Mark Carlton: Atheism is the Worst Sin Possible
In the past I have often made the same point more broadly by saying, “Unbelief is not an evidentiary problem, but a moral one. There is plenty of evidence for believing if you want to believe.”
I don't agree that disbelief in Mark Carlton's god is a moral problem, but I would agree that there are moral aspects to what one believes. That, however, is based on the process rather than the conclusion. If a person disbelieves in gods because they were told to, this disbelief is ethically problematic due to how they arrived at their position. It's the process itself which has an ethical component because beliefs affect how we behave and how we treat others. A belief which is isolated from all other beliefs and behavior would have no ethical component, but that isn't realistic.
This is also why what one wants should be irrelevant. Reality is not dependent on what I desire, so belief about reality cannot be reliably formed while taking those desires into account. Unfortunately, Mark Carlton seems to place great stock in such desires and quotes a couple of atheists who appear to not want gods to exist — as if that were relevant to and/or representative of atheists generally:
Now you may disagree with both of our statements – if you are an atheist or an unbeliever I have no doubt that you do — but from time to time there have been a few unbelievers honest enough to admit it.
Mark Carlton offers no reason to think that the quotes are meaningful about anyone but those who wrote the words; he certainly offers no reason to think that the sentiments might be representative of any other atheists or atheists generally. He also offers no reason to think that the quotes are more "honest" than any other statements made by atheists about themselves and their atheism.
Then again, this may simply be what Mark Carlton wants to believe about atheists. He does, remember, seem to think that what one wants to believe is relevant. It might be worth mentioning at this point that his blog is called "Honest Debate" and this is presumably representative of what he considers an "honest debate" to be — cherry pick a quote from one person and pretend that it is representative of everyone in the same group.
That would be like picking a quote from Osama bin Laden and pretending that it is representative of all Muslims, but he was just honest enough to admit it. Or I could pick a quote from Fred Phelps and pretend that it's representative of all Christians but Phelps was just honest enough to admit it. That would be an "honest debate," right? An "honest debate" doesn't require believing what people say about themselves; instead, I can just believe whatever suits my preconceptions about them so long as I can find some flimsy bit of evidence to hang it on.
Speaking for myself, I would say that incorporating such desires into the formation of such beliefs is unethical. An atheist incorporating a desire that no gods exist into their conclusion about atheism is just as unethical as a theist basing their belief about atheists generally on what they want to think is true about atheists.
...as far as the Bible is concerned the greatest sin a person can commit must surely be the sin unbelief. The Bible assures us, for example, that it is the only sin for which there is no forgiveness. The Bible also warns us that it is the only sin for which men and women will ultimately be damned(John 3:18).
So from a Biblical standpoint, it is worse than murder, adultery, stealing, perjury or covetousness. From a Biblical perspective; the hubris that refuses to even acknowledge God is the greatest of act of immorality a human being is capable of committing. What’s more, the motives men and women have for this is particular sin are worse than those who would motivate them to murder, because they ultimately have at their heat deicide and a desire to take for themselves the place of God.
Mark Carlton's position here is fairly orthodox, though the identity of the "unforgivable sin" has been sharply debated and I'm not aware of anyone seriously arguing that mere atheism is it. Indeed, I wonder if Carlton really believes this himself because it would render any effort to argue with or evangelize to atheists pointless. If our sin is unforgivable, nothing we do will keep us out of hell — not even sincere conversion. What's the point of an "honest" debate if one honestly believes that people who disagree with you cannot be saved?
Regardless, atheists might want to thank Mark Carlton for helping lay bare a serious problem at the heart of Christianity: it places orthodoxy ("right belief") above any orthopraxy ("right action"). What matters most is that one believes whatever one has been ordered to believe. Why one is supposed to believe it does not matter. How one manages to believe does not matter. How one gets others to believe does not matter. If the belief formation process is rational and reasonable or incoherent and stupid is irrelevant.
What one does and how one behaves is also relatively unimportant. Are you a child molester? That's bad, but it's better than being an atheist. Have you swindled millions from hard-working people who are now in serious financial trouble? Shame on you, but at least you aren't an atheist. Have you helped make possible an unjust war of aggression that has killed or maimed millions? That's pretty naughty, but at least you have fallen into atheism. Do you promote misunderstandings and hatred of or bigotry towards people simply because they don't believe the same as you? Well, that's way better than atheism.
Comments
I am flattered that you would cite me, though I don’t think you completely understood or fairly represented my points. For example, I do not place right belief in contrast to right action, both are important, but right action, in the sense of action that is acceptable to God flows out of right belief. But your post is interesting.
P.S. I removed several old articles from the blog this morning, including the one you have linked, because they were not be visited. Your article may inspire a new interest in an old article. I will repost it later today.
