access to divine truths but never to scientific truths. In that regard, they were all more or less on the same level as their competitors, and so their religion happened to survive to our day and age because they just won the game of thrones, and not necessarily because it was true.

But if the Bible contained some very, very accurate verses about atoms, would it then be proof of its divine inspiration? I'm not talking about a kind of metaphorical verse that you can maybe, sorta, kinda interpret as being related to atoms. I mean actual scientific explanations worthy of a physics textbook, explanations no culture should have at that point in time. Would that really satisfy modern atheists? I doubt it, I doubt it would even be particularly appealing to believers... Atheists would just claim that the passage has been added later on, or if that fails, they could easily argue that it was just a lucky guess, or if that fails, they could argue that it's not a big deal, that it doesn't prove anything, or they could argue that aliens gave the biblical authors that kind of knowledge. And I'm not being factitious with that last one, by the way, it actually does come up a lot.

It's again this kind of hubris within the atheist mindset, this idea that “they” were dumb and “we” are smart, but I mean, modern atheists do realize that in a few years, people will look back on us as having been very dumb too, right? Science is ever-changing, always shifting paradigms, a trait that puts it in direct opposition with religion, which tends to resist change. But that constant change within science has its downside too, namely that all this stuff we find so amazing nowadays will prove obsolete sooner rather than later. Thus, the point of religion isn't to solve everything, it's to give us the manual according to which we should live our lives. It would appear atheists criticize religious people for wanting to believe in a fairy tale but then they throw a tantrum when the three little pigs have to build their own little houses.

5. The four gospels can't seem to agree with one another.

After you read the Gospel for the first time you're likely to find yourself wanting to reread certain passages only to then have no idea where they are. Actually, you're likely to fall into disappointment at certain moments, namely the crucifixion, because you have all these details in your head, you go verse by verse in search for them, but then Jesus dies and they simply aren't there. You need to go to the other gospels and read the crucifixion again to find the detail you were looking for. For example, in Matthew, Jesus' confrontation with Pontius Pilate is very brief and lacks a very important phrase, then Jesus is crucified beside two thieves who insult him, and he doesn't say much except to desperately ask why God has forsaken him. In Luke though, Jesus speaks prophesies from the cross unto crying women, he famously asks forgiveness for his persecutors, and, interestingly enough, we are given the interaction between the two thieves, one of which insulted Jesus whereas the other praised him, and thus earned paradise. In John, Jesus' interaction with Pontius Pilate is extended, including the famous 18:36 – My kingdom is not of his world... Additionally, Jesus almost lovingly addresses the Virgin Mary. So, which of the four gospels is The Passion of the Christ based on? Why, all of them, of course.

While the gospels tell the same essential story, they also add or subtract certain details. Matthew is more about the narrative and presenting Jesus as a teacher, Mark is more brief, all about the essentials, Luke happens to include most of the parables, and lastly, John is full of long theological lectures given by Jesus himself. Now, within an atheist perspective, and an islamic one too, these and other differences are a problem because the integrity of the event is forever tainted by conflicting reports. The writers of the Gospel seem like four schoolboys who did their assignment individually but then had to give the PowerPoint presentation as a group, and hilarity ensued.

But I've come to find that argument a bit odd for two reasons. One, because I sorta think the opposite is true, I think differing details suggest a bigger reason to believe the actual event if the important details are all there. Because when an event takes place, the people involved will inevitably have slightly different details to add because the report is filtered through their subjective experience, but they tend not to differ on the big picture. Eyewitnesses may vary on whether the suspects shirt was red or orange, but they don't really vary on whether or not he was a tall young man or a short old lady. Thus, the gospels are written according to the individual perspectives of each author, as well as the details they were privy to.

The second reason is that, once more, we are faced with an instance of the impossible atheist standard. If the gospels differ, then the authors were making it all up, always adding as they went along, and thus, the document's authenticity is tainted. It's this idea that atheists claim about christianity that the text just has to be completely perfect or it's worthless. But that doesn't make much sense because, yet again, the claim is an islamic notion about the Quran, not a christian notion about the Bible. Within christianity, the Gospel is considered powerful but not necessarily divine in and of itself. John's concept of the Word isn't the word on the page... And after all that, if the gospels were in total agreement with each other, the rational thing for atheists to say would be that the authors were in cahoots. Once again, there's no way to win.

