Bases of Atheistic Faith

From three questions in a conversation on Quora.

“what evidence does an Atheist base his belief on that God doesn’t exist?”

It depends on the Atheist. There’s a new book out by an Atheist about the seven types of Atheist. Each type is a rather broad category, and there seems to be overlap. The author criticizes five of the seven types.

According to current wisdom, the typical Atheist’s belief has two parallel bases. One is the motive, and the other is the intellectual side.

The thinking atheist claims that the evidence for God is inadequate and the universe does not need a God; but the jump from not needing God to actively judging or rejecting God requires blind faith.

The smarter Atheists know they cannot prove there is no God, so to escape having to prove a negative, they’ve begun equivocating by importing the definition of Agnosticism into what they claim Atheism is. They revert to an obsolete definition of Atheism which meant “You don’t believe in my god(s).” Then they claim they merely believe in one less god than monotheists, and monotheists are atheists, too because they don’t believe in all gods. They also claim (falsely) that they’d be open to proof.

The deception is revealed when they stop their ears to Theistic arguments and when they set ridiculously high levels of evidence that would be needed for them to move from Atheism to Theism. (And even if they received such evidence, they’d explain it away as delusion.)

The motive can be

1. negative experiences (such as mistreatment by “Christians”)
2. attachment to sins
3. defensiveness (taking offense at having their disbelief pointed out, having been reared without religious training or having later rejected God)

Negative experiences actually become an attachment to sins such as anger, bitterness, jealousy, and unforgiveness against “Christians” or daddy issues. Defensiveness also becomes an attachment to the sins of unbelief and “suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.”

The foundation, the basis underlying the bases, is the “the Fall,” “sin nature” or “original sin.” We all start out in rebellion against God, and Atheism is just an expression of that rebellion.

That people may have gone through a religious phase does not mean they left the faith. They may have had a misunderstanding of The Faith, shallowness of understanding or faith, or priorities that made idols of “the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life.” Man judges by the outward appearance, so they and we are easily fooled by counterfeit belief. They may seem to us to have lost salvation, but what they lost was superficial; it was counterfeit.

God is not so gullible. He sees the hearts, and He sees the future thoughts and actions that the hearts will produce. He’s not going to turn a goat into a sheep just to let the sheep turn himself back into a goat again. Either He will preserve that sheep, or He will never turn the goat into a sheep in the first place.

I’ve heard many stories of people who spent their lives in good churches but only late in life actually were converted. How much easier it would be for people to deceive themselves or others and then abandon their counterfeit faith.

“what is his experience or is it that he takes pride in his ability to reason?”

Both. His experience is a lack of encounters with the supernatural. He may have prayed without receiving the requested answer or seen a miracle that he later decided was a con job. By (flawed) reasoning, He then projects that lack of experience onto all of history and adds that to many other flawed arguments. Most then close their minds to protect their pride and to resist admitting to their underlying rebellion.

“….then his ability to reason doesn’t validate his faith (how does an atheist prove that his faith is true?)”

• In engineering and business, verification is a check that you did something correctly. Validation is a check that you did the right thing.

The Atheist thinks his ability to reason verifies his faith, but it is a false verification because a mixture of flawed information and reasoning can only produce wrong conclusions.

Validation happens when the end result meets the underlying needs. If the underlying needs are forgiveness, relationship with God, and everlasting life, and the Atheist’s faith blocks the way to fulfilling those needs, then his ability to reason and his faith are invalidated. The invalid nature of his assumption that he does not need forgiveness, God, or life meet there ultimate, tragic invalidation when he follows Richard Dawkins into hell.


Usual disclaimer for something I've already poste elsewhere: Please give credit where credit is due if you copy this.

Silence In the Search

Atheist: I want to believe so hard. I've prayed to God to help me find faith, to guide me, just even a tiny shred of light in a dark world. So far, even trying to be open as possible, it's been resounding, deafening silence.

I have the same struggle, though I'm a believer. I want that "shred of light in a dark world," too. Here are some differences in our thinking.

The light does not come through the world. The world is corrupt. Whether you attribute that to the Second Law of Thermodynamics or to the consequences of sin, everything tends toward decay and evil. Although there are philosophical arguments that make God highly probable, the world is the wrong place to look for light.

God is not an impersonal force that we can test in a laboratory. He is personal. Like us, He generally does not hang with those those who are hostile or untrusting. When we trust our senses, we trust ourselves (which are part of the world) and the world itself -- which, apart from God's interference, has no light.

We not only look in the wrong place, but we look for the wrong reasons. Look at the counterfeits, the televangelists obsessed with self-esteem, worldly prosperity, vulgar displays of "power," and worked-up emotional experiences. They all look to worldly experience, too. But that's not where God reveals Himself.

The hindrance to faith is usually love of something that offends God. For many, that offense is a practice that they know they'd have to give up. Some rationalize that the practice is not sinful, but the really arrogant ones admit they don't care whether it's sinful. Others stumble over their pride. Some refuse to replace their idols with the biblical concept of God, while others justify themselves. Self-justification takes the form of believing one is righteous enough to stand in God's presence or that one can earn such righteousness.

Faith in God requires a context of need. We cannot realize that need until we face the ways we offend God, ways that render us unworthy to stand in the unbearable light of His holy presence. The prophet Isaiah wrote, "the LORD’S hand is not so short that it cannot save; nor is His ear so dull that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear."

Humbly facing that diagnosis sets the context for the cure. The cure is a gift. Like a big brother taking his younger sibling's punishment, God, as Christ, suffered our sentence for us. He offers that as a gift, to be received as a gift. That entails two conditions.

First, remember that part about humility? We can do nothing to earn the gift. We cannot do ceremonies or good deeds to compensate for the bad we've done. We already owe it to God to do good, and we cannot pay with what we already owe. Neither can we earn the gift without insulting the Giver's capacity, resources, and generosity. (Most "Christian" churches violate this!)

Second, since there's nothing we can contribute to earn the gift, all we can do is quiet our minds and trust. To trust ourselves, our experiences, or our feelings is to distrust the Giver. God rewards trust. Sometimes He exercises our trust with trials or silence; sometimes, He shows people supernatural evidence (that cannot be repeated or shared with others). But it starts with enduring trust.

I used to wish I were a Pentecostal. (That has a strong parallel with what the seeking atheist describes.) It would be so much easer being able to walk by sight rather than by faith. However, according to the Bible, if my faith endures, my reward will be greater than that received by those who believe because they experienced (or thought they experienced) something miraculous.

This is not blind faith that believes despite the evidence. This is informed faith that puts the evidences together and then acts on the probability.  We all have some light. We do not all receive it. Some, like the person who asked the question, are too busy collecting arguments against it to learn why those arguments are flawed. (You'd have to read the whole of his conversation to know that he falls in that category.)

Your challenge, then, is not to convince God to prove Himself to you, but to decide whether you are going to admit your need and then trust the cure for everlasting benefits, no matter what it costs you in this world.

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Since I originally posted this on Reddit, I can't copyright it; and I'd welcome anyone to use it for personal or non-profit used, anyway; but I hope that if you use it, you will give credit where credit is due.