Rich on Hitch

The resident Atheist at Discover Magizine.com has written about a debate between Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete and Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens is declared the winner due to the Monsignor’s inability to provide concrete (material) evidence of the existence of a (non-material) god. The absurdity of this Atheist requirement is always lost on true believers in the Atheist faith, including the article’s author, Melissa Lafsky, and most of the commenters. However, one commenter, "rich" stands out in his comprehension of the underlying fallacy:

Rich wrote:

“What if the LHC does not provide the evidence needed to validate the theories supporting the Higgs Boson, dark matter and string theory?? Does that mean they do not exist? Or better yet does that mean that we do not exist since current theory hypothesizes that those things are the elemental building blocks of our existence? What are all of us practictioners of until we are able to grab onto something concrete? Faith. Faith that our calculations, assumptions and insights are correct. I fear the day when the human race gets to the point in its evolution where it’s arrogance out weighs its humilty and it believes that it’s knowledge of the universe actually defines the universe. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you never lose the part of you that hungers for truth and allows faith to inspire you to search for what others say does not exist because THEY have never seen or experienced it (such as a new route to the West Indies, Bosons, Dark Matter or God). When we do evolve to that place we will not be worth the primordial goo we came from.”

This entreaty will be lost on the predetermined mind-set of the reality-impaired. This is because reality must not be allowed to be composed of anything non-material, or the entire worldview is out the window. And the worldview is more important than the truth, because the wordview is what confers happiness and freedom from absolutes and self-annointed elitism. The materialist worldview is sacrocanct; fact is peripheral and to be explained away with stories. Reductionist stories of evolved morals, situational ethics, delusional transcendence, relative truths, human animalism, intellectual monism. By substituting stories for non-material reality, the fantasy of materialism and Atheism and all that these confer is preserved.

I will reprint some of Rich’s words. I have the same fear...

"I fear the day when the human race gets to the point in its evolution where it’s arrogance out weighs its humilty and it believes that it’s knowledge of the universe actually defines the universe."

And I have the same hope:

"Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you never lose the part of you that hungers for truth and allows faith to inspire you to search for what others say does not exist because THEY have never seen or experienced it."

Thanks Rich, couldn’t have said it better myself.