The atheist's response

So, I wrote an article in response to an article at school about 2 weeks ago. Well, the kid responded. Let me know what you think of his response.

In response to Daniel Palos

Thank you very much Mr. Palos for taking an interest in my column. I am glad to see that both non-believers and believers are criticizing my work and thus giving me the chance to strengthen or question my assertions and arguments. This is in response to your article.

“One cannot use extreme examples that religion is destructive as a whole, because such extreme examples do not accurately represent the majority of religious beliefs.

I think Mr. Palos is trying to show a confirmation bias in my argument; that is, I only point to the horrible things that have occurred in history to show that religion is destructive. If it were the case that I was pointing to an organization that did not have faith as a central justification, then yes, Mr. Palos would be correct in saying that the violence portrayed by a select group of people do not accurately represent the organization as a whole. For instance, if a few people from some charity organization ended up being serial killers, we wouldn’t necessarily say the organization as a whole harbors serial killers or contains within it serial killer values.

But religion glorifies faith, which is belief without evidence: the more faith, the better. And the people who have more faith tend to be the fundamentalists. Can you really doubt that the fundamentalist who straps a bomb on his chest and blows himself up has an incredible amount of faith, considering he is ending his life on the supposition of later rewards in a later life by a non-existent entity? Yes, a lot of religious beliefs do not end in violence but if you are part of an organization that promotes faith, it seems at odds why you would be against someone who has an extreme amount of it.

Also, violence isn’t the only bad thing. A lot of people spend a lot of money on faith healers who prey on people’s faith. There is also psychological damage that goes with faith, which becomes apparent to my friends who were raped. I was just using an example where most Americans would all agree is something terrible.

Also you can’t just back away and say, “That isn’t what religion is” when someone does something terrible in the name of their religion. When people kill in the name of their god, you can’t simply deny that they are doing it because of their faith. Otherwise you can’t attribute any good action that is motivated by their religion either. I am always surprised that so many people can defend an organization that has had such a horrible history. You think some people would look back and say, “You know, I don’t really want to be a part of this.” The Mormon Church used to be a racist organization until fairly recently. Doesn’t seem to matter.

“Moreover the irrationality of extremists and fundamentalists cannot be applied to all of the religious because the majority of the religious are far more rational than these people. In other words, there is a certain level of rationality that leads most religious people to be moderates, which, in my opinion, is a good thing.”

I hope you don’t doubt me when I say it is a good thing that more people are moderate than extremist. Otherwise I wouldn’t be writing these columns. The question is, “Why are a lot of the religious more rational than the fundamentalists?” I think I already expressed my answer. If you have less faith, you are probably more connected to reality and less likely to do crazy things. This of course is a good thing. Less faith is better.

“Maybe I’m wrong but I have more faith in the faithful than Ueda does. The religious are not irrational people. They may be irrational in that they subscribe to a belief that has no legitimate justification, but they are still rational human beings, just not when it comes to religion.”

You shouldn’t use the word faith in that way because it sort of muddies up the argument. A lot of people like to change the word faith like, “You have faith in science,” or something like that, which really isn’t the correct word for the description. In any case I do understand your point. I don’t think that the religious are irrational on the whole. Many religious people are extremely logical and critical thinking. Yet, as you have stated, they become irrational in the realm of religion, which seems rather strange to me. The point is that it’s not ok to just say, “Well they are only irrational when it comes to their religion,” because religion means different things to a lot of different people and it’s unclear what the bounds of religion are. What if my religious views accommodated an alternative view to the theory of gravity or racial segregation? Who are you to tell me that my religious beliefs are bad and your belief on creationism or prayer are acceptable? Luckily people are becoming more accepting and understand we live in a pluralistic society. The reason that traditional religious positions are being softened, as you have said, is because faith no longer is acceptable in this society. Religion doesn’t have a place in a pluralistic society and people are having to either use science or empirical proof to win their arguments or change their definition of religion so it shrinks into a meaningless placeholder.

“What ideology isn’t a breeding ground for fundamentalism? Is there a difference between secular fundamentalism and religious fundamentalism? No. Both are irrational and intellectually, and potential physically, dangerous. None of this means that we should rid of the world of ideologies because of their potentially harmful effects.”

I’m not sure if you actually mean ideology. You are committing a fallacy of equivocation. When you use the word ideology in the first sentence, you are assuming that ideology has some sort of dogmatic component to it. If we are limiting ideology to this definition, then I do not agree with your last sentence that we should not rid the world of ideologies. I do think that dogmatism is a bad thing and so if you mean ideologies that have a dogmatic component, then, yes, I do think that we should rid the world of ideologies. If on the other hand, you mean the more benign form of ideology like a set of ideals or ideas, then I do not agree with your rhetorical question. Particularly I think scientific methodology has many checks and balances and a self-correcting process that prevents dogmatism.

            Also, secular fundamentalism is a kind of contradiction. Secular by definition means not having a religious or spiritual basis. Fundamentalism assumes a religious or spiritual basis. You might be referring to the dangers of secular fundamentalism like the atheist Stalin who murdered many people in his country. But although Stalin was an atheist, there really wasn’t anything secular about the way he ruled. He was a dogmatic tyrant and he inherited a country that was extremely religious and gullible. We don’t attribute the evils he committed because he was an atheist anymore than we attribute the evils that Hitler committed because he was Roman Catholic. These people were just naturally evil. All this shows is that being an atheist does not guarantee being a good person.

“Yet Weinberg’s assertion is patently fatuous. It implies that the non-religious are incapable of doing evil things and only capable of doing “good,” which is flat out false. All humans whether religious or not, are capable of doing good and bad. This, I’m sure, is commonsense to most of us, but atheists copiously quote Weinberg as if his statement has validity. See? Even atheists are capable of being irrational.”

Weinberg never implied in anyway that atheists are incapable of doing evil things. In fact he said, “With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things, and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” Crudely put, Weinberg’s argument is: If you are religious, then you are capable of doing evil things while being good (P -> Q). But this argument says nothing about people who are not religious (~P). So you incorrectly assume that the inverse is also what Weinberg meant; mainly, if you are not religious, then you are incapable of doing evil things (~P -> ~Q). Technically you also leave out the while being good part. Like I already stated, being an atheist in no way guarantees you being a moral human being. With or without religion, good people do good things and evil people do evil things.

            You should also be careful of calling someone irrational. You are the one who is committing fallacies and misrepresenting people’s positions. I would suggest that you talk your arguments over with some philosophy professor or a good logic student before claiming victory.