Atheism Basics: Why Do Atheists Debate Theists?
Saturday May 17, 2008
There is a common perception that there must be “something more” to atheism than simply disbelief in gods because of the fact that atheists are so often engaged in debates with theists. After all, what’s the point of debating if not to convert someone to some other philosophy or religion?
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“Why Do Atheists Debate Theists?”
Because as long as the other person is intelligent, it’s fun.
Well, Maybe because atheists are not convinced that faith that something is true regardless of evidence or the lack of it, is the best determinant of truth?
Theists appear to consider evidence in a very subjective light. I am not convinced that their test (if one exists), for veracity is unflawed.
When it comes down to it, I think their test for truth is faith. As mentioned in Hebrews 11:1.
“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1)
So faith becomes evidence of things not seen, but hoped for. (In other words, -Preserve your faith and faith becomes the evidence that what you believe is true, is true.)
While everything that Austin says is reasonable, it seems that we are still dancing around the larger problem by trying to inject the seeds of skepticism rather than to address the errant beliefs directly. It’s like saying, because of the expected strong emotional response to an attack on someone’s faith, we must simply not attack at all if we hope to get anywhere. This is a result of social programming.
In most cases, when someone’s views on something are challenged, like their choice for the next election for example, defending that point of view reasonably comes easy. Religion, on the other hand, has a special status. People are uncomfortable with confronting their views because they (most people) realize they are nonsensical, at some level.
Austin describes confronting the views directly as “kicking away a crutch,” but I need not point out that if enough people became avowed atheists, this crutch would fall away on its own. If the social penalty for being an atheist were eliminated, and most people were publicly and vocally atheist, the opposite situation could conceivably obtain.
As to the purpose of debating theists, Austin didn’t mention one very important thing: the atheists’ moral obligation to do so. If I believe that some religion is ultimately the cause of human pain and suffering in the world, then I am partly at fault for not confronting the religious about their beliefs.
If a person lacks basic critical thinking skills, then going after the errant beliefs directly won’t accomplish much. It that we should be worried about getting a “strong emotional response to an attack” on faith, but rather we should be worried about telling a person they’ve failed at a task they don’t know how to perform, but think that they perform wonderfully.
The problem at issue is known as being Unskilled and Unaware. The worse a person is at certain kinds of tasks, the better they think they do at them. The reason is that being unskilled at such a task means that a person lacks the metacognitive aability to rate their own (or anyone else’s) performance. They can’t tell that they are doing it poorly or that you are doing it better.
If a person is unskilled at critical thinking — and in America that’s a good bet, given the near non-existence of efforts to teach skepticism, logic, and critical thinking in most schools — then getting a someone to think more critically about emotionally powerful issues in which they have a great deal invested will inevitably require significant amounts of education about the very basics of critical thinking skills, like identifying common logical fallacies.
Unless and until such tasks are completed, addressing errant beliefs directly will accomplish little to nothing, except perhaps create frustration on all sides. You’ll be telling them they are wrong and their arguments in defense of their position are flawed, but they’ll assume that they are quite good with logical arguments and so will not recognize any fallacies or errors. They also won’t recognize an absence of such fallacies in your own presentation.
I disagree. I think that most people think they can defend their choice reasonably, but people’s choices tend to have far more to do with emotions and prejudice which are then rationalized via post hoc arguments which appear to be reasonable. Exactly how many people do you know who decided to start with a objective, neutral perspective, went through all the policy issues, and came to a completely sober and rational conclusion to vote for Bush over Kerry or vice-versa? In contrast, how much anger did you notice during the previous election, and how many personal attacks were made in every direction?
The connection between religious belief on a large scale and lack of critical thinking abilities is a very interesting epistemological question.
It presupposes that there is some truth to be known, or better stated, that there is a certain set of empirical data which we all have in common. The atheist position is simply to acknowledge the existence of that set of data. It also implies that there are various competing explanations for that data, none of which are logically coherent, but which have appeal to people for a variety of reasons.
