Man, Nothingness, and Being: A Short Reflection on How the Gospel Might Speak to Atheism

Man is created in the image of God ex nihilo, out of nothing, and so in a sense when he looks honestly into his soul man sees a double reality: on the one hand the fact of an infinite gaping nothingness, and on the other hand the infinite embracing reality of Being. This internal tension demands and takes an enormous toll on his psyche, and in his fallen state man is ever striving towards being, as if standing precariously on and gripping an impossible incline, ever fearing lest he slip into the bottomless nothingness which he senses, if not recognizes, within himself deep below.

At times the nothingness can appear almost sweet, like an infinite ease, while at other times terrifying in its overwhelming power to destroy, through a kind of inexorable negating power of absence, all meaning, connection, and value. Similarly, at times Being can be reassuring, affirming, and uplifting (as out of the nothing), while at other times seem impossible in its rigid demands, its edges and consequences, terrifying in its overwhelming, overshining presence, like a terrible judge ever threatening to pronounce guilt at one’s inability to live up to reality’s infinite realism. In certain moments these two can seem almost to coalesce, to become as if one, where total absence is an infinite presence, and infinite presence a space beyond the cacophony of things, i.e. of matter and form. 

The urge to atheism that some feel is just this thirsting for truth, real truth, as a radical denial of all pious opinions and romantic ephemera, the urge to acknowledge as meaningful the absolute nothingness which appears as such an inextricable part of one’s experience of being (however paradoxical that may sound). Atheism, in this nearly religious sense, is the denial of infinite Being in favor of infinite nothingness. It is finally a kind of mystical nothingness which moves, even bizarrely and as if against the will of the atheist, towards the recognition of a transcendental fecundity at the heart of all such nihilism. This is the path out of atheism by taking the path through atheism, to recognize that beyond all mythologies and speculations there is a bedrock of reality that, often frustratingly, demands recognition. The reality of nothingness finally becomes reality, becomes presence.

From this vantage, and for some perhaps only from this vantage, one is at last able to see that what was once a pervasive absence is now a pervasive presence, and it becomes undeniable that there is a positive reality which pervades all things, and that this has always been so. In this one is even able to see that at the heart of religious faith there is a kernel of truth, one inadequately married to name and form, to be sure, but one to which name and form can become translucent, transcendental reality accommodating itself to the imperfect minds of men. 

This transcendental reality, moreover, has produced time and space, and so pervades all things while not being touched by them. This transcendental reality even has all power. It stands beyond all name and form, all time and space, all laws and all entropy, and in this the true meaning of God starts to dawn on the mind: That which is beyond, but also within, for in this Truth we live and move and have our being. And even here insight is not exhausted, because, beyond the vagaries of personality, the personhood that stands at the heart of our experience is no longer perceived as merely accidental, but reflective, like a deep echo, of what is true at even the most fundamental level of reality. And so transcendental reality is known not merely as an It, but as Person, and here one stands at the threshold of the transcendental Trinity of Persons: the Origin, the Logos, and the Spirit.

Having created all reality, its very Master, the Logos is able to enter into time and space. Almost as if the Dreamer had entered into his own dream, He entered into the stream of history, time and space offering no resistance to Him. For how could they? And so, having lived perfectly according to the laws of nature, and sensitive to their origin beyond time and space, after dying miserably on a cross it were as nothing for Him to transcend them, as if mocking the law of death that governs all things in this world, by rising from the dead, manifesting the mastery of Being over nothingness. This message echoes throughout the world, that conquering death through dying, passing through nothingness Being is victorious, both in time and in eternity, on earth as it is in heaven: This being the recapitulation of the insight that Being is the fundamental Truth, and that even nothingness gives way to He Who Is.

-Fr. Joshua Schooping

The Reality Signifying Logos: Further Reflections on the Semiological Argument for God

Summing up the previous article, what it intends to say is that "evidence" is semiotic, which is to say it is one thing pointing to or speaking of another. For example, the "smoking gun" points to the killer, but is not the killer himself. That being the case, the atheist's demand for "evidence" commits them to certain assumptions, specifically the intelligibility of the universe. In other words, if God exists, then something about the universe ought to point to God's existence, without it itself being God.

