Arguments for Strong Atheism (not the ACA line)

We atheists often launch an attack and run back behind the strongest intellectual bunker in the world- the idea that people claiming that weird stuff is true have the burden of proof. While awaiting that proof, which we don’t believe we’ll ever see, we can kick back behind our walls and say, “You haven’t provided convincing evidence, so I don’t believe it.”

I find the “I’m an atheist because I’m not convinced of your god” completely valid. So does almost every theist in the world. I have known a few people, Buddhist Gurkha Nepalis with little education and eager to join any happy religious celebration, who claimed to believe that every religion is true. I remember stopping a group of them on Easter to ask where they were headed. They told me they were going to a Bhai temple, even though it wasn’t a Bhai holiday. With the exception of this small demographic, very few adherents actually believe that their beliefs are only as true as those of other religions. (Most likely, this demographic (Buddhist Gurkha Nepali) doesn’t really exist either- they were all working as maids for westerners in India and knew that none of their employers would deny them a day off for religious celebrations, so they may have been feigning belief.) Most believers are completely unconvinced (atheist) toward the beliefs of every other god that exists outside their religion. They aren’t just waiting for better evidence- they believe that the god claims of other religions are false and maybe even comical. I consider this Atheist Community of Austin (ACA) definition of atheism to be completely valid and almost universal (even among theists), but notice that even here, when discussing theists, most of them have a “Thor positively doesn’t exist” attitude. I have no issue when the Atheist Community of Austin crowd defines a ‘light’ atheism- I am not yet convinced that there is a god.

At the same time, this stance is complete bullshit. I listen to all the atheist podcasters and come away with the sense that we all believe the same things (We believe that no gods exist), but I really think they express a willingness to accept potential evidence for some god (usually Jesus), that is just stupid. Listen, I’ve gotten emails from supposed Nigerian princes with money in the bank that they just can’t exfiltrate without my help. Do I have evidence that those princes do not exist? No. Do I absolutely believe, with no evidence, the proposition that all Nigerian princes who have ever emailed me do not actually exist as Nigerian princes? Yes, absolutely. I literally believe that these princes don’t exist, despite the fact that they are emailing me, which is far more than any god has ever done. I know that these stories are created by fraudsters, so I believe that they are lies upon hearing them. Stories fit into cultural narratives- they occur at certain times for certain reasons. It is stupid to treat every proposition they cough up as a sterile logical point deserving of serious consideration. I get the emails from these lads and I can safely say, “Such a prince doesn’t exist.” Universal negative, QED. Why? Because statements have histories, and anyone who pretends to examine them in sterile conditions is ignoring the very real human motivations that prompt people to write these lies in the first place. I don’t need to look at a a stone-age religion that gave the fattest cuts of sacrificial meat to the priests who controlled the scripture, and say that I am willing to be convinced that their scripture might be correct if someone could just prove it. FUCK NO, I can look at a bunch of fat rabbi’s eating the best lamb, while preaching that others need to sacrifice it to them, and say that the statements in their scripture are obviously designed to put lamb fat in their bellies. I don’t need to treat their bullshit as any kind of normal claim about the world. They aren’t saying, ‘Rebecca up the road is feeling sick today’ or even ‘The crops might be a little meager this year’. They are making claims about things that have zero bearing with our experience in this world- even more crazy than some rich Nigerian prince who can’t download Venmo. We have zero reason to treat these claims as anything that deserves the same consideration as any non-religious statement that anyone has ever told us during our entire life.

