The faith of the atheist

We were sitting in the Faculty club,  discussing his atheism. 'I believe there is no god'.  “What would it take to change your mind?” I asked him. 'Well if the sun went down 10 degrees I would believe', he said.  “Would you” I asked him, “would you really?”.  He thought for a minute and then said 'No, I would find some other explanation for it'.  “You have a lot of faith”, I told him, “and you said it yourself 'I believe there is no God' ”. His faith of course is not the same as mine. His faith, his belief, is in “not God”.  That is after all what the word 'atheist' means. 

Certainly not all atheists are as unyielding as my friend, but this (true) story does illustrate how easily, on both sides of the fence,  we tend to (a) argue from our presuppositions  and (b)  to dig in.  I think we need to be aware of our presuppositions and, if our faith is not to be blind, to be willing to reexamine them.  Admittedly this is hard, again on both sides of the fence.  It would be less confusing if there were just two positions, but there are many voices all claiming to be truth!

Now while I am not saying that my friend is representative of all atheists, I am saying that in the end, all atheists hold to their position by faith.  But it is not just the atheist whose world views are held by faith.  In fact we all have world views, and each and every one of them (including mine) are positions of faith.  A world view of course is a subset of all the things we have come to believe about reality. A helpful list some of the things  I am taking about can be found at

http://www.gregcaughill.com/theology-wiki/christian-apologetics/53-worldviews.html.

 It seems however as  though most people are unaware they possess  a World view, but most arguments have their roots in conflicting worldviews, for example  abortion, the secular verses the religious etc.  To say it again, many are not aware of their presuppositions. The famous Oxford Professor Richard Dawkins for example, is a man of great faith, though I believe that he would adamantly deny it. He is quoted as saying “I believe that eventually we will be able to explain everything in terms of the  natural”. When asked what evidence he had for this belief, he had to admit that he had  none.

Perhaps then, since we all hold our positions by faith we should be a little more tolerant of each other's views.  In fact one more implication of the work of  Kurt Godel (see yesterday's post), is that  there is no system that has all the answers be it Philosophical, Psychological or Theological.  Yes not even, or perhaps for emphasis especially not even Christians, have all the answers. What does the Scripture say? “Let him who thinks that he knows something, acknowledged that he knows nothing yet as he aught to know” (more later on this).