“I’m an atheist because I think of the universe as a natural, material system… I’m perfectly sincere and definite
in my belief that there is no God
”
—Philosopher Crispin Sartwell
We conclude, from part 1 and part 2, considering Crispin Sartwell’s “Irrational Atheism – Not believing in God isn’t always based on reasoned arguments—and that’s okay,” The Atlantic, October 11, 2014 AD; God help us, he teaches philosophy at Dickinson College.
Sartwell quotes William James (1842-1910 AD), philosopher, psychologist and physician, thusly:
Our belief in truth itself, that there is a truth, and that our minds and it are made for each other—what is it but a passionate affirmation of desire, in which our social system backs us up? We want to have a truth; we want to believe that our experiments and studies and discussions must put us in a continually better and better position towards it; and on this line we agree to fight out our thinking lives. But if a … sceptic asks us how we know all this, can our logic find a reply? No! certainly it cannot. It is just one volition against another—we willing to go in for life upon a trust or assumption which he, for his part, does not care to make.
This strikes at the point that according to an Atheists’ typical evolutionary views; life evolves to survive (for some unknown reason) and not necessarily to ascertain empirical truth. Since someone can survive by ascertain empirical truth or just as well by holding to delusions then truth is evolutionarily irrelevant (ultimately speaking). Thus, Atheists employ brains that were haphazardly evolved towards survival and then demand that they have discerned the ultimate truth, Atheism, and that anyone who disagrees is delusionally wrong. Thus, they demand adherence to their concept of truth after merely assuming that truth and our minds are made for each other which is merely a “passionate affirmation of desire.”
When the “sceptic asks us how we know all this” James states that our logic cannot find a reply because, on the sceptic’s own view, “It is just one volition against another” because the sceptic “does not care to make” the “trust or assumption” that truth and our minds are made for each other. Well, in reality they do but do so upon begged, borrowed and stolen premises. Judeo-Christianity holds that truth and our minds are made for each other and, as noted in part 1, premised the scientific method upon this view.
For some odd reason, Sartwell follows this by writing, “By not believing in God, I keep faith with the world’s indifference. I love its beauty. I hate its suffering.” But why is “the world’s indifference” or his supposition of “the world’s indifference” that upon which he premises his “faith” (faitheism) and why “not believing in God” based on the supposed “world’s indifference” or, for that matter, what does he mean by world; the planet, its peoples, what?
In part 1, I noted that Romans 1 notes that since “that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them” and that “the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made” it is a fact that “when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”
Now, Sartwell asserts that “It is possible, I think, to find a material world as inspiring as a spiritual world.” And Romans goes on to state that they “changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things…changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator.” This is exactly what Sartwell is doing as he “changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image” of the “material world” in rejection of the “spiritual world.”
I wrote much about this Atheist form of Paganism in Atheism spirituality and more evidence is provided by Crispin Sartwell who quotes Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862 AD), philosopher, naturalist, historian, etc.:
What is it to be admitted to a museum, to see a myriad of particular things, compared with being shown some star’s surface, some hard matter in its home! I stand in awe of my body, this matter to which I am bound has become so strange to me … Think of our life in nature—daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it—rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?
In short, “corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.” Sartwell then writes, “Many people, from Lucretius and Spinoza to Darwin and Muir, have expressed this sense of wonder or ravishment at material nature and their own embeddedness within it.” You see, they replace awe in God with awe in nature. Conversely, the Judeo-Christian view is that nature’s beauty reflects God’s beauty and its horror reflects the fall into sin.
Recall that Crispin Sartwell noted that “I grew up with” Atheism and empathetically note that he writes, “Genuinely bad things have happened to me in my life: One of my brothers was murdered; another committed suicide. I’ve experienced addiction and mental illness. And I, like you, have watched horrors unfold all over the globe. I don’t—I can’t—believe this to be best of all possible worlds. I think there is genuinely unredeemed, pointless pain. Some of it is mine.”
In referring to and criticizing the “best of all possible worlds” he is referring to polymath and philosopher Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716 AD) who philosophized about such matters in his “Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil” (William Lane Craig’s The Difference Between Possible and Feasible Worlds may be of interest). Besides being theologians, you will note that Atheists long for heaven as this is most certainly not the “best of all possible worlds” (granting Sartwell’s context) but is a fallen one.
It is also important to note that his claim that “there is genuinely unredeemed, pointless pain” is merely asserted, merely something “I think,” and not something that he proved or for which he argued, see this video for why this is a problem for him logically:
He then reiterates that he keeps “faith with the world’s indifference” and thinks that its love, beauty and suffering “are perfectly real, because I experience them both, all the time” even whilst, incidentally, asserting that our brains and truth are not made for each other. Thus, how could he even know that his “experience” of love, beauty and suffering are real and how does he even define love, beauty and suffering in the first place? After all, are not his thoughts mere fallible interpretations of bio chemical neural reactions occurring within the haphazardly evolved gray matter of a temporarily and accidentally existing bio organism sitting atop a spinning rock orbiting an average star in the backwaters of a temporarily and accidentally existing universe?
Finally, he positively affirms God’s non-existence, “I’m perfectly sincere and definite in my belief that there is no God.” Now, he can take the “Irrational Atheist” route and merely state that he can merely state that “there is no God” and do so upon an irrational premise. However, firstly, this undermines his entire claim to knowledge in the first place. Secondly, he must be called to prove God’s non-existence. Now, for those who have fallen for the “you can’t prove a negative” claim; note that he actually claims to know it, to possess positive knowledge and it is the lack of ability to prove that God does not exist, even whilst claiming to know that He does not, which brought about the fallback position from Atheism which is Agnosticism or that which neo-Atheists like to state as merely lacking a belief in god(s) (this, by the way, won Sartwell a spot on my list of celebrity New Atheists who positively affirm God’s non-existence).
He concludes by writing
I can see that there could be comfort in believing otherwise, believing that all the suffering and death makes sense, that everyone gets what they deserve, and that existence works out in the end.
But to believe that would be to betray my actual experiences, and even without the aid of reasoned arguments, that’s reason enough not to believe.
Thus, ultimately, his claim to know that God does not exist is based on the problem of evil and his claim to know, for a fact, that “all the suffering and death” does not make “sense, that everyone” does not get “what they deserve, and that existence” does not work “out in the end.” In other words, he claims to know things that he does not know such as that his own “own extremely limited experience,” as he put it, results in him somehow knowing that the suffering, death, etc. is arbitrary without, by the way, telling us why suffering, death, etc. are wrong, bad, evil, etc.
