Reflections about why the arguments for the existence of God matters more than what you think
"What is even the point of debating about God?" "Why just keep it to yourself?" "Stop criticizing religion!" These are one of the most common responses that people love to throw to atheists whenever there are discussions, debates, or arguments that involves the word "religion" or "God" in them. Many people becomes so emotionally-driven and irrational when non-believers criticize their religious beliefs as if they are always being attacked personally, even though at many times, their counterarguments are valid and reasonable. Considering that we are now living in the Modern Age and we are now more diverse than ever, I think it is now the great time to have a decent fruitful discussion about the truth values of our beliefs, and how can we formulate functional decisions out of it. Unfortunately, those kind of conversations does not always happen, instead we are seeing both theists and atheists alike, calling each other idiots and stupid morons. Setting this aside, is debating truth claims of religion and theology really worth arguing? Or are we just wasting our time talking about nonsense?
The Christian Domination in the Philippines
For hundreds of years, Christianity dominates the entire Philippine islands, and still gains a great amount of cultural relevance until today. It remains the Asian country with the most number of Christians, mostly Roman Catholics, with almost 80% of its citizens (1). But because of the Age of Information that we are living nowadays, it is noticeable that the number of people who identify with no religion continues to expand, realizing that it is irrational, unnecessary, and dangerous. Although atheism is not that popular for Filipinos, the growing number of Filipino non-believers is undeniable (2). It is therefore not surprising that religious people, especially Christians, organized themselves to defend their faith against criticisms and counterarguments by practicing apologetics: the art of defending one's religious beliefs. Christian apologists assembled debates and lectures with atheists in order to preserve their status and to rationalize their preconceived notions.
After all, if God actually exists, especially the Judeo-Christian God of the Bible, then it is our obligation to worship him, obey him, and make crucial decisions with his guidance. On the other hand, if God does not exists, then people are just wasting their precious time, money, and effort believing and devoting their lives in a mere massive cultural delusion, and religious politicians that influencing political decisions out of their religious beliefs that are not even remotely true and can be perilous. Therefore we must do our effort to understand these beliefs, and to find out whether they are actually true or not. The thing is this phenomenon is not just a matter of a philosophical war, but also a political one, since religion seems to always interfere with politics, even though we have a constitutional principle of Church-State Separation. The reason why Philippines is becoming backwards from progressive ideas is because when it comes to topics that involves religion, Filipinos generally always put emotion above reason. No wonder why we still don't have same-sex marriage, divorce, and abortion laws. They also tried to impede with the passing of the Reproductive Health Law of 2013 (3), because it "violates their god's statement of letting go and multiply," and many other religious reasons. But fortunately, they failed anyway. They even also brag about the fact that the Philippines, alongside with Vatican, is among the two remaining countries with no divorce laws, as if that's a good thing (4).
Why I want to challenge religion and God-belief?
I'm an atheist student who loves to study history, philosophy, science, and religion, and I admit that I still have something more to learn. Even though I'm just an amateur "intellectual," I'm doing all of my best to pattern my beliefs with evidence and to make sure that they all correspond with the external reality. I love to load my brain with facts and information and to push my limits of understanding. It is also my habit not just to read but also to question what I'm reading. I'm always open to the possibilities that my beliefs might be wrong and to replace my entire sense of epistemology with more logical ones whenever reality tells me that I should change them, with no exceptions whatsoever. That is what it takes to make new discoveries and to create something productive to our society. But when it comes to religion, you don't even need to bother with any of these at all, because your religion is practically already decided by the society to you, most of the time. Have you ever wondered why as they grow bigger, religion becomes more and more segregated and drifted apart with each other, in contrast with science which has a much greater consensus? That is what you will expect from something that is entirely based on dogma, subjective interpretation, social pressure, cognitive bias, cultural tradition, appeal to authority, and naive intuition, instead of actual objective understanding of reality. Well, that seems to be not so bad, until you remember one thing. By its own nature, religious people, especially Christians, are not contented and satisfied from shutting up, sitting back, and enjoying a quiet worship without bothering other people with different beliefs.
“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” - Matthew 28:19 (KJV)
"Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life." - Luke 18:29-30 (KJV)
"Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned." - Mark 16:15-16 (KJV)
"And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire." - Revelation 20:15 (KJV)
The Bible itself requires its followers to spread its teachings to everyone else and worse, even threatens them with eternal damnation if needed (many of them but not all). If that is not enough, there is also a constant push for exercising legal force to impose a narrow interpretation of the Christian morality to this entire secular nation, not only in the Philippines, but also to other countries especially in the southern United States where fundamentalist Christians always interfere with the government to forcefully implement their religious convictions to the masses, and doesn't allow any other religions. Current political controversies such as traditional marriage, intelligent design and creationism, abortion, and abstinence-only sex education are all heavily motivated by the Christian conservatives on the Right. Although intelligent design and creationism is not that much of a big political controversy in Philippines and seems to be an American thing, it is still a problem that Filipinos are generally ignorant about evolution by natural selection, and science as a whole. The point is, if there is truth in what apologists are saying, then it is a good idea to find it and to make good decisions from it; and if not, then throw away them and replace it with better ones so we can stop wasting government money on worthless dogmatic superstitions.