The argument for “planting the seeds of skepticism” says that the acceptance of these incoherent explanations is closely linked to a lack of ability in critical thinking, or, ability to evaluate a nonsensical claim and rule it out. This certainly makes sense. If an area is prone to earthquakes, we can improve safety and survivability by training people on what to do in the event of an earthquake. Similarly, if a group of people is willing to believe falsehoods because they are unable to identify them as such, then perhaps training could change that.
It seems that there is an alternative explanation, though. My desire for an another explanation is driven by the failure of the above logic when applied to very smart people, who have demonstrated the ability to think critically in other contexts, and who are still theists.
If the explanations provided by religion are obviously false, then critical thinking is not really necessary to identify them as such. For example, one need not use critical thinking to realize that the cup did not just materialize in front of me out of thin air. I would argue that the explanations provided by religion fall into this category.
If that is true, their acceptance is due to something else, like peace of mind or group solidarity. The best course of action in this case is to provide those things via some other avenue.
I think the most notable matter about atheist-theist debates is that Doug Jesseph was called the most impressive atheist debater to date by a very prominent person at Infidels.org (Jeffrey Jay Lowder) but Jesseph made a claim in his debate that contradicted one of the most recognized experts in the field of the origin of life (Stanley Miller). The idea that we have a detailed or detailed explanations of the origin of life is preposterous. For details see: http://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism
I never claimed that such a connection exists. What I said is that if a person lacks basic critical thinking skills, then simply denying the truth of their position is pointless. Even if you could somehow manage to get them to change your mind, you’d have switched the person from an uncritical, gullible theist to an uncritical, gullible atheist. That’s no improvement whatsoever.
Just because a person has acquired some skills in critical thinking doesn’t mean that they recognize the need to apply those skills consistently across multiple fields.
This might be true if people weren’t prone to magical thinking, gullibility, etc.
The truth of this is hardly mutually exclusive from what I have said. On the contrary, the psychological and social functions which religion serves is an important reason why people fail to realize that they aren’t thinking critically about them — just as they often don’t with respect to issues like their own politics and cultural norms.
Did anyone say that we did?
Austine Cline,
As I am sure you are probably aware, Jeffery Jay Lowder is a cofounder and past President of Internet Infidels, Inc. which is one of the principle websites for atheists, agnostics and skeptics on the internet. In October of 1997, atheist Jeffrey Jay Lowder stated that he believed that “the most impressive debater to date” was Doug Jesseph. Yet Doug Jesseph claimed in a debate with William Lane Craig in 1996 that the origin of life had a detailed atheistic explanation(s). In 1996, John Horgan wrote the following regarding what the highly respected origin of life researcher Stanley Miller believed to the case regarding naturalistic explanations of the origin of life: “Miller seemed unimpressed with any of the current proposals on the origin of life, referring to them as “nonsense” or “paper chemistry.”” In addition, in 1996, John Horgan wrote the following in Scientific American: “The origin of life is a science writer’s dream. It abounds with exotic scientists and exotic theories, which are never entirely abandoned or accepted, but merely go in and out of fashion.” Please see: http://www.conservapedia.com/Jeffery_Jay_Lowder
Now that in mind, you, Austine Cline quoted me as saying:
“The idea that we have a detailed or detailed explanations of the origin of life is preposterous.”
You, Austin Cline then wrote:
“Did anyone say that we did?”
Mr. Cline, I found your use of the “we” rather disingenuous. Granted, this website did not claim there were detailed explanations of the origin of life, however, with that being granted, certainly having one of the top 3 atheist websites (Infidels.org ) never even acknowledged that Mr. Jesseph made a foolish and errant claim is rather serious. Now the people at Infidels.org certainly know about the Conservapedia article on atheism as it is only of the most popular searches for atheism on the two major search engines Google and Yahoo. Plus the leaders of Infidels.org were emailed regarding the Conservapedia atheism article.
Now with that in mind, are you willing to contact Infidels.org and make efforts for Infidels.org to set the record straight regarding this matter by having Mr. Lowder retract the statement the Doug Jesseph was the most impressive atheist debater to date at the time he wrote that article or make a statement that one the most impressive atheist debaters in the 20th Century made a serious error due to a lack of scholarship? In other words, Mr. Cline are you a part of the problem or a part of the solution in regards to this matter?
