Is atheism the rational choice?

so the Church of England Synod received some distressing news this week attendance at his churches is set to fall for the next 30 years with today's figure of 18 people per 1000 regularly going to church dropping to just 10 per thousand by 2046 today an 81 year old is eight times more likely to turn Church than an 18 year old well a new book battling the gods published here in Cambridge this week challenges the assumption that humanity is naturally disposed to believe in God's describes how atheism existed in the most ancient of classical societies long before Christianity did fascinating and is atheism the rational choice is the question we're asking to speak to the author of that book Tim is here in just a second but let me start off with dr. Elaine stalky theologian and philosopher lovely to have you here this morning thank you right virgin births people coming back from the tomb copses jumping out of graves talking donkeys peter 2:16 flying horses how can that be a rational choice depends on what you mean by rational choice I mean the whole idea that atheism is a rational choice which is of course the topic of this discussion my answers no it's not enough a rational choice you've turned it round you've our South talking donkeys a rational choice which I haven't actually come to debate no I think it's I think I think it's fair to turn it right because we're talking about which is the rational choice and if you're saying religion is the rational choice people who might question that might like you know talking donkeys might be on the list well we're not talking about that though words of your choice so let's stop with the topic that we all came to actually debate and so you can be um in my room I'm sorry sorry um so you know it which is the rational choice which is the irrational choice it is an absolutely fair area know that the which is the wrong the wrong question too as though there are only two options here atheism or talking donkeys and that's really what I'm rejecting konkey okay so open book that before I thought I completely look will have a cup of tea later I'll buy your lunch but let me let me put this then isn't isn't the reason I mentioned talking donkeys and all those things that some atheists find apps it will all a theist find absolutely laterally still things I mentioned are looking donkey a little indeed so indeed so but that's it you know that's a prima facie thing that people see about it and then they move on to perhaps a more sophisticated theology and that's that's absolutely understanding and fair enough but doesn't at faith transcend reason and that's not an irreligious thing to say that's just what should happen you should go beyond reason faith is greater than reason that's the argument isn't it no because you must understand the nature of reason I mean let's take this word reason words get their meaning from the system of which they're apart and so we can construct meanings of reason that are actually buy into certain systems have certain presuppositions loaded into them you can have reason that starts from the assumption that there is no God and once you've actually taken that as your regional point so that reason is about gaining knowledge from our five sense experiences or understanding about the explanation of those what gain we gain from those experiences and it's a very very narrow of your reason it shrinks our understanding of reason and by the time you've gone down that path yes you have gotten room for God no no I'm not excuse me yeah because I'm finished yet listen I'm telling you huh she's in good form this morning be careful are you gonna be sure is not about starting out with the belief that there's no God I haven't finish this you don't believe something if there isn't any evidence for no we haven't got there yet the evidence is based on the assumptions that you're already putting in right to the program and then when we're making a program on a computer you're you're actually already programming fingers in and you know at the end of that you're going to get information out of it and the word reason is the same there isn't one universal neutral objective view of reason that the entire human race and everything in the world agrees with people would have different views of reason so where do I go for my understanding of whether atheism is rational or Christian extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence extra well I mean for example do I take some leading scientists are gluey professor physics at Oxford University Tom McLeish professor at Durham University Francis Collins head of the genome project all of whom say Christianity is where we are we've actually put on there our fingers to the bone and we are we rational are those people rational Holly's Dinah coming well you see people building it's a grand bargain they're gonna Tim in a minute it I mean your formal degree with Elaine that we are but we started in the wrong place but it seems to me that reason isn't isn't why people make religious choices you become part of a religion through growing up through all sorts of things and it's actually quite difficult as I know my own experience um to walk away from that Yonex when you're an atheist I'm an alien contrastive in an election why don't you stay a Church of England become a lot of them are atheists why do you good well cycle stuff because I life might have been more comfortable if I had yeah I couldn't do it okay Tim um okay via X vicars and talking donkeys and Elaine's superb exposition of different types of Reason let's talk about these ancient atheists this is fascinating before before out before Elaine before Einstein before but Darwin before Galileo I thought he was mentioned earlier on before Jesus you know what where did these ancient atheists get the intellectual weaponry for this but I think this the intellectual weaponry has always been there I think that atheism is actually just as normal a feature of human life as religious belief I mean we're asking whether atheism is the rational choice I'd say it's certainly the intellectually critical choice and this is where I'd agree entirely with what Arif just said atheism isn't actually a belief about the world atheism is a methodology it's an intellectual methodology that says that we don't start from a position of dogma we start from evidence and to the best of our abilities and of course the human brain is palpable to the best of our abilities we go from evidence to conclusion we're led by that evidence now might respectfully say that the discussion