Atheism Argued Successfully by Two Quotations

By Daniel Miessler on May 17th, 2009: Tagged as Atheism | Religion

atheism

The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion. — Thomas Paine

I find this to be a refreshingly honest look at what religion really is, and to refute the most common counter-argument to this position (“it makes people happy”) I offer another penetrating quote:

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. — George Bernard Shaw

So, yes, it makes some people happy, but this does not change the fact that it’s based on complete fantasy, and I would argue the delusional belief that the creator of the universe cares personally for your life is no foundation on which to build a society.

In summary:

  1. Religion is based on absolute fantasy.
  2. Yes, it helps people through altered perception of the world, but so do three glasses of wine.

::

  • filotho

    You have quite a circular little argument there. Try again.

  • Claz

    Yes, quite circular…to a person who can't draw a circle because they are too high on Jesus.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_Circle

    Dip shite.

  • Claz

    Oh yeah, what I meant was that it isn't circular at all. Just because you say something has a property doesn't mean it does. “So let it be written,” doesn't exactly hold up anymore…

  • whoever

    filotho, what makes the argument circular? The passage is simply an example of argument from authority and is intended to present the two quotes and say the author agrees with them. You could have accurately claimed that no evidence was provided to back up the claims made by the two quotes and then rephrased by the author – this is known as “begging the question”. If you had done this, however, you would still have missed the point of the passage.

  • George

    but you're fighting only one point.
    what about other arguements for religeon? e.g. The William Paling arguement or what came before the big bang?

  • rancid

    It just makes more sense that religion is stupid and that God doesn't exist.

  • eleanor

    Rancid does it make more sense? Really??? I think it makes more sense that you're going to hell! Your probebly not even catholic so whatever gods you believe in are probably monkeys or something. Praise Jesus!

  • lior

    does the Bible have more evidence supporting its theory of pre-B.B. existence than the accumulation of centuries of the scientific-method? the only evidence that religion can base its existence upon is an overworked (undeniably incredible) story book. try looking at reality for once, and drawing rational conclusions from what you can see with you own eyes. its much more gratifying to believe and understand things that you can substantiate with your own intelligent mind and the world around you.

  • Guest

    So as you say there is no God for you must have faith in him it is the test of all man to have faith in God. As much as you want to try to argue this topic can you prove him not to exist at all can you prove to me how we all came to be here how earth came to exist? Can you tell me that you know for a fact that this life isn't just a figment of your own imagination? Can you factly tell me exactly where you will be when you die the mental and emotional part that makes you who you are not just your body? Can you prove any of this to me if you could? Then I will take my chances with God rather than to have no belief at all!

  • steve

    ” 1. Religion is based on absolute fantasy.
    2. Yes, it helps people through altered perception of the world, but so do three glasses of wine.”

    I think using religion is a less destructive, and more fulfilling happiness than getting drunk.

  • beez

    Hahahaha!!! Thats Cute!

  • artie

    Yeah. The Inquisition, the crusades and all that other good stuff. Damn drunken priests!

  • Twazzi

    Well said. If only the deluded would catch on instead they robotically head to the thousands of different churches which form the landscape of most of the southern towns in the US.

  • Twazzi

    It goes both ways, you can't prove your side either. This is where common sense should kick in, the bible is full of unbelievable stories and we quit
    believing in Santa, the tooth fairy, ghosts, goblins and werewolves a long time ago. At least I'm hoping you did. The priests and pastors all know it's not believable, but they won't quit because it's their livelihood. Would you leave
    a choice well paid job if you didn't have to? I don't think so.

  • cooperati

    “to refute the most common counter-argument to this position (”it makes people happy”) I offer another penetrating quote:”

    Permit me to analyze your “penetration”, (though neither too deeply nor too roughly), but to merely say “it makes them happy” is a touch of a misdirection.

    It should be thought more, that “it keeps them sane.”

    People are hardwired with this instinct to create a mythology for what they cannot comprehend, to hand over the orchestration of the stars in their heavenly domain to a higher power with a higher purpose.

    Where we see “quasar”, or “pulsar”, “binary”, “dwarf”, or whatever definition we can label what comes through our high powered telescopes, other people will always content themselves with exclaiming “Wow!”, and needing no further inspection.

    (And, this all goes before any morality is injected into this form of acceptance. After morality, religion becomes a distributor of that particular brand.)

    Now, Thomas Paine was a deist, at least according to Wikipedia, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine ). His beef was with the institutions of Christianity.

    “He became notorious because of The Age of Reason (1793–94), the book advocating deism and arguing against institutionalized religion, Christian doctrines, and promoted reason and freethinking, for which he would become derided in America.”

    In saying “The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion.”, I find this this is the mother of the invention of the one most leaping premise and promise in subjecting one's-self to the call of religious devotion, that being FAITH. Something without a firmly established basis for observation, has to be relied upon with the mental instrument of belief alone.

    Most great religion establish this as a requirement for inclusion in their host, and still others simply revert to being unable to grasp the “higher purposes”, and say, “the fact that we are made means there must be a creator.” (This is the deist view, from what I understand.) Paine argues that the simple unquestioned and unchallenged belief, as is practiced and promoted in certain quarters of the church, if not in whole, is what is wrong.

