“God exists because I don’t understand the world”
Say what you want about Bill O’Reilly, he’s an excellent television host. His blind confidence is, no doubt, entertaining, which is the MO of all television shows. After all, if a television show wanted to teach you something, it would be a book.
On O’Reilly’s show recently, he put his blindness to a test when he had on Dave Silverman of American Atheists. They discussed everything O’Reilly doesn’t understand about the nature of our world, which seems to be quite a bit:
Silverman did a good job holding his ground, but he couldn’t get every point through the barricade of blowhard. So for his sake, and for the sake of truth, let’s expose the weaknesses in O’Reilly’s arguments, even if he does get offended.
Insults?
Sometimes the truth can be insulting. If you have a fat friend who doesn’t understand just how fat she is, it may be insulting if you tell her she needs to lose weight, but that says more about her than you. If anything, it shows that you think she’s strong enough to handle the truth. Religious people are just like fat girls, especially since most fat girls are religious.
Why do people go to church when they don’t really believe in God?
Church is a good social network. To put it in social media terms, people who go to church typically have more Facebook friends than people who don’t. This comes in handy when you need to feel socially accepted, which is much more important to most people than being the moral hero who stays home from church to annotate The Origin of Species.
Tides?
Galileo first explained what caused the tides nearly 400 years ago. Since then, 8th grade science teachers have explained it to their students. O’Reilly must have had communion that day. Galileo was forced to live in house arrest for the rest of his life because the O’Reilly’s of his day took this truth as an insult.
Even if we couldn’t explain the tides, if we are committed to reason and truth, then we cannot aimlessly subscribe their cause to a supernatural phenomenon. This rationalistic thinking impedes our ability to think clearly on other issues because it impedes the methodology that is necessary for discovering truth.
To bring the fat girl metaphor back around, eating one candy bar may not seem like a big deal, and if you understand that it’s bad for you, it isn’t. But if you convince yourself that it is good for you because it feels good, then you will be insulted when the doctor tells you that you have diabetes.
I would never try to convince O’Reilly or people like him that God doesn’t exist. They’ve made up their mind, and for the most part, as long as the person is Westernized, as O’Reilly is, their faith is relatively harmless. In fact, the best thing that you can do to promote a secular philosophy is to let the O’Reilly’s of this world, through their willingness to make a fool out of themselves, demonstrate to everyone that religion just doesn’t care about the truth.
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Atheists account for 1% of the American populous? How about 15%? And this is “self-identified” as atheist, so the “real” number is substantially above that. There are a lot of people who just won’t admit it because it would alienate their friends / family.
But the best point of this is that it doesn’t matter if 99.99999% of the world’s population believes a lie, if it’s a lie, it’s a lie. “Belief” does not change reality, just the perception of it.
Good point. In the words of Penn Jillette, “I’m such an atheist that I don’t even believe that other people really believe in God.”
I must admit, I was a little disappointed that it appeared Dan Silverman took an 8th grade science class either, since he didn’t know what caused the tides either.
Greg, I’ll give Silverman the benefit of the doubt. That tide argument is so wrong it’s startling. I probably couldn’t have regained my footing.
Atheism is just as much a religion as Christianity. Articles like this prove it. Do I think Bill O Reilly is right? No. But Atheists seem to think its OK to lump anyone with faith into the same pile. They think that they are right and apparently EVERYONE has to hear about it.
Do I believe in God? Yes. Do I think Christianity (the favorite target for atheists) has it all 100%? No.I’m a religious man, but I am the first one to say homosexuals should have the right to marry. That makes me a bad christian. Apparently.
Most Atheists don’t understand advanced physics. So they go on the word of the scientists. Which is fine. Astrophysicists don’t lie about the science. Its when they have an opinion about faith that they are being bad scientists.
I can’t prove the existence of God. I have a zillion theories on what God could be. For all I know humans exist because another life form evolved to the point that they can move through dimensions we don’t even know about yet.
Problem is I can prove nothing exploded and created the universe either. Either way you have to have faith.
Thanks for being a bad Christian, Michael. It’s a bajillion times better than being an atheist who’s ethically a good Christian, like Sam Harris. And for a more thorough analysis of this subject, be sure to read this: http://www.cockrockmag.com/oreilly-misunderstands-what-the-left-doesnt-recognize
That “atheism is a religion” argument is so lame. Even the concept is lame: religious people attacking a line of reasoning as being religious. But the bigger problem is that it just isn’t true. There are a million sayings like this, but atheists will often say that “atheism is a religion in the sense that ‘off’ is a TV channel,” or in the sense that “bald is a hair color,” etc. The fact is, atheism just means you don’t affirmatively believe in any supernatural god(s). There is nothing religious about that. You (Michael) don’t believe in Thor, Mithra, Zeus, Buddha, Allah, Shiva, etc., etc., etc. You are effectively an atheist in the eyes of a Hindu, or a Zoroastrian. Most people on earth don’t believe in Yahweh or Jesus. You didn’t either, until you were indoctrinated as a kid. The point is this: just as it doesn’t take “faith” or “belief” to think there is not a silverback gorilla in your closet (there’s no evidence that there is one, although it’s conceivably true, so you don’t believe it), it doesn’t take faith not to believe in Yahweh/Jesus. Or Thor, etc. This becomes especially obvious if you imagine – just for the sake of argument – just imagine that atheists are right, and that Christianity is a myth. Then you’ll see why not believing stuff that undisputably requires “faith” to believe is not, in and of itself, a religious belief. I think what you mean to say is that some atheists are so militant in their anti-theism – so dogmatic and rigid in their approach – that their behavior borders on religion. Even this is wrong, although it’s much more articulately stated. (Being an atheist at all in this overwhelmingly religious country requires a positive sense of questioning what you’re force-fed and evaluating and scrutinizing evidence, despite the social consequences… atheists are almost by definition not dogmatic.)