David Mathews

Hello Everyone,

I am not suggesting that all atheists are irrational. What I am interested in is whether or not it is possible for "irrational atheism" to exist and for atheists to adopt their nonbelief for irrational, illogical, unreasonable and erroneous reasons.

Does such a thing as irrational atheism exist?

Sincerely,

David Mathews
<a href="http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1" target="_blank">David Mathews' Home Page</a>

Autonemesis

Yes.

Philosoft

I think the average atheist's philosophy will be grounded in a reason, or set of reasons, to which he has given lengthy, deep thought. I consider things like "the Bible is just too fantastic to be true," "there is no evidence for God," "all the bad things in the world mean that an all-good God doesn't exist" to be rational, logical reasons because the conclusion (God doesn't exist) follows from the premises if the premises are true. It doesn't require an exhaustive study of apologetics or Biblical archaeology to make a rational decision. Reasons that I would consider irrational would be something like, "My beer is warm, therefore God doesn't exist," where the conclusion obviously does not follow from the premise. I have a hard time believing any atheist would say such a thing except in jest.

optimist

Of course! Atheism taken on faith is just as irrational as theism taken on the same basis.

However, given the evidence open to most people, it is hard to see how theism can be rationally accepted by many. I am sure there exist people on this earth with restricted access to the evidence regarding this issue, and based on the evidence they have, their belief in God is rational. But, just by being that this forum it overwhelmingly suggests you have the evidence open to you that rationally requires an agnosticism or atheism.

So…my speculation is that any theist that posts here is so irrationally. I would hope most atheists here are so due to rational evaluation of the evidence open to them, but there is surely a few who are atheists for intellectually dishonest (irrational) reasons. E.g. my family is atheist, I am an atheist on faith, I am an atheist because theists are mean to me, I am an atheist...etc.

I once met a Christian girl who told me she was once an atheist because the Christians she knew smoked, cussed, etc. But then she realized all Christians were not hypocrites and she ended up becoming one. I could not believe what I was hearing when she told me that! That girl was a prime example of an irrational atheist.

- Andrew Fyfe
(Atheist if you were wondering)

[ July 20, 2002: Message edited by: optimist ]</p>

joedad

Separating irrational atheists from irrational theists is a dubious dichotomy at best, considering the vast differences within those two respective groups.

So, my question would be, "What particular atheist do you have in mind?"

joe

tronvillain

I will also have to answer "Yes." One type of "irrational atheist" is someone who says that the probability of God existing is zero, without actually producing a logical impossibility for all God concepts.

optimist

On his website (which I just causally browsed) one of the essays explains how secular humanists want there to be no God, and that is why they are atheists. Their atheism is based on hope, which would be a prime example of an irrational atheism if such a person ever existed. However, think about what the essay is stating. Secular Humanists are the ones believing on hope, that they hope life is finite and ending. That there is not a all-loving creator of the universe who will give just punishment to the evil and reward the good.

However, the essay claims the theists are not believing on hope. They believe solely on rational grounds that there is an all-powerful creator who is watching out for them, and who will reward them in an eternal afterlife for their faith.

I think it is obvious who is the one more likely to believe on faith. In fact, I find it hard to believe anyone would hope there not to be a (friendly) God. However, I while I would like to win the lottery, I cannot rationally believe it is likely I will. And while I would like to believe there is a friendly God, I cannot rationally believe there is one. But just like I do not need the lottery to live a happy life, neither do I need a belief in an eternal afterlife to be happy.


tronvillain is very correct too. Many God concepts are not logically inconsistent, and therefore possible. However, to be an atheist only requires one to believe that those possible concepts of God are equal to the possibility of the Easter bunny or invisible fairies that live on everyone's head. Some would call an atheist who even admits the very possibility of a God, an agnostic. But under that criteria, a theist (most) who even admits the possibility that there isn't a God is an agnostic as well. These types of language games are foolish. An atheist is one who "at the least" puts god in the same set as the invisible fairies, and agnostic is one who will not put God in any set, and a theist is one who will "at the least" put God in the set with electrons (something they believe in but do not see).

