The Devil Told You That!

My fellow atheists are such an embarrassment to me. Well, some of them.

I’m not a “relativist”: I very strongly think that Greta Christina is full of shit. I don’t think that one truth is as good as another: I think that her truths are definitely inferior. (On religion, that is: she’s good on some things, like sex education.) What I think is that she’s come up against an argument – maybe that should be in quotes, because it doesn’t amount to much – she doesn’t know how to answer, and so she’s throwing a tantrum over it, calling names like “postmodernist” and “relativist.” That sort of stuff won’t get you into Hell, GC. When I consider that abuse of one’s opponents is a hallowed Christian approach to controversy, it might just get you into Heaven.

She cites the Daylight Atheism blog, who quotes a commenter:

But I have faith in the gospel and what it promises me, just like you have faith in your readings. Your suposed [sic] facts and my suposed [sic] facts, what makes mine so wrong and your so right. Are facts from the bible so different from the facts you read from magazines, books and websites....nope. It all boils down to faith. Until you can tell me that you were there from the beginning up until now, you dont really have facts of your own do you. Neither do I, I dont proclaim to like you do. Faith boys, we all have faith, faith in what is up to you. I think I will stick with the gospel on this one.

on which Daylight Atheist goes on to comment, incoherently:

Although this Christian believer didn't notice, what he was actually advocating was postmodernism and relativism. Just like the strawman academics whom conservatives love to hate, he was effectively proclaiming that there's no objective truth and no way to decide between competing worldviews, so we might as well choose whichever one makes us feel best.

Notice the weasel words in there which undermine DA’s claim: “effectively” proclaiming (not really proclaiming, just effectively) and better still, “the strawman academics whom conservatives love to hate” -- a strawman is a nonexistent position, so DA is saying that no one actually holds the position he’s attributing to the commenter – sounds pretty postmodernist / relativist to me. Besides, aren’t those “conservatives” generally conservative religious believers themselves? Why not let one of them attack the commenter?

Now, I imagine there are people who will claim, while waving vaguely at "postmodernism", that there's no objective truth and so we might as well believe whatever makes us feel best -- just as there are people who claim that the theory of Relativity proved that everything is relative, y'know? (Or atheists who claim that morality is for slaves, and that since there is no god, everything is permitted.) It's difficult to know quite how to deal with such claims, without falling into the No True Scotsman fallacy (those people aren't true postmodernists!). Few would hold Einstein responsible for those who claim that he proved "everything is relative", though maybe they should. But I have read enough postmodernist writing that I think I can say that DA is right: this is a strawman position. The academic postmodernists who have been attacked from left and right alike for supposedly undermining Western Civilization and the Enlightenment do not claim that one opinion or position is just as true as another.

And in fact, there’s nothing “postmodern” about what the commenter wrote. Theist apologists have been saying the same thing for many years. Back when he was still an atheist, Antony Flew wrote in God: a Critical Enquiry [1984, but except for a new preface it’s just a repackaging of his 1966 God and Philosophy]:

People with pretensions either to deep wisdom or to worldly sophistication will tell us that everyone knows that you cannot either prove or disprove the existence of God, and the fundamentals of any religion belong to the province of faith rather than of reason. They could not be more wrong. ..

The claim about the different provinces of faith and reason is presumably to be construed as implying that it is either impossible or unnecessary to offer any sort of good reasons …. If this is the correct interpretation – and unless it is, the claim would seem to lack point – then it must be regarded how enormously damaging to faith this contention is, and how extremely insulting to all persons of faith. For it makes any and every such commitment equally arbitrary and equally frivolous. They are all made, it is being suggested, for no good reason at all; and every one is as utterly unreasonable as every other. [ix-x]

Flew commenced his assault on theism by quoting the theologian Karl Barth’s dictum, “Belief cannot argue with unbelief: it can only preach to it!” Barth was no postmodernist or relativist either. If you haven’t read Flew’s God and Philosophy in any of its variant editions or titles, you should, if only to see how he answered Barth.

In my own response to Christianity, I took a rather different tack than many recent atheists. Christians argued about the “facts” of their cult (the word “faith” has become too debased to be applied there), just as DA’s commenter does. “Are facts from the bible so different from the facts you read from magazines, books and websites....nope.” The commenter has just let slip that he, like C. S. Lewis (who was no postmodernist or relativist either) believes that Christianity has “facts,” maybe even “objective” ones, as good as those DA reads from magazines, books, and websites. (I think that’s true, in fact, and I suspect it’s why DA and Greta Christina are so annoyed about it.) I spent a few years looking at those “facts”, and emerged from the experience with my atheistic “faith” renewed and strengthened. Except that’s not quite true either: what I established to my satisfaction was that Christianity is not true; that does not, in itself, prove that atheism is true.

Of course, it took a little more work than just stamping my foot and screaming, “The Devil told you that!” Which is what lobbing epithets like “postmodernist” and “relativist” amounts to. But it was also more interesting and more fun.

Now let me take apart the commenter’s argument, such as it is:

But I have faith in the gospel and what it promises me, just like you have faith in your readings.

It’s not whether I have faith in my readings, it’s whether I have faith in yours.

Your suposed [sic] facts and my suposed [sic] facts, what makes mine so wrong and your so right.

So you agree that your facts are just “supposed”, not real facts? Thanks. My “facts,” however, come from looking at your “facts.” I’ve studied the Bible. It’s false. That doesn’t tell me that any other religion is true, but Christianity is false.

Are facts from the bible so different from the facts you read from magazines, books and websites....nope. It all boils down to faith.

No, it doesn’t. I’m not relying on my “magazines and books” when I talk about Christianity; I’m relying on the Bible and what Christians say about it.

Until you can tell me that you were there from the beginning up until now, you dont really have facts of your own do you. Neither do I, I dont proclaim to like you do.

You don’t, eh? What are you doing posting comments on Daylight Atheism, then, if not to proclaim your “faith”? Not to argue with disbelief, that’s for sure, but to preach to it.

Faith boys, we all have faith, faith in what is up to you. I think I will stick with the gospel on this one.

That’s fine. (Which “gospel,” though? Christians have been at each other’s throats, often literally, for two millennia, over which gospel is the true one.) As long as you don’t try to impose your gospel on anyone else, we shouldn’t have any trouble.

As I said, it' s not much of an argument, but it is an argument. The commenter is making a case that Christian faith ("the gospel") is as valid as atheist "faith." He even believes enough in logic and reason to use them to make his case. Calling him "postmodernist" isn't a response -- it even concedes the debate. (I can't refute you, so I'll just call you names.) Granted, his stance is infuriating to missionary atheists who believe that every knee must bend and every head bow to them, but one of the risks of reasoned argument is that you can't force your opponent to change his or her mind.

It would be interesting to press this commenter on the divisions among Christians, or among world religions generally. (I’d also have to acknowledge the differences among atheists.) He really has no argument here, and we end up with “each to his own taste,” or at least gospel. So I’d want to press him on whether he really regards ‘sticking with the gospel’ so whimsically, as if it made no more difference than preferring chocolate to vanilla. It seems that he’s falling back on a position rather like Pascal’s wager, which as Flew also pointed out many years ago, isn’t very helpful. What if it turns out that the universe is really run by the gods of ancient Egypt, and they send Christians to Hell? What if Yahweh is boss, but he doesn’t like people who bet on his existence? I sometimes tell people like this commenter cheerfully that I’ll see them in Hell, since their position will (on Christian presuppositions) very likely land them there along with me, with Greta Christina and Daylight Atheist watching our torment from Heaven.