Atheism: A logical choice, or a lazy one?

Richard Dawkins, atheist & skeptic

‘Non-religious’ is a rapidly growing response to the questioning of one’s spiritual affiliation. Popular culture and the intellectual elite have created an an atmosphere of apathetic disdain towards religion – namely Christianity. The Richard Dawkins’ and Bill Maher’s of the world mock religious belief with intensity, and the intellectual elite chastise it, passing it off as naive and foolish.

In a culture that indoctrinates people to act without thinking, it’s easiest to adopt the latest flavor of popular thought. We are a society of followers, and are largely afraid to upset the apple cart. In a world without finite answers for the existence of God, the origin of life and where we go when we die, jumping on the bandwagon of atheism is a logical choice for many. It’s easiest, and most logical to believe in nothing. Or, is it?

“…violence is a logically deducible path from atheism, and may I recommend for your reading that Darwin himself categorically stated this in A World of Natural Selection. Tennyson, in pre-Darwinian poetic postulation, described nature “red in tooth and claw”. Where antitheism has been the reigning ideology, blood has flowed without restraint – China, Russia and Nazi Germany provide the grusome tale of the tape.”,

The overarching issue lies in how we are trained to define religion. Those who proclaim atheism or agnosticism often do so to wipe their hands clean of the many difficult questions posed to Christians, Muslims and the like. Bottom line – atheists don’t want to be called religious. Let’s explore the word religion in more depth, and get to the bottom of its meaning. Is religion a belief in God/s? Not really, because Zen Buddhists don’t actually believe in a God at all. Is religion the believe in a supernatural force? Not exactly, Hinduism is rooted in materialism.

When then is religion? To summarize succinctly – religion is a worldview or world-narrative. The beliefs you hold regarding the way the world should work -morality, justice, meaning, etc.- define what we hold sacred. It’s impossible to believe in nothing, as it would still require believing in something.

What does this mean for the non-religious? It means we are all religious, like it or not. The worldview, or core beliefs of atheism, classify it as a religion. Modern atheists present a soft definition of the term ‘atheism’, knowing full well that atheistic belief, at the core, falls victim to philosophical suicide.

Ravi Zacharias, perhaps the most profound Christian thinker on the planet, has for years studied atheism and its roots. Zacharias says modern Atheists pitch a soft-sell of their beliefs, knowing that the absolute assertions of true Atheism -God doesn’t exist- commit devastating logical fallacies, which are not academically credible.

As Zacharias astutely points out:

“…to move to atheism by default is hardly an academically credible switch to make when there are a myriad of other options”

“…to say that there is insufficient evidence for theism and there I am an atheist implies a logically satisfactory defense of atheism that they do not have. After all, why else would they hold to it if it is logically indefensible, when their very reason for denying theism is that it is logically indefensible?

“…it is purely an admission that atheism cannot be defended, even though they have tried, hence the softer version of agnosticism…”

“The word atheism comes from the Greek…alpha is the negative, and theos means “God”…Having quickly recognized the inherent contradiction of affirming God’s non-existence, which absolutely would at the same time presuppose infinite knowledge on the part of the one doing the denying, a philosophically convenient switch was made to agnosticism.”