Response to Austin Cline’s Agnosticism / Atheism Blog

My Thanksgiving post, Can Atheists Really Give Thanks apparently provoked a lot of heated discussion, some of which is still going on. But maybe what’s surprised me more than the amount of discussion the topic has generated, has been the tone.

The site’s moderator, Austin Cline, recently recapped our “exchange” in this way:

Update: Mike Duran has been posting about this in comments on this own site. He falsely claims that his “point” has been “dismissed,” even though anyone can see that his claim that “in a temporal / amoral universe, doing good, appreciating beauty, experiencing pleasure, doesn’t really matter” has been addressed more than once. Specifically, he has been challenged more than once to support it and rather than doing so, he simply refuses to continue to engage in conversation. He walks away.

By dishonestly pretending that others are simply dismissing his point, Mike Duran is implying that he made some great, insightful statement that others are afraid of. No one is afraid of it, though, and no one has ignored it. Duran, however, can’t seem to take it seriously enough to invest even a couple of minutes to defend it and if he can’t take your own points that seriously, then neither should anyone else. How often has Christians come to this site, made similarly bigoted claims, and then disappeared after being challenged? Most of them, actually. What does this say about Christians and Christianity?

I wanted to take some time to address Austin Cline’s characterization of our exchange, reiterate some of the points he feels I left unsupported, as well as comment on the “ground rules,” or lack thereof, that inflame such blog skirmishes. Whatever I say from here on out will, no doubt, be viewed by him as a perpetuation of my “bigoted claims” and cowardice. So be it. Perhaps, however, I can quell the suggestion that I’ve simply “disappeared after being challenged.”

At this writing, the thread at Austin Cline’s Agnosticism / Atheism Blog is well over 120 comments and many subsequent points have been made since I exited that conversation. Cline suggested my departure inferred that I don’t take it “seriously enough to invest even a couple of minutes to defend [my position].” I’m unsure how long Cline thinks I should remain to answer objections at his site in order to convince him I take this subject “seriously”. My three lengthy comments (#’s 3, 7 and 18), all of which required more than “a couple minutes” to compose, are apparently not enough.

As I said in my last comment there, one reason I withdrew from further involvement was the “name calling” going on. Comment #66 by marc is indicative of the tone of that “discussion”:

To Mike Duran. . . You were bested. Plain and simple. Wherever you are, I’m sure it’s safe and no one confronts you on your idiotology.

Folks like marc don’t strike me as individuals who want to dialog, but as those who look for ways to “best” their opponent. As such, whoever has the best sound bite or the wittiest comeback, has “the truth.” That such an important topic as the nature of existence can be “proven” in such short measure, with so little evidence, on an internet forum, by lay people, makes marc’s chest-thumping all the more sad. Thankfully, truth is not determined by who’s “bested.”

Even more disheartening to me is Cline’s, similarly inflammatory tone. In the above quote, he portrays me as making “false claims” and “dishonestly pretending that others are simply dismissing [my] point.” He summarizes, “How often has Christians come to this site, made similarly bigoted claims” (emphasis mine). Along those lines, Nancy referred to my “inane reasoning” (#2), Jason said it was “ridiculously stupid” (#15), and marc added that I was “delusional” (#8). I’m sure there’s been more unflattering tidbits sprinkled along the way. Perhaps it’s just me, but charges of bigotry and dishonesty, calling others delusional and inane, and labeling others’ belief systems as “idiotology” don’t do much for the spirit of healthy debate.

Frankly, this type of rhetoric is one reason I did not continue the “discussion” at Cline’s site. If this is how he and his fellow atheists defend their position in the marketplace of ideas, it’s no wonder that the vast majority of Americans still believe in God. I’ve always held that civility is one of the “rules of engagement” in debate and that once we throw that out the window, logic will surely follow. I fear that both have been breached in this skirmish.

One of Cline’s charges is that I “falsely claimed” that my point has been “dismissed.” I’d still assert that my main point has been skirted and here’s an example of why. From comment #26:

Duran: Classic atheism has, for millennia, acknowledged that the absence of God intrinsically affects one’s morals and meaning.

Cline: I never claimed that there was “no effect” it’s just that the only “effect” is that gods don’t enter into the subject. That’s all. For someone who complained so strongly about alleged mischaracterizations, you sure are quick to misrepresent others.

Please look at this carefully. Austin Cline asserts that, “the only effect” of postulating the non-existence of God “is that gods don’t enter into the subject” (emphasis mine). This is either (a) disingenuous or (b) evidence of ignorance of classic atheism.

