The arrogant atheist

Written by in Opinion at September 28, 2011

“Atheists are so arrogant!”

This phrase can frequently be heard on the lips of religious people. What this accusation really boils down to is the fact that atheists, when speaking on various topics, either claim to know something based on evidence, or remain hesitant to make affirmative claims until they have amassed sufficient knowledge or evidence. In other words, atheists don’t just make things up. This should leave one asking themselves, “Well, what’s so arrogant about that?” To which they should immediately realize and answer, “Nothing.” In fact, what religious people call arrogance is really just intellectual honesty driven by curiosity, and placing importance on what is demonstrably true, or at least what can be inferred. Religious people, on the other hand, tend not to be as intellectually rigorous in this sense. They do just make stuff up. Let’s look at an example regarding both an atheist’s and theist’s answer to the question, “What happens when you die?”

The atheist’s response (from WikiAnswers in Atheism):

When you die, your heart ceases to beat, your brain stops functioning, and eventually your body will decay. This happens to all people, regardless of belief.

You, in words, will cease to exist. It is impossible for anyone to grasp this concept entirely because the ‘experience’ itself is an entire lack of experience. The concept of nonexistence can be compared to the lack of existence of a human before being conceived or brought into the world - The universe was here before you were born and will continue when you are gone.

Whatever personal belief you hold will dictate what you think will happen to yourself or others - but what we do know to be fact is that we do not know what happens after death. We may think we know (in the form of theories, practices, beliefs, etc) but we do not really know, since you are alive, and whatever you believe will happen, might only happen after your death. (So, hence, you do not know what will happen until you die.) This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t believe in your faith, or necessarily that your faith is wrong; it only means that we, as flawed beings, cannot be certain as to what awaits us after death.

This response is extremely measured, reasonable, and full of qualifiers. It basically describes what death is in a biological sense (i.e. that your heart stops beating and brain activity halts), followed by a discussion regarding the epistemological difficulties surrounding this topic. One would be hard pressed to find the slightest tinge of arrogance, or any intonation of superiority for that matter, in the atheist response to the question. But let’s now turn to Greg Laurie’s answer, a contributor to The Christian Post, in a recent article.

When a Christian dies, it is a direct flight to heaven; there are no stopovers. The moment we take our last breath on Earth, we take our first breath in heaven. We go into the presence of God. . .

So when we get to heaven, will we have the same bodies? The answer is not exactly. Our resurrection bodies will not be our earthly bodies merely resuscitated, but will be the likeness of the earthly body glorified. God will recover from the dust a body with a definite relationship to one’s earthly body, but transformed to suit our new environment.

Did you notice a difference? Going to heaven after death is assumed! Not only does he start with this unsubstantiated and onerous assumption, but he then goes on in more detail about the precise state of affairs that take place in heaven once you arrive. And what evidence is offered to bolster these claims? Nothing at all, just a bunch of Bible quotes which are, again, merely assumed to be inspired by God.

I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise. (Luke 23:43)

For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die; our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies. (1 Corinthians 15:53)

One definition of the word arrogant is “overbearingly assuming.” I think it would be difficult to find a more overbearing assumption than the existence of heaven and an afterlife, not to mention all the minute details regarding the properties of our “transformed” and “glorified” new bodies after crossing over. As Carl Sagan has so famously said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” And so far, regarding heaven and the afterlife, the evidence garnered for such a realm is nil. So, who’s being arrogant?

 

Discussion

The arrogant atheist « Warm Little Pond

[...] Originally posted on An American Atheist. [...]

Robin Marie

I like the issue of an afterlife to explore this issue. I would say most religious people would skirt around the issue of who has the more reasonable belief, however, and just point to (explicitly or not) how *many* people believe in God/an afterlife. As Piers Morgan recently complained to Penn, there are so many of us who believe!, and you think we’re all delusional?!

Of course, there are so many things wrong with that argument in and of itself; truth has never been a popularity contest, hard core post-modernists aside. But I think it is worth keeping in mind that is where most religious people, whether Christians or deists (and even some agnostics) are coming from — how can you possibly deviate from the norm on a question *none* of us can be sure about? Tackling the false reasoning in this response is pretty important too I’d wager.