Why shouldn’t we approach religion the same way? The world over, religions are a system that has accorded food, money, property, privilege and power to those who convinced others that it was true. Time and time again, we have seen evidence of chicanery from these priests. I remember seeing a statue in Luxor, Egypt that was hollowed out, so a priest could climb inside and speak a god’s voice to believers- no doubt asking for something. When I hear a new claim that sounds just like the same old bullshit that priests have been trying to peddle for 5,000+ years, why should I accord that the same, withholding-judgement-til-I-read-it, respect as a scientific theory that is just asking me to read a peer-reviewed article? Religious claims, strictly by virtue of their provenance (declaration from a supposed authority; written by cave men; etc.) remove themselves from the logical consideration we give to real ideas. They aren’t even trying to compete with reality. They should get no consideration. Why on earth should I weigh the first, second or third order translation of hallucinogenic ravings of some bronze age dude as equally deserving of logical consideration as a scientific article on vaccines? I shouldn’t. And if any of us really thought that cavemen beliefs deserved this, then we would all be rereading Gilgamesh, the Book of the Dead and every other ancient scripture outside of our own rejected religious tradition, just to see if some of it panned out. They don’t deserve that. Every believer on the planet will acknowledge that (at least with respect to competing religions) religion has been a well of lies since its founding and almost nothing they used to believe still stands. We need to stop this lie that we’re on the cusp of being convinced, with good evidence, that some 2,500 year-old screed on cracking sheepskin might be the truth. Seriously, run this thought experiment- a 2,500 year-old Israelite suddenly materializes in front of you, spouting every belief his people had- about stars being stuck in the sky, the sun stopping, the earth created in 6 days, that it’s OK to beat a slave as long as he doesn’t die for three days, etc. Just imagine how far back you would have to go in history to find a six year-old that you wouldn’t agree with more than this ancient joker. I’m guessing 1700s for my taste- anything prior they’ll still be talking witches. Yeah, so I’m not going to pretend like I have to take their claims seriously enough to say that I don’t merely not accept them, but actually think that they are malevolent bullshit and I believe the gods they posit don’t exist. Let’s not be strictly logical. Let’s allow some history, sociology, psychology to also inform our views. I don’t have to remain merely unconvinced of the truth of a statement when I am thoroughly convinced of the bad motives of the person uttering it. Sure, by denying the need to even entertain this bullshit, I’m risking being wrong when some religious person actually comes up with something true and consequential. But that hasn’t happened yet in human history, and maybe I can just fall back on induction to assume it won’t happen today.

Despite their claims of complete willingness to be convinced of god, none of the ACA podcasters really seem that gullible. Indeed some have even stated that they would reject the evil god of the bible if he did stand before them (I’ll be working in the resistance movement, right alongside you- we might go down, but it’ll be epic.) I would challenge Matt Dillahunty, Eric Murphy and others to shed their light atheism for something more hardcore. They believe that no god exists. The flaw is the idea that we have to admit that we can’t prove that the god doesn’t exist. We don’t have to prove anything. We can clearly prove that the entire history of religion has been a history of abuse, privilege, dishonesty, etc. We have no obligation to take the ideas coming from that tradition seriously. For almost all religions, we can show enough malice, bias, profiteering, stakes in the game, etc. on the part of the people advancing the religious claims that we can just say, “You are full of shit”. We don’t have any obligation to take their claims seriously, as deserving of unbiased, logical consideration. We can safely take them as false, because we can see the mechanisms that led to their creation. I’m not saying this even of the disgusting, anti-human, child-killing, anti-vaxxer movement, which is making claims that might possibly be true and consistent with everything we know about the world. Scientific investigation disproves their lies, but they aren’t making claims about demons, god, fairies, angels or other entities that we’ve never seen. Almost none of them are asking us to give them anything, except our better judgement. But when someone starts making claims about the supernatural, as part of a long tradition of liars working for their own benefit, their claims shouldn’t even be logically considered in the first place. We should just identify the tradition they are following and disavow everything. The ACA light atheist view pretends that some charlatan might actually be right. Let’s add a little induction here. Yeah, the sun has risen every morning since forever. Also, religious charlatans have been presenting bullshit claims in their own self-interest since forever. I’d risk a Pascal’s Wager in whatever the worst hang-up hell Matt D. can think up to keep rejecting every religious claim out of hand, because it’s another claim in a long, long history of bullshit.

Chapter two, of this (next week)- let’s establish some burden of clarity when we hear terms like ‘god’ that have no basis in the actual world that we all live in. Even sillier than atheists pretending that they might be convinced of an outlandish god with good evidence, is the notion that anyone can actually explain, in terms rooted in reality, what god even fucking means. No atheist should ever say that they might be willing to be convinced that a god exists until theists can actually explain to us exactly what a god is. If we give on this, we are ceding them a huge percentage of their bullshit. Seriously, I’m looking at a loaf of bread right now. If they want to claim that it does or doesn’t exist, at least we can be sure that they’re actually talking about a conceivable, definable, thing (never mind that mine is pita). Why do we atheists cede all this clarity to religious types when discussing god?? If you want to claim that god exists, your first burden is describing that thing until I fully understand what you mean by it. And they will never get there. Theists can never reach this point. We really need to just shut them all down at this initial point. I don’t know why this isn’t the second question in every ACA conversation- just because the hosts used to have some (no doubt not fully articulated) concept of god, doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be demanding a definition up front from every theist caller. I say this with MD’s intended (not the callers) audience in mind- if every theist listening were constantly reminded that they can’t even adequately describe this god thing they believe in, perhaps more of them would fall away. Anyway, that’s next week.