Being an impressive debater does not mean that one is immune from making erroneous statements. On the contrary, a good debater is one who can convince people to believe something regardless of whether it is true or not or whether they believe it or not. Complimenting someone on their debating skills thus does not mean that you think that everything they have said in every debate is true.
Curious, since I was simply using the same pronoun as you.
Only if you assume that they have a responsibility to point out every foolish and errant claim made by every religious theist, or at least every apologist and debater. That, however, would require far too much time and effort. I don’t try to myself and would never expect others to try. Unless you can muster some reason to think that they should, this isn’t a objection worth taking seriously. It doesn’t even rise to the level of nit-picking.
Conservapedia’s statements on atheism are rife with errors and can’t be regarded as an authoritative source on anything but conservative religious believers favorite myths and misconceptions about atheism. So, frankly, the fact that some idea or claim appear on Conservapedia in connection to atheism really doesn’t need to matter much to atheists.
On a related note, it appears that you are just repeating some of the same text that appears on Conservapedia — but without noting it as the source. If you are not the original author, you must cite the original source for your words; if you are the original author, you need to say so. Continued copying and pasting from other sites without making that clear will cause all of your posts to be deleted.
Is it just coincidence that the Conservapedia page in question was edited just minutes before your post appeared here? Very curious indeed.
The only problem here is yours, namely your failure to recognize that complimenting someone on their debating skills doesn’t imply anything about, much less agreement with, any specific statements that they have made. Since I have pointed out this error of yours, hopefully this makes me part of the solution.
Oh, another issue where I might be able to be part of the solution is the spelling of my name: I think that every time you have tried, you’ve misspelled it.
Mr. Cline,
I went to the Stalin link you suggested and what I found was a rather dead file at Conservapedia which had no information on Stalin. I would suggest that if you have to resort to citing rather dead files at Conservapedia you are grasping at straws. However, I certainly would grant you that if the Stalin remark that you claim was made at Conservapedia then that statement was certainly in error. However, one error in a Stalin article which may or may have not been committed certainly is not a rigorous set of data to make your much broader claim that the material at Conservapedia on atheism is rife with errors. I suggest you take some courses in statistics and logic so you do make arguments based on one data point in regards to Conservapedia’s atheism articles.
Now here is what I suggest. If you do have a legitimate claim in regards to Conservapedia’s information on atheism being rife with errors certainly you should want the world to know about this given that their main article on Conservapedia is so highly ranked by Google and Yahoo and is about to mentioned in a news article which will be read by a great deal of people. However, I think your claim is specious and I believe you know this. Therefore, I do not believe you will attempt to tackle Conservapedia’s information on atheism in a major way in one of your articles. At best, you will nibble at Conservapedia’s trousers regarding its material on atheism and comment on Stalin articles or other articles relating to atheism while assiduously avoiding attempting to tackle Conservapedia’s main atheism article or even citing it. Personally, I think this tactic would be rather lame and would further confirm the intellectual poverty of the atheism position.
The Atheism article at conservapedia is the worst I have ever seen. The whole article is devoted to saying why atheists are wrong- and all they have are strawmen and lies!
Where to begin. Well, the first line is a lie. Atheism isn’t a denial of God- it is a lack of belief. Then they declare that they will go onto the effects on society at large. Fallacy of results. Why people adopt atheism, historical events important to the cause…
In short the entire article is crap. You know what a real article would look like? Wikipedias!
As a good example of how bad the article is, they use bible quotes to prove their points! It is like using the little red book to prove communism is true!
I guess someone deleted it. That’s some progress.
Google ranking is not indication of accuracy. Otherwise, you would be a bigger supporter of Wikipedia, wouldn’t you? In point of fact, I do rebut the common myths which appear on Conservapedia and from other religious sources. I simply don’t consider Conservapedia important enough to single out on a regular basis. There is nothing new or original there, nor do I see apologists citing it as an authoritative source for their own repetition of common myths and misconceptions. So, why should I bother?
I find your shilling for Conservapedia to be quite interesting, though. You have nothing personal invested with people taking it seriously, do you?
