Quite a few theists try to argue that atheists don't really exist. I'm not sure why, though I suppose that denying the existence of atheists makes it easier to pretend that atheists' critiques of religion and theism can be dismissed. Most of these arguments are old, tired, and silly. Theists need to come up with new ones.

Ophir provides what appears, to me, to be a new way to claim that atheists don't exist:

Consider this: Atheism rests upon the denial of what pundits have dubbed "teleology," the very obvious notion that "design demands a designer," or that patterns imply intelligence.

Ophir then goes on to demonstrate that, at least in some cases, atheists do infer from patterns that an intelligence behind the patterns exist. Therefore, atheists don't really believe the premise upon which they base their atheism and so they can't "really" be atheists.

There are many problems with this. First, it's not true that atheists deny that "design demands a designer." This phrase is usually used to "prove" that nature must have been designed (presumably by some particular god) and what atheists reject is the premise that there is in fact "design" in nature in the first place.

Second, notice how Ophir shifts from "design demands a designer" to "patterns imply intelligence." The two aren't actually the same — we can only perceive them as the same if we assume the truth of Ophir's beliefs, which would mean committing the fallacy of Begging the Question. Design is not the same as a pattern. A pattern is a form with consistent style and which can occur either by design or accidentally. Consider all the shapes a person notices in clouds or in floor tiles — how many are there by design and how many simply constructed in our minds?

This is a very important point which is discussed at length by Stewart Guthrie in his book Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion. According to Guthrie, religions are created by the human propensity for anthropomorphization: we are naturally inclined to see in patterns around us the presence or activity of other intelligences like us. Most of the time we're wrong (there is no person hiding in the bushes), but the cost of being wrong here is much lower than the cost of being wrong in the other direction (not seeing the person who is hiding in the bushes).

The final problem with Ophir's argument above is that it is simply false: atheism does not rest on the denial of either patterns implying intelligence or that a design demands a designer. Everyone arrives at atheism by a slightly different path and there is no one set of ideological premises upon which everyone's atheism is founded. If atheism rests upon anything, it rests upon the failure of theists like Ophir to provide compelling — or even truthful and logical — arguments in defense of their beliefs. People like Ophir would spend their time much more fruitfully if they worked on making their own beliefs more rigorous and logical than trying to claim that there isn't anyone who "really" disagrees with them.

 

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• Atheism 101
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