4. The concept of sacrifice is barbaric and outdated.

This one might be the weirdest argument here and possibly one that not a lot of atheists defend since it doesn't come up very often. I guess the gist of it would be that if God wanted to forgive sins he could have done so without any kind of violent sacrifices, of which the Old Testament is full, and especially without any kind of human sacrifice, on which the New Testament is built. The idea would be that two wrongs don't make a right. The atheist worldview would then be something akin to an enlightenment where, somewhat ironically, forgiveness is entirely preferable over punishment, which is seen as wholly barbaric. Indeed, the atheistic mindset seems based on a kind of rational nirvana, a kind of awareness of our intellectual superiority in comparison with the brutality of the past. We are now civilized, and notions of sacrifice greatly offend our sensibilities, much like an uncultured musical preference at a proustian soirée.

But is civilization all that civilized? I've started to think it isn't, I've come to believe there are some things simply beyond our limits. And I've come to the conclusion that nothing in this world is ever free. Everything has a price and, one way or another, that price has to be paid. According to christianity, that price was so high it had to be paid by the Son of God himself. On that note, atheists are weirdly in allegiance with muslims, who also believe it to be a weakness of God to require Jesus' crucifixion for the remission of sins, for they believe God should be able to forgive sins by his own power and grace... I for one began to disagree, though not exactly strongly because, as I said, this is a weird argument. But the crux of it is simply my suspicion that, for justice to exist, a sacrifice of some kind has to be made. After a crime has been committed, the criminal can't simply get away with it, even if some miracle cure is discovered. Grace has to be a constant struggle between forgiveness and judgment, love and punishment. If you think christianity ought to be Jesus just being a cool dude telling everyone to chill, then that's the real fairy tale. And if you think you live at the peak of civilization, then, to steal from Mr. House, look out the windows.

3. The moral commands of christianity are psychologically unhealthy.

The sermon on the mount made it so that everyone, every single one of us, is a sinner. To murder is a sin and, though not all of us are murderers, Jesus claimed that to be angry with our brother is akin to murder. To commit adultery is a sin and, though not all of us are adulterers, Jesus claimed that to have thoughts of adultery when looking upon a woman is, in and of itself, adultery. We're selfish beings by nature but Jesus claims we ought to give what we have to the poor, or even that we ought to give to whomever asks of us, even if they don't ask nicely. And more importantly, Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek and to love and forgive our enemies... The apostle Paul understood these commandments better than anyone, and so he went so far as to claim – This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. [1 Timothy 1:15]

That's a pretty tall order then... We are naturally predisposed towards envy but we are commanded to share, we are naturally predisposed towards lust but we are command to, not merely avert our gaze, but to purify our hearts, we are naturally predisposed towards conflict and pride but we are commanded to forgo of all those vanities, even though they are part of our fallen nature. So how can anyone live that way? If you give away all your possessions you become homeless, which would be a futile thing to do since your possessions, however vast, won't fix the world, and if you forgo all your lusts you'll die alone, if you allow all sins and trespasses you'll be trampled and destroyed... And how can a man really live a healthy life with the constant thought that among the worst people he's the worst person? I don't know and that's a tough one to figure out. But the simple truth is that recognizing your own capacity for evil is the true beginning of morality. As a sidenote, the other day I was watching some lectures of Frank Turek, of all people, and this college girl comes on saying – I generally try and be a good person but I don't believe in a christian god, do you think I'm going to hell? And I was just dumbfounded by the sheer hubris... I highly doubt that girl was Ted Bundy in a wig, but I also doubt that her attempts to be a good person were as lofty as she believes... All in all, I'm inclined to believe she was under some great delusion.

Anyway, I'll admit partial defeat on this one because you know what? Maybe those commands are psychologically unhealthy. Maybe it's not great to walk around believing you are absolute trash. But then again, the alternative is a kind of will to power whereby the weakest feed the strongest. Morality has to begin with a true and soul-shaking realization that you, whoever you are, have way more in common with Ted Bundy than you might realize. So can you really claim to be a truly good person? Are your actions all that pure and selfless? Or are you good only to the extent that you are friendly to your friends? On that point, atheists are delusional, but christians are hypocrites. I just find it funny, and I gotta write about this at some point, that in a world full of christians, so many of them are almost satanists, at least in the self-centered sense of the world.

2. We can find meaning in our lives without inspiration from the divine.

So you came to the conclusion that God doesn't exist and you actually feel pretty relieved because now you don't gotta go to church, you can eat whatever food you want, you can lust after whoever you want, and so on. In a word, you're just free to do whatever you want. And life is pretty great for a while, but after a few days you think to yourself – Well, I probably shouldn't do this bad thing, but if I'm gonna die anyway, if I'll cease to exist, if my existence won't really matter, if I'm just some guy, then why not do it anyway?... After arriving at that line of thought, some people live according to the will to power mentioned above, but other people, myself included, have a slightly different line of thinking. We think – How can I live my life by focusing on all of these tiny things that surround me when none of them have any real meaning?... It all becomes contingent, we can continue on with our lives and do what we like to do, but we can also die tomorrow and none of it will have mattered. At that point, the problem isn't even that evil exists, it's that senselessness exists, indeed, it's probably the only true absolute within an atheistic worldview. A kid can spend hours watching a spider build a beautiful, intricate web, and then he can just burn it with a magnifying glass. Not a very nice kid but I mean, how different is that from the universe? Why are you so happy with your lifestyle when, on this very day, you may die? And it might not even be because of a real problem, it won't be because you're a bad person, it won't be because you made a mistake, it might just as easily be because of simple random chance.