That would be a logical fallacy, and suggestive of a poverty of logic in your own thinking. Even if we were to assume that Conservapedia is worth taking seriously, and even if we were to assume that it’s page on atheism happened to summarize the best and most serious explanation of and engagement with atheism, my not tackling it directly would say nothing at all about either atheism generally or even my own atheism in particular.
Mr. Kline,
In light of your last post I suggest you read and reread the following article by Dr. Leo Hobson entitled Atheism is Cowardly and Pretentious which is located here: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/theo_hobson/2007/06/atheism_is_pretentious_and_cow.html
I’ve already read and written about it. You’d have known that if you had checked, just like you’d know the full definition of “phobia” if you checked and you’d know how to spell my name if you checked.
I think I detect a pattern there.
Another pattern is you continual failure to support any of your assertions. You had more than one opportunity ‘in light of” my last comment, but the only way you could address the irrelevance of and errors in Conservapedia’s claims about atheism is to provide a link to an irrelevant writer who can’t write anything about atheism without repeating a variety of myths and misconceptions. How curious.
Mr. Cline,
My apologies for misspelling your name one of the times I wrote it. As I stated earlier, I am certainly a believe in lifelong learning and I will also add I believe in admitting and correcting one’s mistakes.
With the aforementioned being said, I do not believe your rather murky posts regarding the “phobia issue” provided sufficient clarity. I therefore concluded that you were merely picking a fight where no fight was warranted.
Lastly, I stand by my previous comment regarding your inability to address the material in Conservapedia’s main atheism article which is located here: http://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism
You misspelled it multiple times, even after I brought it to your attention.
There is nothing “murky” about being told that “phobia” means more than just “fear.” Someone who believes in life-long learning would take steps to learn more about what “phobia” really means. A person who is loathe to give up a clever-sounding talking point won’t and will instead try to find excuses for not being better informed.
You are of course free to stand by any assertion you wish, but as with all your other assertions you haven’t even tried to support it. On the contrary, the first time you brought it up you did so with a glaring logical fallacy. Standing by assertions made on the basis of fallacies is no way to make the case that one’s favored source on atheism is worth paying any serious attention to — especially if you bear a major responsibility for the material there.
Having some small experience debating theists, I can say that I have always been approached at atheist venues by theists. I have not sought out debate by going to Christian lists or forums to challenge anyone’s beliefs.
I have one atheist friend who holds out hope that he can reason a theist out of their belief, but even he doesn’t go looking. He was approached more than a year ago by a theist family member and continues a correspondence with the hope of deconverting this person. I expressed my doubt about his potential success the moment he explained to me what he wanted to attempt. I told him that any belief system that allows the caveat that even if it contradicts outright, it’s still fine, since “I’ll just hold on, have faith, and god will explain it all after I’m dead.” Even faced with a direct hit, the theist can absorb it and keep on in his/her faith, unscathed. And I’m unaware of any magic bullet that can pierce that amour from the outside in.
I do, however, believe that if a person desires truth over faith, there is potential for influence; but even then, my advice is to answer when asked, and not promote. But that’s just me.
Now, one thing that does concern me are prejudices and misconceptions about atheism, since those things can lead to real trouble for individual atheists who likely just want to go about his/her life. If a politician feels it’s OK to say ugly things about me, without ever having met me, and despite the good things I try to do for the community, then I have a vested interest in speaking up to educate as many people as possible; and theists are simply more prone to harbor unfounded prejudices since holy books often deal out some harsh hatred toward those without faith. Infidels often get the short end of the stick, and I just want to have as much chance to live a nice life as anyone else. If that means I have to speak up for myself now and again, I’ll do it–but not to make someone else become an atheist, so much as to get someone else to please stop trying to force-feed their religion onto the population (generally using the government as a spoon).
I have met a few atheists who have asked me “Where can an atheist go to argue with Xians?” To those people I always explain to them what I consider to be the futility of their plan. I ask them to examine their goals and motives deeply and honestly. And I warn them that a great chunk of their time/life is about to be thrown down the crappy in a weeks’ or months’ long discussion that will end in: “I’ll pray for you.”
That’s just been my experience with “why atheists debate theists,” in a nutshell.