"If belief in heaven was private, like the tooth fairy, I'd say fine. But tooth fairy supporters don't come around to your house and try to convert you. They don't try to teach your children stultifying pseudoscience in school. They don't try to prevent access to contraception. The religious won't leave us alone. These are not just private delusions, they're ones they want to inflict on other people." - Christopher Hitchens
Therefore as a skeptic, I'm very curious and compelled to understand this controversy for all of the best that I can do. I want to critique some of the philosophical and political arguments and to expose the very core of what religious apologetics actually represents. It is because the debate about the existence of God is not just about an academic philosophical issue, but a battle over the very rules of epistemology itself. Because when it comes to science, all beliefs must be rigorously justified and heavily scrutinized in accordance with epistemic requirements before they become knowledge, if you desire building a reliable understanding of reality. But such epistemic requirements don't exist in religion. One does not convert to religion because of evidence and intellectual discourse, but plenty of people convert mainly because of indoctrination, upbringing, tradition, and social pressure. The only meaningful goal of apologetics is not to convince non-believers to convert but to keep their followers from leaving their religion by rationalizing their preconceived beliefs and dogmas, exercising mental gymnastics and verbal contortions, and even going so far as to deliberately lie. Not only that because there's big money in this stuff too and even a tremendous political power, but it will only work as long as you can keep support from a devoted flock of gullible believers that don't think critically. That's why education and outspoken criticism, if done carefully, is crucial for breaking the cycle of belief and destroying the socio-political machinery that makes a lot of effort to impose itself to everyone's lives.
Why dissent and religious criticism is important?
That is also the reason why religious groups are fighting so hard to indoctrinate children at such young age, since they will believe everything what the grown-ups are telling them. Try to preach any religion into the mind of an adult who never had an idea about any religion, and it is sure that he will dismiss all of them as mere fairy tales. Religious indoctrination is also an intended tactic too that is designed to make religious affiliation as part of one's personal and social identity. We are living in a society where leaving religion is not just casually admitting a simple intellectual error, but a psychological equivalent of losing an entire limb. Therefore it is not shocking that criticism of religion often encounter a hostile and hypersensitive irrational opposition where many believers refuse to change their minds in any condition whatsoever. Many of them even admit that no matter how strong the evidence you show to them or how convincing your argument is, nobody can make their mind change.
“And my view here is that the way in which I know Christianity is true is first and foremost on the basis of the witness of the Holy Spirit in my heart, and that this gives me a self-authenticating means of knowing that Christianity is true, wholly apart from evidence. And therefore, if in some historically contingent circumstances, the evidence that I have available to me should turn against Christianity, I don't think that that controverts the witness of the Holy Spirit.” - Dr. William Lane Craig
"If, somewhere in the Bible, I were to find a passage that said two plus two equals five, I wouldn't question what I'm reading in the Bible. I would believe it, accept it as true, and then do my best to work it out and to understand it." - Pastor Peter LaRuffa
Their statements seems to represent all of the religious believers who already shut their door of reason. It may sound as a casual statement of their spiritual faith, but sadly, it is also an open admission that facts don't matter, an implicit assertion that personal subjective experiences and intuition are far more superior that any objective physical evidences to the contrary, despite of the known notoriety of ourselves to be extremely easy to deceive by our own selves. Therefore religious apologetics, whether they realized it or not, are far more interested in engineering conformity to a foregone conclusion, instead of engaging into a real discussion sincerely and working together for making a functional understanding of the universe. If we seriously want to take this issue of the existence of God, it is important to remember that the actual existence of God is not a big deal. If he's real, then great! Let's believe, worship, and study him as best as we can; but if he's not real, then great too! Let's stop wasting our time, money, and effort doing pointless religious activities and start making more meaningful usage of our short mortal lives. What's more important is that these religious and God-related beliefs affect our society and what are the consequences of these beliefs if taken in action, because beliefs inform actions, actions have consequences, and consequences are objective. Whatever beliefs that are we holding, they must all justifiably reflect reality, and if truth matters, then at least we should at least all agree on this one.
Why focus on Christian apologetics?
It is true that apologists do hold some impressive sounding arguments for God's existence (ontological, cosmological, fine-tuning, teleological, moral, transcendental, etc.), but unfortunately, that's the only thing that they can offer: MERE ARGUMENTS. The reason why these arguments are so easy to discredit or to refute is that because they are just vacuous words wrapped in a thin veil of philosophical jargon without any verifiable application in the real physical world. They might convince someone, if they are foolish enough not to notice the flaws, but they ultimately prove nothing. Because when it comes to science, in order to convince someone with a controversial idea, no one cares about any philosophical rhetoric but about testing predictions and scrutinizing ideas. No matter how are, apologists never provided any single verifiable evidence of any supernatural force manifesting in our real physical world. It is as if that the whole tradition of religious apologetics are built on the ignorant assumption that merely concluding God with arguments is the same as demonstrating God with evidence. Here's an idea, rather than making a lot of efforts proving God's existence, how about asking God himself to disprove all atheists and make a clear undeniable demonstration of himself? That would seem to be so easy, since he can do anything, right?
Now why focus on Christian apologetics? Well, not because we have a bone to pick with Christians per se, but because they have the most active tradition of apologetics, and also, it happens to be the religion that I am most familiar with, since I'm an ex-Christian. Let's examine the very foundations and the very basic rules of epistemology itself, and let's see if they're parallel with the claims of apologists (see the article Why Apologists Don't Know What Truth Really Means). Remember that basing our beliefs on a functional reflection of reality is the only way for our decisions to have a positive significance in the real world. So, are you going to measure your beliefs according to strict epistemic rules and willing to change it in the face of new ever-changing information? Or are you going to measure your beliefs according to cultural tradition and subjective personal experiences and never changing them under any conditions whatsoever? That is entirely up to you.
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Date Published: June 25, 2020
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