I look forward to David Mathews' response on all this.

[ July 20, 2002: Message edited by: optimist ]</p>

Philosoft

<strong>Quoth optimist:

Their atheism is based on hope, which would be a prime example of an irrational atheism if such a person ever existed</strong>

I don't see how "atheism... based on hope" is atheism at all. I do not know what "hope that God doesn't exist" is, but I don't think it's belief or non-belief.

<strong>tronvillain is very correct too. Many God concepts are not logically inconsistent, and therefore possible.</strong>

He didn't say that. He said an 'irrational atheist' hasn't produced a proof of logical impossibility. Besides, logical [im]possibility is trivial. Can you give an example of a concepual thing that is logically impossible?

optimist

Philosoft, I would think believing due to hope is very possible. Do you not think a barren woman might come to believe she will have children on hope? Or maybe a dying cancer patient comes to believe in an afterlife on hope? I find it hard to believe someone might come to believe something like "I have cancer" on hope, and equally I find it hard to believe anyone could come to the belief "There is no afterlife providing God" on hope. But it seems at least possible. And it seems very likely that other beliefs are based on hope all the time.

And about tronvillain, he said an "irrational atheist" is one who says God is logically impossible without producing proof that all God concepts are logically impossible. Which is true. But I now realize what tronvillain really meant by this (I think), that "if I cannot prove all God concepts logically impossible, I cannot rationally be an atheist" which is of course false. To not believe that my mother is a killer all I need is good evidence she is not, I do not need logical proof. Evidence need only make it (extremely) likely she is a friendly old woman who happens to believe killing is wrong. The same for God, to not believe there exists some intelligent creature who created the universe all I need is a lack of evidence for such a claim, or evidence against. The idea that God created the universe can no more be believed on no evidence than the claim 10 monkeys did, or 11 monkeys, or 12…on to infinity. There is an infinite number of possible ways the universe could have been created, and we are only warranted to accept one or even spend time thinking about it if some piece of evidence makes it even the slightest bit more probable then the infinite number of other possibilities.

I do not call all God concepts logically impossible, but that is not a requirement for rational disbelief. If so we would be unable to discount the idea that the universe was created by 102 green monkeys (or 102 red monkeys, or purple…) An atheist should not discount all God concepts as logically impossible, but only empirically shown to be highly unlikely (as unlikely as 102 green monkeys).

If you want to argue that I cannot call the idea that "102 monkeys created the universe" false, because it is still a possibility then you have effectively banned "true and false" from discourse. You could never say "it is true I have two hands" or "it is true there is a God" or any such statement. Since true and false are used, and used often in life, it seems the proper definition of true or false does allow their use for statements like "102 monkeys created the universe." If you say otherwise, you are simply changing the meaning of our words.

[ July 20, 2002: Message edited by: optimist ]</p>

Clutch

There are probably a few arational atheists, meaning atheists whose view does not stem from any reasoning process, not even a systematically defective (that is, irrational) one. Someone raised atheist who's never really thought much about it would neither be an atheist on carefully considered and defensible grounds, nor be an atheist as a result of thoroughly fallacious reasoning.

I'm not sure that tron's example would count, moreover. The bar for irrationality is set higher than simply making a mistake, which overlooking the possible polysemy of "God" certainly amounts to. The many very clever mathematicians over the years who thought (due to analogy, pessimistic meta-induction, or whatever) that Fermat's Theorem was spurious were mistaken, indeed they believed something logically false. But they weren't irrational. Irrationality is characterized, in my view, by (i) systematic failures of reasoning and (ii) the "defensive deployment" of fallacies to protect a threatened but cherished belief.

Anyone can make a mistake. We call someone irrational when this mistake is pointed out carefully, clearly, in easily-understood terms, and yet is still believed, perhaps under the smokescreen of a hostile response or a non-sequitur.

There are billions of people around, so irrational everythings probably exist. But by the standards I've sketched, I expect that irrational atheism is very, very rare. By contrast, in my experience, irrational theism is virtually the only kind.