A friend of mine on Facebook is a self-professed atheist. One day in the not-too-distant past I noticed he joined a group that caught my attention called “Calling all ATHEISTS – Let’s see how many Atheists are on Facebook.” It’s a rather silly group that never actually bothers to define what they mean by “atheist”. Is the group open to “weak” atheism or only “strong” atheism? That is to say, does the group recognize me as an “atheist” if I am merely agnostic about the proposition? For that matter, how does this group define the “God” it is so fervently denying?
It came to my mind to recall the fact that Christians were originally called “atheist” by the Romans (and thus perhaps the oldest group to receive that appellation). Additionally, when we understand the original meaning conveyed in the Germanic term “God” (compare “Gott”)âa word that was in Old English when the tribes of Brittain were far from Christianâit would be reasonable to refrain from using that term for YHWH the Eternal One of scripture. And thus in my denial of this pagan “god” concept, could I not be an Atheist myself?
Well, suffice it to say, I’ve had a good bit of fun with this group and despite the several discussions I’ve had with others on the subject, I’ve yet to receive a satisfactory definition of “Atheism” in the group as no one has yet to define “God”. It’s not that I’m asking for someone to disprove the concept; I’d just like to know what the concept they’re attempting to disprove IS in the first place. So anyhow…
As part of posting on that group, I came across this rather silly picture…
When I saw this, I had to laughâalthough perhaps not for the reasons intended by the person who put this picture together. The reason I was immediately moved to laughter is because I have a passing acquaintance with these figures. Anyone with a passing acquaintance with history would immediately question the inclusion of at least some of the iconic figures depicted in this graphic. And the truth is it’s actually quite difficult to say that any of these figures could unarguably considered to be completely “atheist” in the common parlance understanding.
From left to right, top to bottom we have: Ernest Hemingway, Abraham Lincoln, Carl Sagan, Samuel Clemens (a.k.a Mark Twain), Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, and Benjamin Franklin.
Starting with Hemingway, the only evidence I could find to support Hemingway’s supposed atheism is a quote that is much bandied about on the interwebs by a lot of smug atheists who proudly make this citation…
“All thinking men are atheists” – Ernest Hemingway.
This sounds rather conclusive on the surface, and it is a fact that Hemingway wrote that… as part of a FICTIONAL dialog stated by a FICTIONAL character in one of Hemingway’s FICTIONAL books! Suffice it to say, my derisive laughter only multiplied when I found atheists using this quote this way. I guess these “thinking men” didn’t give this one enough thought. Here’s the quote in context…
” ‘All thinking men are atheists,’ the major said. ‘I do not believe in the Free Masons however.'” – A Farwell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (Chapter 2, p. 8)
The fact of the matter is that Ernest Hemingway was born and raised a Congregationalist who later converted to Roman Catholicism. A simple search on adherents.com and this can be easily verified.
Now, while we’re on the subject of quotes, let’s just go ahead and consider the following quotes on the rest of these great “atheists” shall we?