Now, the intelligibility of the universe - the intelligibility itself - points to an ordering principle that makes the universe intelligible. At a fundamental level, something about the universe coordinates with intelligibility, coherence, order. This ordering principle is what is termed Logos in Christian philosophical theology (and although Logos is much more than merely a principle, it is at least a principle). Therefore, the intelligibility of the universe implies Logos, i.e. God. The dilemma this presents to the atheist is that for the atheist to attack the intelligibility of the universe as evidence of an ordering principle, which is to say Logos, would be for him to attack the principle by which scientific inquiry proceeds. Either he admits Logos, and therefore God, and proceeds with scientific inquiry, or he denies the Logos and therefore science, since science proceeds as a consequence of the principle of intelligibility, which is to say the Logos, which is presupposed in all rational empirical inquiry.

Moving forward, and regarding the order in the universe signifying the Logos, an objection based on multiverses would not be sustainable. Multiverses don't help the atheist, rather the multiverse proposal would merely kick the can down the road. In the argument from semiosis, a multiverse theory would not work since the mathematics which seeks to justify such a theoretical construct necessitates that the mathematical laws imply an overarching integrating principle (i.e. Logos) which would make such transuniversal calculations and conclusions possible. In other words, not only are such mathematical laws not empirical, but themselves point to Logos.

Regarding a comparison with the teleological argument, it would also be fitting to distinguish the semiological argument from the teleological argument in that atheists will typically object to telos in nature, whether biological or otherwise, but they cannot object to order in nature, or its significance, lest they deny the possibility of scientific inquiry. It does not seem that chaos would be a strong objection here, either, in that entropy is a scientifically intelligible phenomenon, and is even a field of study in science, having laws of entropy which govern such phenomena. Such laws, then, again signify Logos.

The semiotic nature of the empirical thus seems to be a key aspect of the argument, for it means that the atheist is already using the material of the universe to point to something that is not immediately empirical, thus putting a wedge in their empiricism, a wedge between what they see and the laws that they infer from what they see, a gap that gives room for the theist to accuse them of inconsistency if they finally attempt to deny Logos.

-Fr. Joshua Schooping

The Reality Signifying Logos: A Semiological Argument for the Existence of God

Atheists ask for evidence. Evidence is semiotic, it functions by signification. For example, a falling object is not itself gravity, and so as evidence of gravity the falling object functions semiotically as a sign of gravity. Gravity itself, therefore, is not known directly by the senses, and so is not directly empirical. The empirical aspect of gravity functions according to signification, i.e. it is semiotic.

What would evidence of God be? Well, the concept of God includes that it (the concept) points to a reality not contained within the empirical realm. Like gravity, God cannot, in principle, be verified directly, cannot be directly perceived by the senses. Therefore, evidence for God must also be semiotic.

Moreover, God, as a concept, includes many aspects that are distinct, and so to provide reasonable evidence for what the conceptual sign points to could not therefore mean providing exhaustive evidence for all that is ascribed to God. Only certain attributes can be reasonably treated at any given time. A proof of God's love, for example, is not the same as a proof of His existence. The semiotic evidence, in other words, must be suited to the attribute.

Now, the evidence demanded by naturalists is not God's love but His existence, but this existence must be related to something conceptually meaningful to the naturalist. What is meaningful to a naturalist is related to his basic presupposition regarding the universe: its intelligibility. Their basic assumption about the universe is its intelligible order, for apart from this presupposition science cannot establish itself or proceed.

Moving forward, the basic assumption about universal order cannot be verified empirically in any direct way, only semiotically. The laws which govern the universe are not immediately accessible to the senses, but must be rationally discerned. The empirical is a pivot for the intuition of order, but in itself is incapable of proving order. Order must not only be discerned semiotically, but is also a non-empirical presupposition which functions as a precondition of empirical and scientific intelligibility.