Most serious philosophers have wrestled with the moral / ethical / existential implications of a world without God. David Hume in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, addressed the issue of ethics and morality. Morality, he taught, is not based upon reason, fact, or God, but upon feelings. Immanuel Kant spent considerable time attempting to provide rational grounds for social ethics apart from the existence of God, for instance his Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (often referred to as “the Prize Essay”). Nietzsche is often viewed as the father of the “God is dead” movement in the early sixties. His parable, Thus Spake Zarathustra, directly addresses man’s quest for morality without God. Zarathustra, as the story goes, is a master ethicist who abandons his quest for virtue as unreasonable and false. Bertrand Russell vehemently argued against God and a moral law. French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was an atheistic existentialist who in his most famous work, Being and Nothingness, concluded that there is no explanation for the brute existence of things. Because life is absurd, Sartre taught, man must authenticate himself and author his own values. And on a less scholarly note, the famous atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair, in her book What on Earth Is an Atheist, said:

We need a decent, modern, sophisticated and workable set of standards by which we can get along with ourselves and with others. (pg. 39)

So while the Christian’s standards are defined outside of him (by God’s Law), the atheist must establish a “workable set of standards” to “get along with [himself] and with others.” In other words, the absence of God affects one’s existence. Is it any wonder that Will Durant, the popular historian and philosopher, categorized the greatest question of our time as “Can man live without God?”

As you can see, Austin Cline’s assertion that “the only effect” of positing the non-existence of God “is that gods don’t enter into the subject,” fails to acknowledge the long historical discussion, by theist and atheist alike, concerning the moral / ethical / existential implications of living in an amoral, godless universe. The point that I made in my original post, my comments at his site, and reiterate here is that THE ABSENCE OF GOD RADICALLY AFFECTS ONE’S MORALS AND MEANING.

However, instead of simply acknowledging the relevance of the point, the philosophical tension it creates, and its historical tethers, Cline continues in comment #26:

Duran: By way of example, I Googled “Morality without God” and found 2,010,000 results. Guess my “assertion” isn’t so “ridiculously stupid,” huh?

Cline: So, you actually believe that if lots of people think or assert something, then it can’t be “ridiculously stupid?” What do you suppose that tells others about the quality of your reasoning skills?

If Austin Cline would have taken just “a couple minutes” to peruse these links, he’d see that many (if not most) of them are atheists addressing the problem of meaning and morality without God. The Google reference is not intended to prove one cannot find meaning and morality without God, but that it’s a major issue for atheists. Instead, Cline mischaracterizes my point, makes a false assumption about my intention and questions “the quality of [my] reasoning skills.” The volume of Google hits only buttress my assertion that finding meaning apart from God is a major issue for atheists. C’mon, how hard is this?

Cline’s basic reply to my assertion that atheists cannot find meaning without God was this, from comment #26:

Duran: Once again, if you’re just an animal, an advanced collection of cells, who will dissolve into absolute nothingness along with all your good deeds and efforts, then yes: Life is ultimately of no value.

Cline: OK. Prove it.

Duran: Attempting to find meaning in a meaningless world is tantamount to madness.

Cline: OK. Prove it.

With rejoinders like this, why debate? My statements, like his, are philosophical assertions not scientific equations. “Proving” that the search for meaning is futile in a meaningless world is as nebulous as trying to “prove” it isn’t. To illustrate this point, let me invert Cline’s response in this mock exchange:

Cline: Attempting to find meaning in a meaningless world IS NOT tantamount to madness.

Duran: OK. Prove it.

How exactly would Cline go about “proving” that finding “meaning in a meaningless world is not tantamount to madness”? If he said that many atheists don’t go mad, I’d say that some do. If he said that some live happy, satisfied lives, I’d say that some don’t. Judging the validity of a philosophy by its adherents is double-edged — no one perfectly embodies any single belief system and there’s always exceptions to the rule. If Cline thinks he “proves” his point because some atheists DO find meaning, I’d argue, as I have all along, that there’s no logical reason or necessity that they do so. Atheism offers no compelling argument for why one must believe or behave any way. This is why Hume and Kant and Nietzsche and Russell spent so much time trying to articulate a reason to live and be ethical — because they understood the danger of extrapolating their unbelief to its logical conclusions.

I’d also float this idea: Many Christians find happiness and meaning. No doubt, some of that “happiness” is contrived and shallow. Nevertheless, I think Cline would agree that the fact that some Christians find meaning in Christianity DOES NOT validate Christianity. Likewise, the fact that some atheists find meaning in atheism DOES NOT validate atheism. The validation of any belief system involves a fragile combination of logic, evidence, and humility.

If anything, my encounter with Austin Cline and his readers reinforces the caricature of the “angry atheist.” Atheism is not a passive unbelief in God, but a brazen assertion in his non-existence. For the most part, atheism is really anti-theism — an aggressive counterattack against religion and the religious. After my encounter with Cline, I’m wondering if this “hostility” against theists is actually what drives many atheists.

I’ve always felt that, at the heart of atheism, is a terrible, unspoken philosophical inconsistency. For only until every possible dimension and nook and cranny of the universe can be explored, can someone, with confidence, say there is no God. But no one has done this. Thus, the atheist is left to staunchly defend something he CANNOT EVER PROVE. For this reason, agnosticism has always seemed like a far more reasonable, and less hostile, stance.

Finally, if atheism is true, discussions like this don’t matter. If there’s no god, and no heaven or hell, when we nuke ourselves into oblivion, the sun burns out in a million years, or the universe contracts again, the fact that I was “bested” by a bunch of atheists won’t flippin’ matter. If, however, Christianity is true, these discussions are infinitely more important.