I am an atheist because when I was a child, my parents read to me (and later with me) every night before I went to sleep. Some of my earliest memories are of Joseph and his Technicolour Dream Coat, of Rudyard Kipling’s Elephants Child and the Cat who Walked by Himself, of Midas and his Golden Touch. If I was ever told one of that lot was more true than the rest, I can’t remember it. I am an atheist because I can not comprehend how an adult living in the modern age, confronted with the plenitude of myths that purport to explain our existence without foundation in evidence or even simple plausibility, can pick one and say “that is the truth”.
Charles Miller
Australia
This might be one of my favorite examples of Atheist logic. Miller is unable to discern between Kipling’s stories for children and the issue of existence itself:
” I am an atheist because when I was a child, my parents read to me (and later with me) every night before I went to sleep.”
(snip)
” If I was ever told one of that lot was more true than the rest, I can’t remember it.”
Or perhaps it’s that he cannot accept any premise without evidence (which he doesn’t define, but we can presume that it means material evidence).
But then again he might accept “simple plausibility”, except that all arguments are given equal weight: false, because of the way his parents read to him. Because all arguments are “myths”, and no myth has plausibility by definition, then Miller,
”can not comprehend how an adult living in the modern age, confronted with the plenitude of myths that purport to explain our existence without foundation in evidence or even simple plausibility, can pick one and say “that is the truth”.”
Apparently modern education has not equipped Miller with any ability to analyze for coherence, investigate for contraries, discriminate against fallacies, determine falsifiability, judge inferential density, and thereby develop a rational viewpoint.
Miller is an exception in that he does not claim science, nor does he claim logic and rational thinking as the reasons for his Atheism. He admits that he cannot comprehend how to make sense of competing worldviews without just “picking one”.
So he does just that: he picks one. He picks Atheism, despite any analysis of its foundation in evidence (none) or its plausibility (no cause for the material universe).
Yes, this is one of my favorite “reasons to be an Atheist”.
5 comments:
Are you going to do analyses of reasons people become Christians? They are often much much worse.
Dear Plus Plus Slomo Plus Plus,
This is a anti-atheist Christian apologetics site. It is very unlikely that what you are asking will happen.
From
Nats
I can not comprehend how an adult living in the modern age, confronted with the plenitude of myths that purport to explain our existence without foundation in evidence or even simple plausibility, can pick one and say “that is the truth”
And I cannot comprehend how an adult living in the modern age, confronted with the plenitude of vice, sin, debauchery and evil, inter-mixed with some acts of Christian charity, cannot hold a Creation-->Fall-->Redemption worldview. To me it becomes more apparent every day.
SloMo,
"nats" has the right idea, although stated with incorrect qualifiers.
The assertion, "Christians do [X] too" is a Tu Quoque Fallacy, especially in the environment of this blog. This blog is dedicated solely to the assertions of Atheists, which they claim to be based in logic and rational thought.
There are plenty of other sites which are dedicated to Christian claim analysis such as you wish to pursue.
“He admits that he cannot comprehend how to make sense of competing worldviews without just “picking one”. So he does just that: he picks one.”
No, he's picking none. Atheism's an absence of a particular kind of worldview.
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