It is also worth noting that the cause of something is not circumscribed by the event it affects. Nor do signs circumscribe the signified. For example, although it semiotically points to gravity, the falling object does not itself circumscribe gravity, but is acted upon by gravity. Thus gravity transcends any particular gravitational effect. In this way an ordered event can function semiotically as a pointer to a more fundamental ordering principle or law. Not only does the sign, then, signify the signified, but the signified itself also points to a governing principle or law.

The foregoing is to say that order itself points to a principle of order, something that functions to order that which is ordering. For example, gravity itself is governed by the law of gravity. This law governs the various gravitational effects acting on objects. This is to say that three coinhere, (1) the semiotic object, or sign, like a falling object, (2) that which the sign points to, like gravity, and (3), the law which governs gravity. A similar analogy could obtain from (1) the swaying tree which functions as a sign of wind, (2) the wind itself which the sign, the swaying tree, signifies, i.e. the atmospheric pressure differentials, and (3) the thermodynamic laws which govern the atmospheric pressures.

More generally, all of the forces of nature are bound together as a whole and called the universe. Reality as such is singular. Gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces, quantum mechanics, etc. all operate together in a singular reality (I would say material reality but quantum mechanics and laws of nature are not themselves "material"). In short, all of these forces coinhere in an ordered system, and this system of order functions semiotically to point to an ordering principle which governs this universal integration.

In conclusion, the order in reality, the order which is necessarily presupposed by the scientific endeavor, the order which is already non-material, presupposes a further and more fundamental ordering and integrating principle, a Logos, i.e. that which makes all things coinhere as a single intelligible reality and which yet transcends that reality, analogous to how the law of gravity transcends any particular gravitational effect. The Logos, as a concept, points to the fundamental, non-material ordering and integrating principle of reality that is itself not circumscribed by the reality it orders and integrates. The order of the universe, the very principle of its intelligibility, is therefore evidence of God, because one aspect of the concept of God is that God is the Logos.

-Fr. Joshua Schooping

See also here for a few brief related reflections on multiverses, teleology, and entropy.

An Atheism of Convenience: The Non-Rational Origins of Atheism

Sadly, it seems most people's denial of God is rooted in one or both of two things: Either God didn't do something the person wanted/expected, or He tells them not to do something they want to do. This means that most atheism has its roots in emotion and morality, which is to say not in logic. Few people "arrive" at atheism as a result of long, studied inquiry into the arguments of Aristotle, Plato, Plotinus, Aquinas, etc. They typically assent to atheism due to a much less sophisticated or rational source of denial, and so their faith in God is snuffed out prior to any real exercise of reason. This non-rational source of faithlessness, then, motivates much, if not most, atheism, and as such it deserves a closer inspection.

If you tell a person that there is a street in China, most people will likely believe you. Even if you’ve never seen a street in China, you will likely believe them when they tell you. Humans are wired to believe, for without belief people cannot function. Imagine if you had to literally prove everything to people, all the time. Prove the sandwich isn’t poisoned. Prove you’re my parent. Prove I’m from such and such a city. Prove that 17 is really 17 and not some other number. Prove my memory is accurate. Prove your memory is accurate. Prove that language has meaning. Prove that reasoning is rational. Prove you’ll never cheat. Prove that obeying the law matters. Prove that the law, and each law, is just. And on and on one could go. 

If proof is required of absolutely everything prior to its being believed or believable, then the first step of proof would be impossible, for the first step would have to be proven prior to the first step having been proven. As a result, nothing could justify believing anything either in general or at all, and one could not take a single step because believing one’s own senses would not be established. One couldn’t accept any explanation until they first proved that reasonable explanations ought to be persuasive, but it would be viciously circular to use reason to say that reason is reasonable. If reason cannot be trusted, then reasoning about anything could not be trusted, and so even the senses could not be trusted because one could not trust that one was reasoning accurately about the sense data. Even doubt would be impossible because there would be no rational basis for the doubt, for the very structure of doubt itself implies rationality, and so doubt cannot be so radical that it denies itself the rational ground on which it stands. That would be like using language to prove that words don't exist. The reasonableness of reason must therefore be presupposed on the basis of faith, on the faith-borne presupposition of the reasonableness of reason, otherwise reason must be disqualified, and with it all reasoning about sense perception. Faith is required, therefore, because non-faith is really just nonsense. This is why radical skepticism and nihilism are foolish, because in using reason they have already admitted belief in something other than nothing. 

