The Logical Fallacy of Religion...

I am an atheist...there is no surprise in that. I’ve blogged about it before and will again. However, I’ve shied away from discussing religion as of late through sheer frustration. A few debates on Facebook (probably the worst place to try and debate anything) and I find myself less tolerant of religious view points. I am normally quite tolerant of religion. I do work as a biblical scholar after-all. If I wasn’t able to tolerate it I would have a hard time on a daily basis. In general I am still tolerant of the average church going Catholic in Ireland and religious people throughout the world. If people want to go to church and believe then that is fine with me and I hope it enhances their life and brings them happiness. Members of my family believe and I would never say anything against this and would defend their right to practice religion as I would anyone else. That’s all part of being free isn’t it? Well, lately I have run into a few opinions that have pushed me a little away from my usual indifference toward religion. The one that I’m concerned with here (there may be other posts about other things – I need time to organise my loosely collected thoughts) is that somehow atheism is illogical and we are somehow odd in our assertions. Firstly, there is this view that atheism is somehow a religion. This is not correct – it’s not even organised. I belong to no atheist group. I have no rituals. I have no catechism, dogma or creed. I just don’t have religion in my life. It’s not a set of religious beliefs; it’s the lack of one. Well, for a start, a total misunderstanding of atheism makes any further argument hard...it seems to me that people from this view point find it hard to even imagine a life with no religion and therefore have to make atheism a religion of sorts to be able to deal with it. Secondly, atheists decide not to believe because they only believe in the empirical. We only believe in what can be observed therefore chose to neglect God and the supernatural. Well, ok then, I admit...there is more to the world than what can be observed but that doesn’t mean I should fill in the gaps with the supernatural because I can’t explain everything. If I can’t explain something then it remains a mystery to me...I don’t jump the supernatural to explain it. Logical? The same argument can be made for any belief in the supernatural. If I hear footsteps in the hallway and nobody is there should I assume it’s a ghost...no. There are a plethora of other and more rational solutions to the problem. Assuming it to be ghost is to blatantly ignore logic, reason and the other, more likely, solutions available to me. The same goes for a belief in God (of course, I’m referring the style of belief where 7 day creation and other similar beliefs are still held to in the light of modern scientific discoveries). Thirdly, and this is where it gets weird, logic is somehow wrong and illogical! That’s right, somehow, not believing is illogical as I’m not opening my mind up to other possibilities. Now, I’m all for other possibilities and would allow for the possibility of a god if it was in any way logical. Put simply, there is no evidence for the existence of a deity, simply none whatsoever. It is not even a leap of faith to do so it is simply a leap in the dark – and there is nowhere to land. If that’s what opening my mind is then I could believe in anything I wanted; unicorns, the Easter bunny and non-Catholic Popes. To me, opening up my mind is believing in the possibility of life on other planets...possible yes, provable no...that’s a leap of faith. So basically by the logic of certain Christians played out above it is illogical to lose faith in Father Christmas. Yes, this is a tired and much clichéd way of putting it but I can’t think of a better way. Crude...but it gets the point across. Now we come to the crunch...to the point I’ve been trying to make all along. This religious view point rests on a logical fallacy - the fallacy that somehow belief in something that there is no evidence for whatsoever is absolutely logical and not believing in it is illogical. God has been places beyond reason, beyond the empirical and beyond observation so that any argument against the notion of God can be perceived as small minded, illogical and simply wrong. There is frankly no argument that can be made against the existence of a deity that can’t be answered by simply saying, ‘oh well, God is beyond human thinking.’ Now isn’t that a nice catchall.

Now, as I said before, I’m not against religion. By all means, go and practice and believe if you wish but at least think as well. Some do this, many religious people believe in evolution, the big bang and science...I’m not getting at them...their faith incorporates the logical and the empirical. However, a dwindling minority still cling to this illogical fallacy and continue to say we are all going to hell because we don’t believe... and they just terrify me.