    Yet, our cynical society isn't so absolutist to accept this polarized application. We even acknowledge that Mother Theresa herself had written to the effect that she doubted her faith, in very small measures. How can an icon of the Holy Roman See challenge the “unquestionable” institution? She can because it isn't “unquestionable.” She saw hunger, and became the means to provide food. Ultimately, her devotion to a higher purpose betrayed her, in that her accepted mission brought her from the first world always back to the third.

    To the impoverished millions that she and her fellow missionaries fed, clothed, and taught by the powers provided to them by the church and other charitable institutions, that was all “the study of nothing” they would need to reach adulthood, where they could choose for themselves what is for them to observe, believe, or have faith in.

    -=T=-

  • pyrex9

    P1. The principle of sufficient reason: All phenomena are either self-caused (i.e. A->A) or other-caused (B->A; B is not equal to A) but not both. Put another way, this principle says that the question “why?” is always meaningful. Everything happens for a reason.

    P2. The potency principle: If A -> B then for all C element of B, A -> C. In other words if A is the cause of B then A is the cause of every part of B. There are several notions of causality in philosophy. Hatcher's notion of causality is total causality; i.e. it is not the straw that breaks the camel's back but the 1000 straws before it, the camel, gravity, and so forth, that give rise to the camel breaking its back.

    P3. The principle of limitation: For all A, where A is an element of B, B -> A does not hold. This says a system (which Hatcher represents as a set) cannot be the cause of its own components. Hatcher justifies this by explaining any system has (1) form (the parts) and (2) function (the relationship between the parts). A car (the system) cannot be the cause of its own steering wheel (a part), because the car does not even logically exist until the steering wheel exists. Thus the car's existence cannot precede the steering wheel's existence.

    Hatcher shows that the logical outcome of these 3 axioms together with the above noted assumption are the existence of a “unique, universal, uncaused cause.”

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hatcher

  • Francois

    I like wine :(

  • http://twitter.com/OzAtheist OzAtheist

    Did you mean the William Paley “Argument from design”? If so, that fails dismally as well.

  • http://twitter.com/8c Jaren L

    Speaking as an atheist, who has heard, enjoys and finds use in both of the above quotes:

    “1. Religion is based on absolute fantasy.”

    strikes me as a logical leap. This is a point you haven't addressed, unless you take Payne's personal interpretation of the study of Christianity as a factual description of faith itself. Payne's quote, as far as I see, indicates only that Christian theology is unscientific in its methodology. I don't doubt that he's also penned wonderful quotes actually striking at the root of the truth or falsehood of theology itself, but that's not what this quote is.

    And the second, while conclusive in and of itself, is only conclusive evidence of the rightness of atheism if presented as the follow-up to a more credible argument for atheism.

    So I wouldn't say this is as much a “successful argument” for atheism as it is a pair of useful tools in the overarching argument over theism. I'd instinctively guess that, if a proof this elegant does exist, it likely invokes Occam's Razor on a broad scale.

  • Steve

    “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”
    -Albert Einstein

  • http://dmiessler.com/ Daniel Miessler

    Make a DISQUS profile, mang. :)

  • Rick

    “I find this this is the mother of the invention of the one most leaping premise and promise in subjecting one's-self to the call of religious devotion, that being FAITH.”

    I find this statement utterly impenetrable.

  • http://dmiessler.com/ Daniel Miessler

    I'm confused. What are you arguing?

  • Rick

    “I find this this is the mother of the invention of the one most leaping premise and promise in subjecting one's-self to the call of religious devotion, that being FAITH.”

    I find this statement utterly impenetrable.

  • http://dmiessler.com/ Daniel Miessler

    I'm confused. What are you arguing?

  • http://twitter.com/immto Mike Ortiz

    Um yeah ok. Proof is not found in Quotations alone.

  • jo oliver

    Tolerance is what makes the world go round. I hear atheists argue that the reason they oppose Christian beliefs is because Christians force their beliefs on others. This Christian agrees with that aspect; as I find that practice actually to be polar opposite of all things Christian. That said, what do you think you are doing by trying to force your belief that religion is fantasy. You want tolerance…..you must first show it. It is hardly tolerant to call other belief systems fantasy. People can not prove that God doesn't exist anymore than people can prove that he does.

  • anti-supernaturalist

    Theology is the subject without an object.

  • http://wormed7600.wordpress.com/ Adam

    burden is on those who make the assertion, not on those who deny

  • SayBlade

    “Yes, it helps people through altered perception of the world, but so do three glasses of wine.” ___ Oh, so atheists do not drink alcohol because it is too much like religion?

    “Religion is based on absolute fantasy.” ___ Nor do atheists read books of poetry or fiction because real life is not represented there?

  • fead

    good

  • Eznight

    Once again you have shown that you have a cursory understanding of Christianity and God. To state that “religion is based on absolute fantasy” is barely partially true. While there are some religions that have no basis this is glaringly untrue of Christianity.