In that light, it is clear enough that people believe things all the time, without requiring proof. This much is obvious. But why, then, would someone doubt something’s existence? If it is not born of extensive logical inquiry, then some other factor must be involved. Now, if the idea of God were utterly innocuous, then the risk of belief would be very low, and doubt would be less likely. For example, on the one hand, despite not having done the measurements, most people accept that the earth is so many thousands of miles around. If another person said that it was, give or take, several hundred miles different, no resistance would be given. No threat; nothing to doubt here. The truth is, though, on the other hand, with the idea of God comes all sorts of non-innocuous implications. These implications are sensed emotionally as either welcome or threatening to some cherished prior belief or commitment. Only if someone finds an idea threatening to their worldview will they find the motivation to start doubting.

Now, along with the idea of God comes the idea that one must both acknowledge and even obey certain restrictions. In short, God imposes on the free desiring of objects. Consequently, the motive of many people’s disbelief in God is, quite simply, that they want to do what they want to do. God is invisible, and yet the desire seems so tangible, and as such the disbelief in God serves a positive purpose in their mind to free their conscience to pursue the desired object or person. And yet, the absurdity of this being a rational ground for disbelief is obvious. It is merely desire counterposed to God, an atheism of convenience. In contemporary culture, however, convenience is king, and desire is nearly self-justifying, even virtuous, and so God is disbelieved at ever-increasing rates. Why believe in something that limits one’s freedom of desire? Today, the entire progress of humanity is being framed as the increased access to desires, coupled with the systematic deconstruction of all perceived limitations and restrictions, and so as convenience culture insinuates itself more and more, God will necessarily be made to seem less and less real and compelling. Since He does not give total permission in an environment where total permission is the intuited goal, belief in Him becomes consequently perceived as an existential threat to one’s very relationship with life; God is made to seem anti-virtuous.

Not only restrictions, others disbelieve God because He does not satisfy deeply felt desires. Rather than being upset by restrictions, they are willing to believe and obey as a transaction for the reception of desires and favors. As long as the sickness isn’t unto death, they will believe. As long as the marriage lasts, they will believe. As long as they get or don't lose the job, they will believe. And so on. At the point at which God finally seems uncooperative to the desire, not holding up His end of the bargain, their imagined and projected bargain, then the person begins to despise God for betraying their trust.

In order to deal with this atheism, one might be tempted to argue logically for why God’s existence is rational. But, unfortunately, this will not touch the motive of disbelief. The basic selfish motive is driving the show, and that motive is that what they want is king. For them, God either interposes Himself as an obstruction, or He fails to meet an expectation, and so either way He seems positively threatening. In either case man’s desire is made the standard, the criteria whether or not God ought to be believed in and obeyed. Without dethroning self, God will be resisted. To address this, then, one must address the man and his desires. One must address the moral question, whether desire ought to have limits. One must address the assumption that life ought to be as one wants. Until then, God will be resisted with existential fervor. Too much is at stake. The logical question of God's existence is simply an afterthought, a window dressing, a cleaner come in to wash and tidy up what is at root a matter of a desire for unrestrained desire and radical autonomy.

-Fr. Joshua

The Myth of Atheistic Ethics

Following upon the argument of the previous article, an insightful reader offered a clarification that by accidental is meant: “arising from specific experiences accumulated as an ethos over time,” and by arbitrary is meant: “concerning the dynamic of human to human interaction based on personal encounter.” Using these senses for the terms, which amount essentially to subjectivism, it can be observed that if ethics arise from specific experiences accumulated over time, i.e. accidentally, then ethics is essentially non-different from prejudice or personal taste, and can never escape subjectivism. Subjective ethics are no ethics. These accidental ethics can also never have any certainty, because when ethics is based on experience, then, hypothetically, an entirely different set of experiences could produce an entirely different ethics where the selfsame action, say theft, is both wrong and right depending on whether or not one has had a bad or good experience of it. Moreover, if ethics arise from the dynamic of human to human interaction based on personal encounter, i.e. arbitrarily, then ethics is again essentially non-different from prejudice or personal taste, and likewise cannot escape subjectivism. According to this scheme, ethics is made impossible.

