Hi, I’m Wayne Jones, and welcome to re:Christian, a critical and satirical reconsideration of Christianity, the Bible, and God. This is episode 21: “The Ignorant Atheist.”
The usual distinction that people make between an atheist and an agnostic is that an atheist asserts that there is no God to believe in, and an agnostic claims that it’s impossible to know whether there is a God or not. At least, that’s the distinction that I make. Let’s see what the huge Unabridged Merriam-Webster dictionary says:
Atheist: “a person who does not believe in the existence of a god or any gods”
Agnostic: “a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (such as God) is unknown and probably unknowable … one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god”
So, I think I had it about right. I’m not sure about other atheists, but there are aspects of ignorance to my non-belief. What I mean mostly is that when I occasionally have a conversation with a theist, a believer, a person of faith—whenever they bring up the fact that our universe is highly complex, and that the earth is conveniently situated at the right distance from the sun so as not to be fried or frozen, and then ask me how that could have happened without the intervention or initiation of God, I really have no good answer. It’s basically that I just don’t know. I’m not a scientist and I didn’t study science at university, so I often reply that it all happened by chance. There was an explosion and one of the results of that was the planet Earth. I don’t know why there was an explosion. I don’t know why or how there was anything there to explode in the first place. And I certainly don’t know how the Earth then developed and species evolved so that here I am now some 4.5 billion years later making a podcast episode.
If the discussion continues, then I start talking about evidence. What evidence is there that God created the universe, or, alternatively, that he set it in motion? Pushed the button, so to speak? And though it’s certainly possible for a complex system to develop randomly when all the right conditions are in place, I share the theist’s bewilderment that this could be the case. But what I’m not able to do is to believe that something natural like, well, Nature, was ultimately created by a supernatural being that a lot of people call God. I can’t make that leap. And frankly I don’t know how anybody can do so in good faith.
For me, this is where science and religion part ways. This is where some people stand by objective consideration of observable phenomena and other people either don’t like the phenomena they see, or willfully just don’t bother to even take a good look at it all as they trip over themselves in order to subjugate themselves at the feet of a non-existent being.
Perhaps it’s understandable that those believers who are at least willing to take a look, to consider, perhaps it’s understandable why they don’t like what they see. A vast universe without purpose or meaning, and one in which they are assigned 70 or 80 or more years before they fully cease to exist. That’s a hard one. I’m not a fan of it myself. I’d prefer to live forever, or, failing that, to die comfortably at the age of 99 and then spend the rest of my existence in the figurative lap of goodness and light. But I just can’t believe that, I just can’t see any evidence for that, and so I try to squeeze whatever living and enjoying I can into my slender allotment, accept that I will stop/die/cease/come to an end at some point, and then that’s all for me. I think that a large proportion of the people who are believers simply don’t like that outcome, and so they are willing to debase themselves into believing a fairy tale just so they can live happily ever after.
I don’t of course know what the proportions are, but there is the other group of believers who just don’t think or just don’t think for themselves. They grew up in a Christian family where everyone went to church on Sunday, and when they leave home and live their own adult lives and have families and do everything else that regular people do, it doesn’t even occur to them to think critically about the beliefs they have inherited. Of course they are going to be Christian. It’s a no-brainer for them, just like the fact that they will put up a Christmas tree at Christmas. Everyone does that, right?
If I carry things a little further, I just become more and more convinced of God’s absence in the universe. Why would he create such a messy world? Such a dangerous and cruel one? Why would he be so secretive about his existence? Why force us all to base our eternal fate on a guessing game? To all the true believers out there, can you really look at the earth, and at our sad little species, and think this is what a perfect God would create?
It’s 12:35 a.m. as I finish this. I’m alone in the dark in my home office, while it’s windy and rainy outside in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada. It’s not so bad. I actually like it a lot.
And that’s all for this episode. Thanks for listening. Check the show notes for a transcript, sources, and contact information. And please join me again on Monday.