The fatal flaw in Carlton’s argument is “The Bible Says”. He is basing his argument on the false assumption that the bible is an unquestioned authority. One might as well quote “The Wizard of Oz” or “Red Riding Hood” as an unquestioned authority.
I challenge any believer to follow every rule and law in Leviticus, just as an example. Just one of many such examples in this “so called” authoritative “Holy” book.
By the way, Mr. Carlton I have read all of the old and new testament, and they just corroborate my atheism. This is the 21st century, not the dark ages; at least, I hope not!
Thanks for reposting the article. I was running a little low on toilet paper this morning. I will print your article and give it the respect it deserves.
>The Bible also warns us that it is the only sin for which men and women will ultimately be damned(John 3:18).
>So from a Biblical standpoint, it is worse than murder, adultery, stealing, perjury or covetousness.
This alone is enough for anyone to understand the inherent immorality of the doctrine. It’s more important to an uber-being–that is supposedly infinitely above a human in every capacity–what a human’s opinion is of its existence than whether that human murders, lies, cheats, steals, molests children, tortures animals, commits genocide, or anything else a human might do to abuse or inflict harm or pain upon others. The idea that people can be made to accept this as “good” or “right” should frighten anyone with any sense. The level of harm I inflict–even maliciously–is less important than whether or not I believe in invisible supermen.
>There is plenty of evidence for believing if you want to believe…
Then all that talk in the Bible about “faith” is meaningless.
And I should also point out that there is plenty of evidence for believing in Big Foot, alien abduction, and any conspiracy theory or woo-woo claim ever put forward, if I “want” to believe. If a person wants to believe a thing, they will simply employ Morton’s Demon to make it so.
To ensure the most unbiased outlook possible one must not “want” to believe things, one must instead “want” only to believe those things that are true or most likely to be true. If I don’t “want” or “not want” to believe things, I have the best chance of fairly evaluating the data and coming to the best supported conclusion possible. “Wanting” to believe creates a bias before I even start. And bias and truth are poor bedfellows. If I’m going to review data _in order to try to support_ what I “want” to believe, why even review the data? Why not just ignore the data outright and believe what I “want”?
Atheism isn’t about wanting or not wanting to believe anything. It’s a conclusion, and it, therefore, does not imply any preconceived filter is required before the data is even considered. That doesn’t mean an atheist is immune from bias–but there is no compulsion to “want” to believe there is no god or there is a god BEFORE considering the data.
Also, if Christians were interested in making sure the Bible was reliable, passages like John 7:53-8:11 would have been purged the moment they were identified as errors (that’s a kind label for “forgeries”). The fact that such a thing can be identified and still _retained_ more than shows the level of trustworthiness of the group’s claims about the reliability of the books.
At what point, when faced with that sort of problem, do I finally get honest and admit it’s an hack-job of an anthology? I remember when I first began to learn about how the books were compiled and how they were selected/rejected (and revised) by church leaders (not apostles or Jesus or god); I felt it was my duty to alert my church. I thought they’d want to know. I thought they needed to know. Here I was, still a believer–and still naive enough to think anyone at my church cared an ounce about “truth.” I thought the “truth” mattered to everyone in the congregation–since they talked so much about how important “truth” was. What I found, however, was that if the “truth” didn’t align with the promoted doctrine–then it was a truth that just needed to be swept under the rug. Truth doesn’t matter in Christianity. Doctrine matters. If truth comes up against doctrine, doctrine wins every time except in very rare instances. Just consider how long it took for the church to finally admit the Earth wasn’t the center of the universe or that it revolved around the sun. FINALLY, after they had time to re-interpret the scripture to make it fit the facts, they stopped banishing and killing scientists for telling the “truth” that they didn’t like. Luckily they can no longer kill people for telling the truth–but I see that church attitudes haven’t changed much at all.
This argument also incorporates the old “atheists actually know a god exists” flaw, but extends it to where atheists want to kill God. It has to do this in order to justify making it the “worst sin”.
Mark, if the problem is really the behavior that flows out of the belief, why the focus on the belief? Are you really suggesting atheism leads to child molestation? If “deicide” is the aim of atheists, wouldn’t it be a lot easier to accomplish if a deity actually existed? Wouldn’t a Pullmanesque “Authority” be a better belief (frankly, though Pullman may be an atheist, I have a hard time understanding how people consider the Golden Compass atheistic, since it starts with a premise of a deity and never loses it. Unless it’s because it’s an obvious fantasy, but then the Chronicles of Narnia would be just as “atheistic”.)?
“There is plenty of evidence for believing if you want to believe.”
There is plenty of evidence for believing if you have already drunk the Kool-Aid.
“…the greatest sin a person can commit is the sin of unbelief.”
We’re number 1! We’re number 1!