One could perhaps also say more about the transfer from experience to ethical prescription, as to why, for example, a subjective experience y of action x ought to mean that action x is wrong. If action x causes suffering, what ethical principle renders the cause of suffering to be translated as ethically wrong? For example, giving birth causes suffering, so according to this reasoning then sex is ethical wrongdoing. At this point the very means of our survival is a fortiori unethical. Homework causes many people suffering, therefore it must be wrong. Taxation causes suffering, therefore it is wrong. The person who disagrees with another person causes suffering, therefore the one who disagrees is wrong. Eating vegetables causes suffering, therefore it is wrong to eat them. The consequences become absurd, and so it is nonsense to state that the foundation of ethics could be the experience of suffering, or even any experience. Suffering in and of itself does not determine whether or not something is ethical.

An atheist may also attempt to escape subjectivist ethics by pointing to the objective actions of nature in order to develop an ethic, but animals can be found to eat their young, cannibalize their own kind, commit tribal warfare and genocide, enslave, rape, and any number of other things. There would be almost no way to exclude any possible action on these terms, and so the actions of nature cannot provide a foundation for a system of ethics. Nature itself causes suffering, sometimes for the sake of survival and sometimes with no apparent cause, and so if nature’s actions justify an action, then nature itself would therefore justify causing suffering to others, either with or without apparent purpose. Moreover, the decision-making process of animals, driven by instinct and desire, would as a consequence of the appeal to nature become the ethical foundation for humans choosing according to the same principles of instinct and desire, and so subjectivism would not be escaped by appealing to the objective world in this way, either, but established as a foundation for ethical action.

Concerning historic atheism, one would not have to dig deeply into history in order to find examples of ethical disparities between individual atheists such as Ayn Rand, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Richard Dawkins, and atheist governments such as the Soviet Union and China, but the question at hand is the issue that they had no truly objective means or canon to establish an ethical system beyond the opinions of the individuals and leaders themselves. In other words, arbitrariness is bound up with atheist ethics, and also with the atheist authority structures which would seek to impose the arbitrary ethical system. What is the guarantee of ethics in any of these systems? Is it, say, because of Rand’s wit, Sartre’s sensualism, Dawkin’s evolutionary philosophy, or Stalin's might, or because of a subjective experience of displeasure, a majority of people's opinion, or something else? Having no canon and nothing but subjective opinion loosely based on reasoning and personal experience, it is clear that these independent atheists found no meaningful or lasting agreement amongst themselves, discovered no transcendent self-evident ethical principle or authority, and so again in no way to escape subjectivism, either the subjectivism of the individual or the group.

In light of the foregoing, the great problem for the atheist is shown to be centered on induction’s inability to generate reliable ethical principles. In essence, where induction means “the inference of a general law from particular instances,” if an ethical prescription is not given from a non-arbitrary authoritative source, then any number of experiences will not discover an ethical principle. For example, as shown above, it is not at all clear that the experience of displeasure could serve as a foundation for an ethical system, and would, on the contrary, produce many absurd conclusions.

The conclusions of inductive reasoning can be disproved by a single contrary instance. For example, if a person states, “all blackbirds are black,” and then one non-black blackbird is found, then the statement “all blackbirds are black” is proved wrong. Thus if one inductively reasons according to the principle of displeasure to the wrongness of theft, all that needs to be found is one instance of theft which does not cause displeasure and the wrongness of theft goes up in smoke. Further problems with displeasure as the foundation for ethics arise, too, for if one, say, steals from a person and they are unaware of it, then the law of displeasure has not been violated, and the action cannot be considered unethical. Or, if one does not “care” that person z stole item x, then the law of displeasure has not been violated and the action cannot be considered unethical, but ethical!

To conclude, atheism lacks both a canon and an authority, cannot escape the arbitrariness of subjectivism, and cannot through the accidents of inductive reasoning develop a certain ethical system. Without a transcendental authority that reveals a true ethic together with ethical prescriptions, ethics is rendered impossible. Hopefully, atheism will decline as people realize that it is morally bankrupt.

