Expert: Austin Cline - 9/25/2010

Question
What's logically wrong with this ?

The bad news is that you can't prove that God exists.
The good news is that you can't prove the he doesn't.
Then, just like a Christian, you have to have faith to be an atheist.

When I stated this to an atheist, he said, "You can't prove a negative.
You can't prove that there's no unicorns, for example."

So I said, "OK, you can't prove a negative.
So you have no case. Why are spending so
much time and energy on something that
has no case ?"

I told him that I suspected that his real reason
for spending all of this time on atheism was his
hatred of Christianity.

All atheist arguments against Christianity - take Dawkins, for
example-- let loose with an angry broadside of arguments
showing how illogical Christianity is.

My reply, of course, is I never claimed that Christianity
is based on logic.  Read the bible. It's based on faith.




- Roger

Answer
"Then, just like a Christian, you have to have faith to be an atheist."

This is a myth:

http://atheism.about.com/od/atheismmyths/a/faith.htm

Saying that if you can't prove something then you must have faith is a false dilemma fallacy: they aren't the only two options available.

The atheist you spoke to was mistake; some negatives can be proven:

http://atheism.about.com/od/atheismmyths/a/omniscience.htm

The idea that atheists spend all their time on Christianity because they hate Christianity is another myth:

http://atheism.about.com/od/atheismatheistantireligion/a/AntiChristian.htm

If it's OK to believe your god exists based on faith and for illogical reasons, then it's OK to believe any god exists based on faith and for illogical reasons. For that matter, it's OK to believe absolutely anything based on faith and for illogical reasons. Your position is that there is nothing positive or good about having a position that can be defended with evidence and logic - everything goes and every position is acceptable so long as a person says it's their "faith." So why bother with science? Why use a computer that was developed with the methods you reject? Why go to a hospital and ever use medical science when you can just use "faith" and faith is just as good?

I submit that you don't really accept any of this - I'll bet you reject the idea of just taking things on faith, generally speaking. I'll bet you do prefer modern medicine to faith healing. You're only using "faith" for one position of yours in order to avoid having to use the same standards you use on everything else and expect others to use on everything else.