But you might argue that I'm being very pessimistic. The day we die is only one, it's the other twenty-seven thousand we gotta watch out for. But why though? Where do you get all that meaning? Why are you bothering to build your own little spider web when there's a chance a magnifying glass will soon hover over you and you'll be totally helpless to stop it?... I think this is yet another classic example of atheist psychology. It's very easy to not feel that lack of meaning when you're living in a nice apartment, surrounded by nice things and with a belly full of nice food, but if those luxuries are suddenly lacking, the attempt to regain them becomes a sisyphean struggle. And even if that comfort never leaves you, there's still a strong chance that this lack of meaning will catch up to you. When or if it does, how confident are you that you'll be able to create a set of “objective” values according to which your life should be lived? And how confident are you that, if religion were to cease to exist, everyone else would follow your example? And how confident are you that those “objective” values each individual person invents for him or herself won't be in direct opposition with anyone else's? Yeah, the golden rule... but why though? If the only purpose in my life should be to have a good time, why should I care that other people won't share my sense of humor?

1. Everyone is an atheist with regards to most gods.

Finally, the argument that made me wanna write this article... I was browsing along and happened to stumble upon that famous video of Richard Dawkins being asked by a girl the scary question – What if you're wrong? And then, in an example that supports my thesis that atheism is an all-out attack, Dawkins smashed Pascal's wager instead of offering a more or less honest and charitable answer. Mine would be something like – I just hope God knows my unbelief was as sincere as everyone else's belief... But anyway, Dawkins gave the often-repeated argument that we shouldn't take one particular religion, in this case christianity, to be the default religion, the only option to place besides atheism. If christianity is true, then atheists are in trouble, but so are jews, muslims, hindus, pagans and so on. If islam is true, then atheists are in trouble, but so are jews, christians, hindus, pagans, and so on. You get the idea. But a funny thing about the argument is that, no matter what, atheists are always in trouble. So it's almost like Dawkins' answer had an underlying comfort in the fact that, if he's wrong, then at least he's not alone...

Practically speaking though, why don't I believe this bit any longer? Well, because in this instance, modern atheists seem to have willingly forgotten their incredibly high standard of proof. When talking about very precise points of each particular religion, they need a whole lot of firepower to find even the smallest detail convincing, but on this instance it seems like every single set of beliefs is a legitimate religion, and therefore it's one that could well be true. Well, I don't think the Flying Spaghetti Monster is at all likely to be the one true god, so I don't think it's correct to say I'm an atheist regarding that particular deity... When it comes to the other gods such as Zeus, Osiris, Odin, all the cool ones basically, there are methods of telling whether or not the religion behind them is likely to be true, methods that atheists are very familiar with. The fact that greek mythology reads like an awesome soap opera could have something to do with it, but regardless, and without getting into more than I'm qualified to accurately present, the simple fact is that not all religions are created equally. I just started to find it funny how the standard of proof suddenly drops when the question of atheistic doubt creeps in. Certainly, the best way to go about it is to look at all the religions and, through a process of elimination, decide on the one or ones that are most likely to be true. Afterwards, you'd weigh the arguments and make your decision. The idea of sowing seeds of doubt by bringing up a ton of religions no atheist would ever take seriously seems like an attempt to soothe the atheist's doubts more than anything else. Atheism is all about reason and logic but then, on a switch, anything that calls itself a religion is a religion.

Having said all that, it would be funny if the one true religion turned out to be one that no one practices anymore and we're all doomed to hell.

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And that's about it. I'm not sure what else to say except to rephrase some stuff I previously said... I've just come to find atheism to be quite unfeasible and, though religion is far from perfect, it offers some answers to questions that atheism doesn't even agree to ask. And regarding the people who have no religion but have some faith, they can guide themselves in this world with a kind of spiritual and comforting belief that something akin to a loving god exists, regardless of religion. That's all fine and dandy, but is it true? I don't believe it to be, but I've also come to believe that atheism is wholly unsustainable, and all the implications religious people put forward when considering the undesirable real-life results of atheism are, at least to me, factually true.