we had earlier about the catholic church's own investigation into child abuse might have been bettered if they'd followed that sort of methodology so I would say two intellectually critical but I like Elaine I'm rather suspicious of the word rational which seems to plug us into very quickly into a story about human progress away from the primitive societies that don't get things you know via the Enlightenment and so forth to the Western science lesson Madame so what about those early atheists what were their views on on first cause I mean it was a time of thunderbolt and rainbow the God did that and God did that but what about first cause if we're talking about a more sophisticated theology and desire to understand the world or where they're not to bound up in notions of creation they once you bound up notions of creation cria mean if you think about the where fault lines for form between the religious and the atheistic they do change over time and creation is one of these things that in a very big in the 20th and 21st century but perhaps I mean I'm no expert in the history of these debates but it certainly wasn't a fault line for classical antiquity having said that they were very keen to find alternative explanations for celestial phenomena and there were the question of eyeballs and rambling on doing exactly this under is the weapon of Zeus yeah so the idea that you can actually explain it through material causes and so it was a key weapon in the in trying to unpick conventional ideas of theism yeah or if do you think that belief is explainable in terms of natural selection and evolution if you reach a certain cognitive level then you then you can explain the Thunderbolt so you explain the Rainbows and you can you can ya see significance yeah things that's right I mean there there are obviously there are theories concerning how religious beliefs came to exist in the first place and I think that religious belief may well have some natural basis for instance and this is a heat theory that goes back at least to David Hume which is that people do have a natural tendency and indeed this nebula advantage in natural tendency to be over credulous about there being some kind of agency behind the phenomena that you observe so for instance you know the marginal benefits of being slightly too credulous that the thing you see moving as a snake rather than you know stone or something I'll clear its advantage with the advantages that you run away more often than then you need to running away more often than you need to is much safer than running weighs less ival thing that's like yeah exactly yes surely as well it's being able to be the guy who can explain stuff see that Thunder well that yeah sure I mean that comes back and then you then you then you are more successful breeder that's right no that and it I don't know whether you go I don't know whether we can actually set up on lodging you chop it up and say this comes then that this one I think humanity's always been a you know big bag of hair bows assorted sweet you know many different types in the hey listen I bet she had a me for talking donkeys I'm going to have a gun bag which I think I think I think we agree and is is that there is whatever the explanation is for religious belief certainly explanation isn't in terms of the evidence for it there is just no evidence at all that the universe was made by man with magic powers or that somebody came back from the dead let alone datong talking donkeys are the talking snakes one of the other stuff that they they try and palm off on a semi simple essential that's symbolic for centuries if you got his outside space and time you know your dragon got into into the wrong place you know it's funny they only started saying it was symbolic when the evidence became really clear that it was literally false thought that they didn't know we missed you missed Church this morning didn't we that before Peter the default position oh that's the wrong with the natural the natural disposition is i Sarah's dying to get in the lonely comforted future on me come on so well I actually doesn't promise eyes my belief in Christianity to all to think that atheism is in fact a default position or one of the default positions after we believe that man's fallen and that he was separated from his creator so that would totally come in line with our beliefs but I find it interesting that the professor went for really positive before idea of atheism atheism is simply the disbelief in God that's all it is it's nothing more than that and they're different forms of atheism you can't simply say yeah the Athens of one particular thing some atheists rate is because their empiricist they believe that the only reasons the only things that are true though you can empirically verify here some because they're naturalist materialist in fact mostly because a noxious materialist they be the only causes are natural that anything that exists is material the reason I don't think the 80s was a rational choices because I think there's far too much good evidence for distance of God and exactly correct Catholic Christianity believed that atheism is true and for that reason I would say that it's irrational for one thing I think we have the evidence of the resurrection which i think is excellent where not only do I think we have excellent evidence historically knowing that we also have metaphysical convictions of God such as the Athenian argument can change all of these different arguments are very very good at this one existence of God this is an assertion - first of all sorry first of all but just on evidence I mean this this idea of people rising from the dead I mean that's a common feature of a number of different ancient stories and it's a way of explaining I mean there's a guy called Apollonius of Tyana whose story is told in a very similar way of sort of coming back from the dead afterwards it's how you express the idea of the holy man in a certain genre of ancient writer it's not that not that the evidence that we have for Christ rising is based on greco-roman biography and the fact that they followed us go forth afterwards and then they died for this belief that's simply not the same as simply animus derivation that's on both sides or also by the contemporary simply not the same contemporary chronicles like Philo of Alexandria who chronicled everything didn't didn't mention it but they're other people who who do mention it you know what we've had that debate before we're going to have it again and you Sarah I think that belief is is logical and it's rational but