“As my husband was known to be the most loving and devoted husband & father we will allow these falsehoods a place where they deserve. We all â the whole world have been greatly shocked â at the fearful ideas â Herndon â has advanced regarding Mr. Lincoln’s religious views. You, who knew him so well & held so many conversations with him, as far back as twenty years since, know what they were. A man, who never took the name of the Maker in vain, who always read his Bible diligently, who never failed to rely on God’s promises & looked upon Him for protection, surely such a man as this, could not have been a disbeliever, or any other than what he was, a true Christian gentleman. No one, but such a man as Herndon could venture â to suggest such an idea. From the time of the death of our little Edward, I believe my husband’s heart was directed towards religion & as time passed on – when Mr. Lincoln became elevated to Office – with the care of a great Nation, upon his shoulders – when devastating war was upon us then indeed to my knowledge – did his great heart go up daily, hourly, in prayer to God – for his sustaining power. When too – the overwhelming sorrow came upon us, our beautiful bright angelic boy, Willie was called away from us, to his Heavenly Home, with God’s chastising hand upon us – he turned his heart to Christ” – Mary Todd Lincoln on Abraham Lincoln (“Abraham Lincoln and Religion“)
“Some people think God is an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there in the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow. Othersâfor example Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einsteinâconsidered God to be essentially the sum total of the physical laws which describe the universe. I do not know of any compelling evidence for anthropomorphic patriarchs controlling human destiny from some hidden celestial vantage point, but it would be madness to deny the existence of physical laws.” – Carl Sagan (“Personal Life & Beliefs” section of Wikipedia article)
“I believe in God the Almighty. I do not believe He has ever sent a message to man by anybody, or delivered one to him by word of mouth, or made Himself visible to mortal eyes at any time in any place.” – Samuel Clemens (“Mark Twain’s Creed”)
“In summary, then, Jefferson was a deist because he believed in one God, in divine providence, in the divine moral law, and in rewards and punishments after death; but did not believe in supernatural revelation. He was a Christian deist because he saw Christianity as the highest expression of natural religion and Jesus as an incomparably great moral teacher. He was not an orthodox Christian because he rejected, among other things, the doctrines that Jesus was the promised Messiah and the incarnate Son of God. Jefferson’s religion is fairly typical of the American form of deism in his day.” – Avery Dulles on Thomas Jefferson (“Thomas Jefferson and Religion”)
“I’m not an atheist and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God.” – Albert Einstein (“Albert Einstein’s religious views“)
“I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God. â I think that generally … an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind.” – Charles Darwin (“Religious Views” section of Wikipedia article)
“In the beginning of the contest with G. Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine Protection. — Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a Superintending providence in our favor. … And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? or do we imagine that we no longer need His assistance. I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth — that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings that “except the Lord build they labor in vain that build it.” I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel: …I therefore beg leave to move — that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that service.” – Benjamin Franklin (“Virtue, religion, and personal beliefs” section of Wikipedia article)
So, in summary, what do we have here? We have a Congregationalist turned Roman Catholic named Ernest Hemingway. We have a Calvinist Christian in the person of Abraham Lincoln who stirred the emotions of men with his famous appeals to the righteousness of God while liberally quoting the Bible. Carl Sagan is perhaps the closest thing to an “atheist”, but himself agreed with Einstein’s theological understanding of “God” and therefore was really more of a speculative Deist/Pantheist. We have Mark Twain who as a sardonic Deist was certainly no friend to the Church, although he remained in name a Presbyterian and a FreeMason. We have Thomas Jefferson who was also a textbook Deist, but unlike Twain he had a lot of respect for Jesus Christ and the morality of the Bible. We have the scientific genius Albert Einstein who famously referenced “God” and plainly stated “I’m not an atheist”. Then we come to Charles Darwin who, due to his controversial biological thesis, we might think the atheists have someone to claim here, yet he himself wrote “I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God.” Finally, we end with Benjamin Franklin… who not only was officially a Presbyterian, but Franklin actually argued for prayers to be offered at the start of congressional meetings on the basis that “God governs in the affairs of men”!
So, do we really have any atheists depicted here at all?
I think the answer speaks for itself. The message of the graphic is certainly tongue-in-cheek, as not one of the men depicted was an “idiot”. On the other hand, I tend to think the creator of this graphic was.
So, that being said and in conclusion, I decided to make my own little parody of this graphic to illustrate the point in the same spirit of satire.
To think, I was cofnsued a minute ago.
You’re an ignorant, biased, Christian. Enough said.
Well, when it comes to ignorance at least you’re certainly one to speak, aren’t you, Mr. “Agnostic?” ;-)
In case my point wasn’t immediately obvious, I’d like to share one of my favorite quotes from G. K. Chesterton…
“The general notion that science establishes agnosticism is a sort of mystification produced by talking Latin and Greek instead of plain English. Science is the Latin for knowledge. Agnosticism is the Greek for ignorance. It is not self evident that ignorance is the goal of knowledge. It is the ignorance and not the knowledge that produces the current notion that free thought weakens theism. It is the real world, that we see with our own eyes, that obviously unfolds a plan of things that fit into each other.” – The Thing, p.170
Personally I describe atheism as: “Atheism is the acceptance that there is no credible scientific or factually reliable evidence for the existence of a god, gods or the supernatural.” it is not about if there is a supreme being it is rejecting everything that has been laid out as proof. Sure there are historical parts of sacred texts proven to be true in each end of the spectrum but those stories are often just that, stories.