An Accidental Virtue: Why Atheist Ethics are Necessarily Arbitrary and Accidental

A common claim of atheists is that they “don't need ‘a book’ to tell them how to be a good person.” The purport of this claim is that the distinction between good and evil, right and wrong, and virtue and vice, are in some sense self-evident and readily accessible to reason. If, however, this claim is examined more closely, then its emptiness will become clear.

In order to make this problem more clear, the concept of canon will prove illuminating. It is not a word which is often heard in day to day speech, and so deserves a brief explanation. One standard definition of the term canon is “a general law, rule, principle, or criterion by which something is judged.” It comes from the Greek, kanon, and calls to mind a measuring stick like a ruler or “any straight rod or bar; rule; standard of excellence.”

The notion of canon is important, especially in things requiring measurement, for without an objective standard of measure, a canon, there is no way to have any certainty regarding the true dimensions of any object of inquiry. An additional consequence of having no accurate measurement means that one will also be unable to squarely fit any additional pieces together. Thus if one wants, say, to lay the foundation for a house, fit a pipe, or build a bridge, one must have an objective canon, a fixed measure or criterion by which to ensure that the construction does not fall apart.

A similar situation obtains in ethics. For example, if there is an ethical prescription, say, against theft, meaning the forbidding of a claim to ownership of any property that is not rightfully one’s own, i.e. to not steal, then this prescription serves as a canon, a criterion, a measure by which to evaluate whether or not an act can be regarded as theft. Without this objective canon, however, nothing is objectively ethical, and therefore it would be impossible to measure whether or not an action was ethically forbidden and thus wrong. It is the criterion which makes this evaluation possible. In other words, a canon is the organizing principle that makes ethics possible.

An additional factor impacting the concept of canon is that of authority. This is made obvious in the differences between the US standard and the metric systems. For example, when people design parts for a machine, they will measure according to one or the other system. When a system is chosen and put in place, the various manufacturers can produce size-matching products. Although in this example the systems of measure are each equally valid, it is clear that uniformity of measure is what makes complex integration of many machine parts feasible, and that the imposition of this measure by an authority that makes its feasibility actual. In other words, the canon becomes effectual because it is established by an authority (whether this be initiated by an academic institution, scientific academy, or governmental organization, etc.).

Without an authority there is no foundation upon which to establish the consistent criterion requisite for effectual compatibility. No authority means no canon; no canon means no organizing principle. The problem, therefore, for the atheist, is that there is neither an objective criterion nor authority, and therefore no possibility for establishing any stable, non-arbitrary ethical system.

Atheism can equally produce anything from a principle of hedonism to total permissiveness to one of eugenics-inspired genocide to one of killing all humans in order to preserve the environment, and anything inbetween. But within atheism there is absolutely no authority that can be appealed to which states one is objectively right and the other objectively wrong. The appeal will be to reason, desire, force (alas), precedent, survival, democratic processes, various philosophers, studies, aesthetics, psychology, or any number of other things, but canonically none of them will agree with each other or be able to establish a certain foundation or principle of integration for ethics.

Christianity, however, as regards ethics, has an explicit, unquestioned authority in the Lord Jesus Christ, and as such He establishes both the canon and the authority for determining what is right and wrong. For example, if a man hates his enemy, one can immediately point to Christ who stated unequivocally to love one’s enemy (Matthew 5:44; Romans 13:9; 1 Corinthians 13; Galatians 5:4; 1 John 2:9, 2:11, 4:20). The atheist, however, has no fixed reference to point to. He may point to this or that atheist philosopher, idea, or ruling authority, either individual or collective, perhaps a Hegel, a Rand, or a Stalin, a survival of the fittest, but ultimately they all will prove arbitrary starting points for ethical thinking, each unable to escape the ethical subjectivism which ultimately destroys all ethics. He can compel conformity, certainly, but virtue remains unknown.

