NOTE: This post comes to you courtesy of IrishFarmer who’s internet access reliability is tentative.
John Loftus, of Debunking Christianity fame, has recently decided to make his way onto YouTube with a small number of videos (here). I won’t bother with his video entitled ‘Bizarre Beliefs: Where is Jesus Now?’, partially because it’s little more than argument from ignorance, and also because the other video, Do I Look Like the Devil?, was a bit more interesting.
Interesting, not because it was thought provoking, but because it involved sloppy reasoning from someone who should (at this point in his life) know better. So, without further delay – because I don’t have much more time 🙂 – I’ll hop right into the video.
Starting at 0:20, John says, “…wrong beliefs lead to bad voting patterns, and bad behavior [unintelligible]. I think people would be better off without the Christian faith.”
Which is a pretty interesting statement coming from an atheist. I had asked John, and other atheists, on another blog I used to run called Exposing Atheism, how they know things are actually better without religion. That is, where do they derive their understanding of “good”, “bad”, “better”, “worse” and so on. In fact, I took the question a step further and wondered why atheists even bother. Eventually human life will be snuffed out and the universe will “die” some sort of “death”; our actions, our lives, our very existence will lead to the same outcome if atheism is true. So why care? Even if Christianity is false, it doesn’t change a thing, and I fail to see how an atheist could argue (outside of subjectivism) that one set of affairs is better than another.
John then goes on to say, “And when I say ‘Christians’, I’m most often referring to conservative, bible-believing…exclusivist Christians. Christians who believe that they, and they alone, are right. Everyone else is wrong. I find that odd, although I at one time accepted that as well. It’s odd because there are so many things that we disagree with in a free, Democratic society…that it’s amazing to me that, uh, on this issue they’re [Christians] so adamant…I’m a human being and I disagree. I think I’m helping people…Now, Christians think they’re right, and everyone else is wrong. Well, don’t I think I’m right? And everyone else is wrong? But there’s a huge difference between what I do and what I believe, and the Christian…There’s a difference between denying beliefs and affirming them.”
I’m cutting out a bit of fluff, but John really spends quite a bit of time on this subject. I think because he knows he’s treading on dangerous ground – that is, he’s accusing exclusivists of being wrong for being exclusive, despite that he himself is quite exclusive. I think you can see where he’s going with this – that he isn’t being exclusive because he’s not saying he’s absolutely right about what he believes, but I’ll continue with the quote before I dissect the video further. “Christians…are absolutely certain that they’re correct, whereas I am not absolutely certain that I’m correct.”
Which seems to me to be pretty misleading. John is criticizing some Christians for being absolutely certain when he himself is willing to admit that he might be wrong. Which is fantastic. If I admit that I can’t be 100%, philosophically certain does that give me some sort of edge in the debate? Perhaps John doesn’t realize that he’s all but admitting that he believes it’s an absolute certainty that you shouldn’t be absolutely certain about anything. Which is self-defeating. Sorry John, but everyone is absolutely certain about something.
At 4:19, John begins with, “See, I think that, uh, we really don’t know why there is something, rather than nothing at all…we begin with a brute fact: either the Triune God who became a man, died for our sins, and is coming again to send people to heaven or hell. Or, you know, we believe that the brute fact is, that the universe just exists.”
This is another example of the sloppiness that I really wouldn’t expect out of Loftus. Perhaps it was a careless mistake, but clearly we aren’t left with two simple options of Conservative Christianity or Basic Atheism. That John isn’t willing to consider even deism, which itself is obviously incompatible with his brand of atheism, is interesting. Though I imagine that further elaboration on the issue might prove that John didn’t quite mean what he said.
Regardless, John’s seems to imply that one must make a blind choice on the matter, without considering other factors like logical necessity – which I happen to think is one of the strongest arguments against Basic Atheism. I would hope that a philosopher such as Loftus, would stay abreast of current discussions on this matter, instead of recycling worn-out commentary that many of us have already heard before.
Time and again, in the video, John brings up the tendency in some Christians to demonize people who disagree with them. Which is a terrible characteristic of every ideology, and makes me wonder why such a thing is worth musing about when atheists are guilty (in their own way) of the same thing. Humans tend to dehumanize those who disagree with, or are different from, themselves. It’s an interesting phenomenon, and I’ve been guilty of it myself, but John seems mostly interested in setting himself (as well as his fellow atheists) up as some sort of victim. As if only atheists are characterized in simplistic, inhuman ways.
Because, if my memory serves me, Christians have never been characterized as anti-intellectual, dangerously stupid and ignorant, and on and on, right? Get over it, John.
NOTE: From Ken Ammi- thought that I would end IrishFarmer’s post with a quote from one time atheist C. S. Lewis that seemed relevant:
“If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through. If you are an atheist you have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake. If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all these religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth. When I was an atheist I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race have always been wrong about the question that mattered to them most; when I became a Christian I was able to take a more liberal view.”
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1960), p. 29
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