Colin Wright

Yes, it seems that many religious people, knowing that nobody (religious or atheist) is really sure about the afterlife, feel that this means that any answer given on this issue is on equal footing. How can anybody be truly wrong when nobody really knows the answer? They have difficulty grasping the concept of the burden of proof regarding positive claims made about the nature of the universe.

In my experience debating religious people, I think I’ve heard the whole “You can’t disprove God!” argument more than any other. *sigh*

Jesus Tube USA

Atheists say, Christians offer no proof of a Creator. And I would agree. However the BIBLE does offer proof - in fact it offers some 3,000 proofs. They are called prophecies.

Can YOU predict 3,000 events hundreds of years before they occur - with 100% accuracy? I cannot. God said HE could - and proved it some 3,000 times.

Christians who were knowledgeable in Bible prophecy KNEW what the outcome of World War II would be. They correctly anticipated the creation of the State of Israel. They expected the Jews to recaprture Jerusalem in 1967 - and for 44 years afterward, they awaited the next prophecy - the Explosion of Knowledge (Realized via the Internet) . . . coupled with Strange Weather Patterns (you call it “Global Warming”) . . . and the Collapse of National Economies around the World (just read a newspaper).

And when George Soros offers a solution to the Economics Crisis (as he did just last week) - of a Universal Governing Body to oversee the economic affairs of nations - none of this comes as a surprise to the Christian. In fact WE have been warning you of this for DECADES - and you laughed at us - just as you laugh now. But, History is on the side of the Bible. Like I said - 100% accuracy.

When the author of a book with that kind of track record says “I AM God - and here is what the afterlife will be like” - I believe Him.

Tom Beasley

1. My first point regarding Bible prophecy does not directly address your claims but is the most important. Even if the Bible accurately predicted events, it gives no credibility to the other aspects of the Bible being reliable sources of information. If a psychic reliably predicted with 100% accuracy and in significant detail a given event, it does not mean that anything that psychic said is true.

2. There are many other texts with equal predictive power to the Bible. Nostradamus or other holy texts as well as a vast selection of alleged prophecies offer the same vagueness in predictive power and yet Christians will be the first ones to try and dismiss those accounts.

3. The prophecies of the Bible are of little predictive power or have other flaws like self-fulfilling prophecy. Christians use the Bible to predict things like economic downfall. This is a cyclical human event. Christians during the Great Depression would say it is a sign of the end-times. Cyclical human behavior is hardly a bona fide prophecy. I can predict, for example, that there will be war in the future. I can predict that there would even be a “devastating war in the next 100 years.” This could fit almost any of the conflicts that will undoubtedly come in the near future. This is not a convincing prophecy.

Secondly on this point, the Jews inheriting Jerusalem is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The ancient texts are tied to and help create the incentive for the desire for the Jews to inherit the holy land. This, again, is hardly predictive and the evidence of the spiritual reasons behind the presence of Jews in the holy lands is extraordinarily obvious given the political climate of the area.

And yet, the Bible never makes a single specific prophecy that is not vague (could be fit to almost anything), self fulfilling, or easily predictive because of intrinsic human behavior (cyclical).

I’m not sure why you think anyone should take these prophecies in the Bible seriously or that for some reason people were unaware of the alleged prophecies.

Lastly, you argue that it is God’s word. You do not have faith in God when you look at the Bible. You place your faith in men. It is men who wrote the “word of God” and it is men who decided what gospels and letters would go into the Bible in the first place. You also put your faith in men that the scribes who recorded the Bible for the thousands of years after it was written did not significantly alter it, add to it, and subtract from it (which they did, by the way, and there is clear evidence of it).

Colin Wright

It is also quite silly to be amazed that a book, written AFTER a book which essentially “set up” prophesies, fulfilled the prophesies of the earlier book. Given the temporal sequence in which the books were written, literally anyone with knowledge regarding what the first book prophesied could write a later book fulfilling said prophesies. It’s called a sequel.

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