Reading commentary such as what’s in this article breaks my heart. As an athiest, I’m certainly no stranger to this kind of willfull/blind ignorance, I’ve grown some pretty thick skin to it. However, I don’t think my skin will ever get thick enough to ignore the tragedy in that sort of mindset. It’s why I can’t discuss my beliefs with my friends…my loved ones…or my co-workers. Most of them believe that nonsense and would sooner see me out of their lives then reconsider such a hideous notion. Truly sad indeed….
I, on the other hand, am very forward with my atheism to family, friends, and co-workers. I guess I’m fortunate enough to have grown up in a very open family (they claim to be Christian, but the way they describe their beliefs sounds more like Deism), chose the right people to associate with (youth apathy is awesome!), and an work with a diverse and accepting bunch (Jewish country club that has clam bakes and ham on the menu, and I remember one of the members of the board referring to orthodox Jews as a cult).
Mark Carlton said:
In terms of belief in a god, however, said belief does not imply right action. History is filled with wrong or bad actions taken by people as a direct result of their belief in a god, even the Christian god.
One could argue that people had a wrong belief in god which caused their wrong action, but then that would be fallacious since there is no way to delineate who has a correct god belief, if any, much less that there is a god to have a right belief in. In short, claiming that right action flows from right theistic belief is like claiming that 2+2=4 only because one secretly placed a +0 in the equation.
The greatest sin is to look at the world through predetermined, manmade lenses and then judge those who do not subscribe to authortative, bigoted, uneducated, ignorant, and dangerous worldviews that demand obedience by way of fearmongering and hate.
Shame on you and all other believers for feigning to know that God exists, let alone what He wants from us.
Atheism is not a sin or a weakness. It is a strength which wards off all the con artists and suckers.
If disbelief is “the only sin for which men and women will ultimately be damned” then it seems to me that Jesus’s sacrificial death to be found lacking, since his death doesn’t negate the one sin that actually counts. What kind of savior is that? “The little things I can handle, but the important things, uh, sorry, too difficult for me.” Methinks there’s a serious flaw in the logic here. Oh, yah, I forgot. This is ‘Christian logic’ and based on things magical, invisible, and supernatural.
Just a quick bit of info (NIV consulted throughout): John 3:18 refers not particularly to belief in God, but to belief in Jesus-as-redeeming-son-of-God. Thus, were it to be taken strictly as it stands, it would doom Jews, Muslims, and probably even certain “liberal” Christians as readily as it would atheists or agnostics.
The unpardonable sin is referred to in Matthew 12:24-32, wherein Jesus is reportedly angered by an assertion by the much maligned Pharisees that he, Jesus, had cast out demons not by the power of God/the Holy Spirit, but by the power of Beelzebub, equated in verse 26 to none other than Satan himself.
So, the proximate cause of Jesus’ rather stern admonition regarding a sin which wouldn’t be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come, was the misattribution of a miracle’s provenance; that is, from the Holy Spirit to the Prince of Darkness.
Verse 32 goes on to enlarge the potential offense from the quite specific action of asserting that the works of the Holy Spirit were actually wrought by the devil to, apparently, speaking any word at all against the Holy Spirit.
The point here is that none of this specifically addresses the question of unbelief in God, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit, much less its place in the supposed hierarchy of sin (always subject to at least a bit of personal whimsy, I’d guess). So, although the faithful may conceivably argue that simple unbelief in the Holy Spirit should be construed as “speaking against” that spirit (what if I un-believe mutely then?), and can thereby be cast as a way, among many, to commit the unpardonable sin, it must also be conceded that atheism per se is not being explicitly addressed, either here or in John 3:18.
P.S. For those who may be unfamiliar with the terminology, the “NIV” to which I refer at the start of my comments is a modern translation of the Bible, a/k/a the “New International Version.” It’s a bit easier on 21st century eyes than the KJV, or King James Version, by format if not necessarily by content.
The Bible assures us, for example, that [unbelief] is the only sin for which there is no forgiveness.
Given that everyone, by definition, is born without belief in any gods, no one can ever be forgiven. I guess that puts all humans in the same hand basket.
If God thinks the greatest sin is to not believe, I have to wonder about his (/her/no sex in particular) self esteem.
If I am the biggest threat because I find the gross misrepresentation of God, spirituality and most definitely religion abhorrent and despicable, then there is something horribly wrong with that God.
At the moment, religion (and religion’s concept of God) has not provided any reasons for me to believe in God, only reasons to disbelieve.
its writings and comments like this that cause my atheism to be that much stronger. Your fear, prejudice and misunderstanding of a free thinking mind are the reasons I seek a more purer line of thinking. To me, a person of a faith that is based on forgiveness and love who has such feelings toward one that chooses not to believe commits the ultimate sin against humanity.