    Archaeologists have uncovered more than 5500 ancient New Testament Greek manuscripts, with fragments dating back as early as the 2nd century. Counting Latin manuscripts and others, the total is 24,000 manuscripts in existence. Next to the New Testament, the greatest manuscript evidence for any other ancient work is for Homer’s Iliad, of which there are fewer than 650 copies that come a full thousand years after the original writing.

    There are over 25,000 pieces of archeology supporting the bible including: Biblical sites, cities, empires, artifacts, weapons, raw material and more on record which have been located and verified using the scriptures as a guide. In fact many biblical cites still exist today.

    Archaeology has corroborated the essential reliability of the New Testament. Time after time, when incidental details of the New Testament can be checked out, they emerge as being accurate. For instance, John 5:1-15 describes how Jesus healed an invalid by the pool at Bethesda, which John describes as having 5 porticoes. And for years skeptics said that the pool never existed thus John was untrustworthy, however, recently the pool was excavated and scientists discovered 5 porticoes, or colonnaded porches, just as John described.

    Luke, who wrote one-quarter of the New Testament, has been found to be a scrupulously accurate historian, even in the smallest details. One archeologist carefully studied Luke’s references to 32 countries, 54 cities, and 9 islands, finding not a single error. “The general consensus of both liberal and conservative scholars is that Luke is very accurate as an historian,” said archeologist John McRay.

    Taking the cosmological, ontological, teleological, philosophical, scientific, historical, prophetical, existential and theological proofs for the existence of God it is self-stultifying to state that Christianity has no basis.

  • Believer

    My ultimate counter argument is a simple statement.

    Is it possible? Is it possible that God exists. Is it possible that a spirit world exists. Is it possible that there is life after death. Is it possible?

    Any real scientist does not dismiss any thing that seams unlikely. They consider all possibilities no matter how unlikely.

    Science is all about evidence, eliminating possible options though the objective evaluation of all evidence. When all possible options have been eliminated that which remains is the only possible explanation.

    At this point their is not enough evidence from before the big bang (creation) or the after life. To say the do or don’t exist. Their is only opinion based on our current understanding of the universe. From the limited exposure we have to what ever evidence we may have been exposed to.

    To say some thing based on fantasy is not evidence of its existence is good logic but still bad science. To dismiss some thing because you believe it stupid, or only believed by the ignorant. Is just as ignorant. To dismiss some thing because there is currently no evidence is not the same as dismissing some thing there is evidence to disprove its existence.

    Yes the simplest answer is the best. But simple is a matter of opinion. To say that only the material existence is all there is a good simple answer. But to say some one created it is all so a good simple answer. Any and all logic applied to this, can not discount that it could be possible for more then a material existence. That is irresponsible science.

    Please prove that there was nothing before the big bang, and their is no after life. After you have done that you can continue to attack religion. I don’t like the the way people impose there beliefs as truth, whether atheist or religious.

    To argues from ones beliefs (religious) is poor from. Never the less, I believe there is not enough evidence. I believe the answer to the question Is it possible? God exists, there is life after death. The only responsible answer is Yes. Yes it is possible.

    • http://danielmiessler.com/ Daniel Miessler

      Your argument works great until you realize it applies equally to ALL propositions for which there is no evidence.

      Let’s play. Before the big bang there was nothing in the university other than Thor and a small plate of cheese. Do you have any evidence against this?

      • Eznight

        Absolutely, and the evidence comes from the only book that has proven itself; the Bible. Before the big bang there was God.

        In no other religion were the authors of the scriptures supernaturally confirmed with miracles. And no other religion than Christianity has a Savior that was foretold with unbelievable precision. Even the most liberal critics admit that the prophetic books were completed some 400 years before Christ, and the book of Daniel by about 167 B.C.

        Professor Peter Stoner, along with 600 students, calculated the mathematical probability of just 8 (of the more than 300) New Testament prophecies being fulfilled in any one person at one chance in a hundred million billion which equates to 1 chance in a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion. No other religious book offers anything that can compare with these supernatural predictions.

        The Old Testament contains scores of prophecies about the coming of the Messiah. Barton Payne’s Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy list 191 on them, while Oxford scholar Alfred Edersheim cites 400. Some SPECIFIC major predictions about the Messiah, all of which WERE FULFILLED only in Jesus and could NOT be controlled by any human, was that he would be born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14), of the seed of Abraham (Gen 12:1-3; 22:18), of the tribe of Judah (Gen 49:10), of the house of David (II Sam 7:12-16), in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2); He would be heralded by the Lord’s messenger (Isaiah 40:3); He would cleanse the temple (Malachi 3:1); He would be “cut off” 483 years after the declaration to reconstruct Jerusalem in 444 B.C. (Daniel 9:24-27); He would be rejected (Psalm 118:22); He would have his hands and feet pierced (Psalm 22:16); He would be pierced in His side (Zechariah 12:10); He would rise from the dead (Psalm 16:10); He would ascend into Heaven (Psalm 68:18); and He would sit down at the right hand of God (Psalm 110:1).


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