I guess it was summed up in my mind with the creation of Church of the FSM. If youâre going to have faith in a being you can’t touch see or hear why not believe in the FSM. In my mind any âGodâ set out to fighting current world concerns like global warming caused by pirates, is a âGodâ I would like to hang out with.
:)
Personally I describe atheism as: âAtheism is the acceptance that there is no credible scientific or factually reliable evidence for the existence of a god, gods or the supernatural.â it is not about if there is a supreme being it is rejecting everything that has been laid out as proof.
Atheism then, by your own description is context-dependent. By that I mean it depends upon a certain definition of “god.” If we state that human beings are “gods” I’m sure you would agree it’s hard for an atheist to deny the existence of human beings.
Sure there are historical parts of sacred texts proven to be true in each end of the spectrum but those stories are often just that, stories.
I’m afraid I don’t quite understand your point exactly. If you mean to say that the stories contained in sacred texts are “just” historic fiction on par with the modern novel, then I cannot help but point out your assertion is wholly anachronistic. While myth was always understood to convey metaphor and not to be literally understood, and legend was always understood to take some liberties with facts, both of the ancient conventions were meant to be accepted as generally true.
The invention of fictional stories created primarily for entertainment wholly separated from actual history is a rather late novelty. The Germanic folklore collected by the Grimm brothers persisted in Western Europe for centuries before anything like the works of L. Frank Baum or Hans Christian Andersen. And the ancient civilizations which produced the world’s “sacred texts” existed long before Western Europe. Krishna may be depicted with blue skin, but that does not mean he is a fictional character on par with the green-skinned Wicked Witch of the West.
Perhaps I’m being too formal in my analysis of your statements, and in fact you were simply appealing to the anachronistic understanding of “just stories” to assert that many “sacred texts” are factually inaccurate and paint a very distorted picture of history. If that’s the case, then I can agree with you. Of course, many sacred texts are not intended to be understood historically. From the Vedas to the Kojiki, many sacred texts are clouded in myth and followers of these texts’ associated religions do not generally understand these texts literally, and might in fact argue they never were intended to be. Certainly the Bhagavad Gita is clearly allegory; the battle serves as a context of the discourse–standing in to make points in regards to Hindu theology. Mohandas Ghandi, for instance, interpreted the battle to be essentially the battle every man faces within his soul.
As far as texts that are to be understand more literally, such as the Torah, the New Testament, and the Quo’ran, I would personally speak against the last of these three for a number of reasons, but the first two I will defend. It is simply not true that the Old and New Testaments are historically inaccurate, and I would challenge you to demonstrate otherwise–should that be your claim.
I guess it was summed up in my mind with the creation of Church of the FSM. If youâre going to have faith in a being you canât touch see or hear why not believe in the FSM. In my mind any âGodâ set out to fighting current world concerns like global warming caused by pirates, is a âGodâ I would like to hang out with.
As with any belief, we only believe that which reasonably convinces us. No one can truly choose to believe anything. One can choose to ignore certain information, only entertain other information, or operate under a facade–perhaps lying to one self or others–but one can not truly *believe* something without good reason. Your point about the FSM is a strong one if we were discussing liberal theology along the lines of Kierkegaard and his “leap of faith” philosophy, but it does not hold up to the grounded epistemology at the core of Christian Orthodoxy.
While God transcends time, space, and the physical universe and is thus not subject to our senses, God is more than capable of making Himself seen and heard nonetheless. In fact, the God in which I believe made Himself extremely subject to empirical analysis when He incarnated in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus lived and died on Earth for a period of over 30 years and when He rose from the dead to demonstrate His divine nature He was beheld by over 3,000 eye witnesses over a period of 40 days. It is the reliable testimony of these very empirical observations that remains the core of my belief in the God I trust.