which belief sir is Scientology there's a religious belief is that rational and well yeah it is recognized as religion some possible okay you have Hari Krishna is that rational you have to use your reasons what what and I well first of all I just like to start with why would that I think atheism is a rush it is Mormonism rush um well Mormonism that's a very recently I think you said no religion or religious right I think you could just you think you can demonstrate there's some religions that have much better reasons than other is sir I apologize it's over to you now can I just begin with something that faith and reason John ii said over two wings on which the human spirit soars to contemplate the truth so I think you need faith and you need reason so why is fable I was even more for Sara because because it answers to the longings of the human heart I think it's irrational to feel just a room full of people and an earth full of people who long for justice who long for truth who long for beauty and who long for eternal life should be living in a universe that answers to none of those desires and requirements of Earth or the cynical thing to believe that all the things we desire are nothing and they end nowhere and time is there and then we fall into an abyss of meaninglessness that is irrational and cynical but what about you also need apart from that longing and desire and the beauty of the lives of the saints I'm not here talking about the source of Mormonism because you need waste removal of the evidence why do we need it because human cries out because it's that simple it was under the meaning because it's true but because we cry out for a communion beyond our theists love each other something doesn't make it true what wanting something doesn't make it I agree with you sir but that's why you need no no not just I'm just a minute Papa let me go to RS alright for this this this long word stop blushes helpful because it gives an idea of the sorts of confusions that lie behind what you call will seem to thinker arguments um I've only heard why not literally you did not from and don't talk about three minutes mom and I haven't had a single argument I did hear one argument from from Peter earlier on which is to do with scriptural evidence for the resurrection and you you alluded to other ones that have been exploded for hundreds of years but in the case of spirit for evidence every everyone knows it's quite clear that people make mistakes all the time scriptures are wrong all the time testimonies are wrong all the time you yourself believe that testimonies in Islam in Mormonism in Scientology in David Koresh these are all wrong hope to these things of the sayings it's nice loving me so they these mistakes these that you hungry have some reason to think I'm gonna privilege Elena this evidence for the restraining got military if that is nice baking alone uh or if you're you know you're a good academic I respect your stuff in a whole range of ways what you're talking now is rubbish and and that's largely because have you never heard of hermeneutics you actually get can't simply say scriptures are wrong the Bible is a library it's not just a book excuse me finish it's a library full of many different kinds of literature some of its songs some of its prophecy some movies biography some of its letters some of this dream analysis some of its fiction deliberately fictionally the Gospels are full of fictional stories about leg we call them parables and it's loads of different forms of talking junk is a parable whether you're coming to those forms with literature you actually need them appropriate to the form of literally you don't try and get the books of law out of the Psalms like the ones you're very interesting what does not even that these things are truth are ever thunderballs gonna knock you down in just one friggin oh la la death is this was this not in in it but we're coming to the end we're coming to the end so this started much earlier well we have it when we're doing we were talking about other things let let me ask you this because it isn't it logical that in the door in the in the dawn of our species the cradle of our species a hundred thousand years ago people only live for 20 years 25 years so you know adulthood was short people died with massive infant mortality rate and religion was a way of dealing with our growing brains with our cognitive abilities dealing with death and loss well I wasn't expecting that quick answer away well what's the question it wasn't that the reason for the development of religious belief no no no no not at all it was not you've given no evidence you just developed a hypothesis the reason for people's religious beliefs better I'll focus is the man with magic powers do it's not a fair breathing what you say any chance of me following my sentence oh the reason for the religious belief is that deep down in our heart we have this yearning and I think that any human being would consent to having a great deal we have we have to leave it we have to leave it there I know what she's right we should have started earlier thank you for watching

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Length: 17min 43sec (1063 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 21 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/ronin1066]

Yes

[u/Retrikaethan]

well since gods don't exist, yes. it is the only rational choice.

[u/Parrot132]

It would be if belief was a choice, but it's not. Nobody, particularly a rational person, can choose their beliefs. If you doubt that then try believing that clouds are square. Are you honestly able to hold that belief, even for a short time? I know I'm not.

[u/W00ster]

It is the default choice!

If you are never indoctrinated with mythology then the default atheism will not change.

We are all born atheists!

[u/layoR]

Atheism isn't a choice. Not believing in Zeus isn't a choice either.

[u/charlaron]

Well, skepticism is the rational choice,

and there's no good evidence by which a skeptic can justify being a theist,

so "Yes".

[u/[deleted]]

JP2 said this, therefore that is how it is.

What kind of reasoning is that? I swear, every "argument" they come up with always leads back to feelings and descriptive BS. The logic doesn't even flow properly. What a headache

[u/AgitatedOwl]

I'm only an atheist because irrational people believe in a magical man in the sky. It's ridiculous atheism is even a thing. You don't need a word for people who don't believe in pixies or leprechauns.

[u/JackRawlinson]

It isn't a choice. It's a conclusion.