Myth:
You simply refuse accept authority or Divine Rule
Response:
Robert Morey, in his book The New Atheism and the Erosion of Freedom, argues that people today become atheists because they “actually hate God.” Why? According to Morely, atheists are distraught at God’s demands for servitude. Atheists don’t want to acknowledge any authority above themselves, and so attack the idea of a god in order to deny the existence of that Supreme Authority.
This misconception is similar to the claim that atheists don’t believe in God in order to be immoral. What occurs here is an attempt to attribute a person’s disbelief to a desire to evade what they don’t like about God. The first thing to notice about this argument is that it is a logical fallacy, known as the Genetic Fallacy.
All that is happening here is that the theist is making a claim about why a person is an atheist and then attacking that motivation. This does not, however, say anything about atheism itself. No reasons are given for thinking that atheism is an unreasonable position and no reasons are given for believing in any gods. The Genetic Fallacy is a type of ad hominem argument because it attacks the person who holds the position, not the position itself.
Aside from the fact that this claim is fallacious in its reasoning, it is also erroneous in its premises. Contrary to what Morey and what others may think, atheists accept the authority of others in their lives all the time — for example the authority of a boss, or the authority the police.
Atheists also regularly accept the rule of law in their respective countries. They do not break laws at will, but instead accept them. It is not so much the threat of arrest that keeps them in line, but rather respect for the authority and respect for other people.
So we have no problem there. If there were a god, then it might be considered an uber-authority, a supreme authority above all others. As such would it fit in quite nicely above government, and there is nothing automatically wrong with accepting yet one more authority figure in the world.
On the other hand, even if a god does exist, this does not automatically mean that it would be an authority figure. It might and it might not — this would all depend on what sort of god it is. Thus, it is not necessary to be an atheist in order to fail to acknowledge a god’s authority in your life.
Thus, the argument for rejecting atheism because of the claim that atheists disbelieve in God in order to avoid divine authority is both invalid and unsound. It is invalid because the reasoning process is faulty — it committs a logical fallacy, so regardless of the truth of the premises, the conclusion does not follow. It is unsound because the primary premise is clearly incorrect.
Atheism, then, cannot be reduced to mere rebelliousness. Atheists are not inherently rebellious against all authority, which means that they could accept a god along with other authority figures. Gods are not inherently authority figures, which means that their alleged authority could be rejected even while believing that one exists.