That being said, we need not touch, see, or hear God Himself to believe in Him. The fact that we can trust any of our senses at all presupposes an ordered logical universe which can only be the product of Mind. We can not have any science without God and thus the rejection of His Existence due to “credible scientific or factually reliable evidence” seems like utter nonsense to me. It would be a bit like writing an essay denying the existence of the English language. If you truly took your conclusions seriously, then why would you bother to write the essay?
I’ve probably shared this debate before, but just in case…
http://www.bellevuechristian.org/faculty/dribera/htdocs/PDFs/Apol_Bahnsen_Stein_Debate_Transcript.pdf
Dr. Bahnsen expresses a much more eloquent example of presuppositional apologetics than myself. If you haven’t read it already, I’m sure you’d find the debate quite interesting.
:)
Thank you for your stimulating post. I’m always interested in hearing your thoughts dear brother :)
Without getting into long historical passages or religious terms, let me just relate what I have noticed in working during the last 50 years.
I was lucky to get into the early stages of the growth of the nuclear power industry. A lot of the, what are now historical figures, were still active and so got to learn from and read from a lot who first put practical uses to the study and understanding of the atom.
Not one of those I worked with , met, or who were running various programs and departments in either the military ocivilianin parts of the nuclear industry that had what I considered first class scientific minds were, nor acted as what I considered as atheists. The ones I met that professed to be or demonstrated that they tried to be were the second rates, some were very smart, but had the loser mentality. It takes someone with a lot of confidence within themselves to be really brilliant, yet able to know that there are things out there much smarter and morknowledgeablele than you are. Most of the first rate scientists I was lucky to know or work with, were by agnostics, and I’ll simply define those as people who believed in a supreme creator or creators, yet were not active with an organizereligionon. A few of them, mostly older at that time, were part of a religion, more from early upbringing than because they really believed what the actual beliefs of their religion were as stated.
When asking some and thinking about it, the consensus was pretty much for the same reasons. You can”t study how atoms, and parts of atoms work and not see tsimilaritiestes to what we have learned aboouter spaceace and of course, of what we know about our brains and bodies.
The same proportions, same effects, many other similarities go on. Gravity affects things in the same way, chemical changes go on the same in a reactor as they do within your self, and as they do in outer space. No matter how small within an atom something is, it may do more than you realize, but it does not change the rules by which the whole process works, although at times, it makes you rethink your understanding of the whole process.
Theories like evolutionmathematicallycally impossible in considering much of what we see as the design of what has been created. Things to evolved in certain ways and to certain extents, but something had to be there first. The whole theory of entropy can not be explained, because no one can explain its beginning and where the energy came from, even if from a conversion of mass. It still takes energy to create that conversion.
That still leaves a lot of room for a great lot of possibilities as to what happened, by whom, and when, but there had to be something that created this and the more we learn, the more we learn we have been wrong.
The world is full of people with closed minds and so I have given up even wanting to go out and find some to argue with, but I do enjoy listening to anyone tryings tryng to think. I also have become less certain that anything I know is for sure, but find that certain principles, if followed make for a much easier life.
I find most exasperating the fact that as I grow older there is more to learn as the time to learn it becomes shorter. I can’t believe but that at some point, or lives will become much longer. It is too inefficient otherwise and I think that the instincts of man which are exposed in a lot of good science fiction all relate to expansion and the filling of the universe or universes with people and other groups of beings, with extended lives, with the concept that good always can overcome evil, but never wipe it out, with the idea of instantaneous travel to various places.
There is a reason why all peoples have the same basic drives and fears, just as they are all made with the same chemical groupings of molecules. Someone created us as we are, at least the basics of what we are. We also have adapted to the world we live in, so there are intelligenttellegent creatures much different than us.
Well, I also know that not being nearly as smart as a lot, it is easier for me to be comfortable with accepting that someone created me or those I came from. To me it is more important to follow and practice another thing built within us, that of helping others, than to argue with those who are too insecure to listen.
OH yes, I am very proud of my smart sons, although I can’t claim much for how they turned out, it is nice to listen and learn from them.
Very, very nice page! :)