Arguing with atheists...

How often, in this anti-intellectual culture of ours do we really set out about debeting the things that really matter?  As rich aesthetes, I pointed out in my previous post that we do anything and everything to avoid any and all discomfort.  What is worse, as a culture we tend to shy away from intellectual controversies as the real haters have convinced us that silence is better than argument.

On the Catholic Answers Forum there is the real possibility to debate questions of substance.  Indeed, the arguments over there are a breath of fresh air in this silent culture of ours.  At any rate, I have found it interesting as of late that when I argue with atheists, it is much like banging your head against the wall.  It is as if we brow beat one another with neither side budging on their worldviews.

I have become convinced that faith is indeed a theological virtue.  Reason can only take one so far before faith is necessary.  The problem I have with atheists is their dishonesty with themselves.  While they are quick to point out that approaching questions in a philosophical manner from the perspective of there actually being a God produces bias, they are quite blind to their own dogmatism and the conclusions that result from them clouding their reasoning.

Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Ratzinger, raised a few eyebrows in his Introduction to Christianity when he wrote that the ontological status of the category of relation ought to be something scholars start to consider.  Of course he was approaching the question from the perspective of a theologian -- since God Himself is three in one, and there are relations between the three persons of the Trinity -- it follows that relation might mean more than previously thought.  This is not surprising to semioticians or followers of John of St.Thomas, who drew what laid hidden about relation from the depths of Aquinas' writings.  Indeed, if we look around us it is quite easy to see relation as having some substantial role in existence; children are born from relation; ideas are discovered via relation, the theory of realitvity, etc.  We cannot take the scientist out of the science, and he relates to the questions he inquires about.

This idea of relation being fundamental to human understanding seems to get lost on most atheists.  They seem to think the only persons blinded by perspective are those with a theistic viewpoint.  What self-deception! 

The claim goes something like this: "As an atheist, I only trust what I can see.  Since I cannot see God, it follows that I am right in concluding that he does not exist.  You Christians, on the other hand, claim that there is a God and you aim in this direction even though the evidence doesn't support what you claim.  You are reaching for a conclusion that is predetermined.  Whereas we have no predetermined ends, and therefore our reasoning is less biased than yours; indeed, we have no bias at all."

This is rather problematic because they fail to see their own perspectivism, and nine out of ten times, they are hubristic in claiming that only their reasoning is valid.  I have no problem with initiating a study without the supposed bias of God existing.  In philosophy, we look at things in themselves, and follow them where they lead us.  We make our mind's commensurate with the objects in the environment and then judge the conclusions from there.  We move from premise to conclusion based upon experience.

So what do our atheist friends do to allow perspective into their thinking?  They claim only they approach questions of truth with unbiased standards.  The trouble is, they do not follow their premises to the rightful conclusions.  Their assumptions are that "if it cannot be seen, it does not exist."  What do we make of things like the triangle in itself?  or the perfect circle?  or double? or infinity? or a chiliagon (as Descartes says)? or the infinite range of human understanding? or universal concepts? or mathematical concepts? These things do not exist except as mathematical formulations; except as beings of reason.  They cannot be seen.  Sure, we can draw a triangle on the board, but that is not a triangle in itself as it lacks the exact precision of the mathematical formula for a triangle.  Yet we can say that the triangle exists.  We know it exists because of independent verification -- because of relation.  On the atheist view, if it cannot be seen, it does not exist.  So the thinking gets clouded as soon as we reach sciences that are abstracted from matter; as soon as we reach sciences that traverse in both the ens rationis and ens reale categories. 

So the most noble lie invented by modern skeptics and empiricists is that their method is the only method that is not blinded by perspective.  Indeed, we all relate to objects in our environment, and thus perspective can never be removed from questions of truth.  If Christian theologians, and I do not deny that they have, have reached biased conclusions based on a worldview, so have atheists.  Let us put to rest, then, this chimera of absolute objectivity and the hubris of approaching questions without perspective.  Christian realists and atheists realists begin in the same place -- sensible experience -- but the Christian follows the premises it presents to their proper logical (immaterial) conclusions.  The atheist, to uphold his worldview, must deny logical conclusions that are based on things as we experience them. (He will say, for instance, that things have no substances, which ultimately means existence is either monistic or that nothing exists as these are the logical conclusions of such assumptions.  The first is contrary to experience, which is supposedly the atheist trump card, and the latter is simply nonsense. Or he will say all is disorder and chaos, but physical laws in nature testify to the contrary.)  So his method tends to operate on more damaging assumptions.

Faith, then, is a theological virtue.  No amount of brow beating will ever convince an atheist.  The Sedes Sapientiae, however, will.  A Rosary here for our hard hearted brethren will pay many more dividends than some esoteric philosophical debate.  Both are necessary, but reason only carries one so far.  Reason will wade you into the water.  Only grace will allow you to swim.