Of course, very many atheists have claimed that they have a system for distinguishing right from wrong, and for identifying virtue, but without a canon these are by nature arbitrary and accidental virtue. Atheism, when it comes down to it, cannot determine whether it has produced virtuous or vicious acts, and, what is worse, there is no mechanism that in principle can inform them. It could be moral to kill inferior races, to lie to further a political cause, to destroy humanity in order to save the planet, to sterilize those deemed undesirable, or the opposite, they cannot really know. They will borrow ethical momentum from Christian civilization, of course, and arbitrarily claim it as self-evident, but without Christ these borrowed virtues will lose their center and become increasingly distorted, grotesque caricatures.

And so atheists are incorrect when they state they don’t need an authoritative source for being a good person. Without an authoritative source there is no objective canon, and with no canon there is no ability to truly distinguish right from wrong. They philosophically cannot know what a good person is or does, and so any virtue they practice is necessarily arbitrary and accidental. Virtue is not self-evident, and therefore the atheist’s claim to have it while having no means to certainly identify it and distinguish it from vice is empty.

See the following article for continued analysis.

Some Anticlimactic Consequences of Atheism

One aspect of the atheist argument against religion does not hold for the very simple reason that according to the atheist's worldview, religion is the legitimate result of natural selection. Adaptation being a law of nature would make adaptiveness essentially self-justifying. According to the atheist's worldview, religion can and does exist merely because it is an adaptive trait, rendering religion justified on adaptive grounds alone.

There is therefore no truly reasonable ground for the atheist on his own terms to debate the religionist, because the religionist is simply operating according to historically adaptive traits,  i.e. consistently reproducing religionists. Neither from logic nor illogic, religion according to the atheist is the result of natural selection, of genetic and social Darwinism. There can be no blaming of religion in this case, for it is simply a competing complex of traits that proved adaptive. Thus whether religion is true or false can be of only secondary importance to the atheist, for the fact that religion exists and reproduces means it obeys Darwinian natural law and so does not need to answer to any additional bar of truth in order to justify its existence.

The atheist, on the other hand, is simply some other complex of naturalistic traits, traits he would like to believe are more adaptive simply due to the complex of factors to which he is enthralled. But whether or not atheism is adaptive is not determined through argument or rational discourse, but through reproduction. In reality, atheism may be utterly unadaptive and unsustainable, a fact which history would seem to corroborate. Even so, atheism according to its own consequences is not a matter of rational discourse, nor are any beliefs. Reproductive realism, which is to say the actuality of instances of reproduction, is the only relevant law. The atheist's argument is thus anticlimactically emptied of its force because ultimately even his beliefs are only passively retained due to social and genetic Darwinian determinism, and only the presence or absence of reproduction can in principle decide the case.

If freedom of belief, however, is granted over and against reproductive determinism (i.e. those who reproduce determine the case), then again the atheist fails because the religionist according to atheist belief must then also be equally free, belief no longer being about truth but about free competition for existence, truth again being relegated to secondary importance.

But if the argument is about truth, where atheism considers itself more adaptive because it is true, then the atheist would again have to betray his own worldview because truth would have to be shown to be an adaptive trait he uniquely possesses over against non-atheism. This would beg the question since it assumes the possession of the very thing in question, becoming "true" merely because he asserts it.

Moreover, if an atheist has truth as an adaptive trait, it would be in principle impossible to show non-atheists since they lack this trait, destroying rational discourse since only the atheist could rightly be said to reason. The ability to know truth is here reduced to a product of social and genetic Darwinism, and so if this is the case it again destroys the atheist's argument because his truth becomes merely the resulting consequence of his accidental traits, and thus not a function of truth. The knowledge of truth is just an accident of nature.

Worse, if knowledge of truth is merely the benefit of Darwinian adaptation, then it would never in principle be able to be known as truth because Darwinian adaptation equally produced falsehood  (i.e. religion). Thus, absurdly,  only the presence of atheism could demonstrate possession of truth, reducing atheist truth claims to rank tautology.

The Epistemology of Faith: Evidence and Atheism

In a previous article was stated:

“We can measure gravity, share love, live in peace, receive justice, know truth, give mercy, and celebrate beauty, when none of these things are in themselves strictly reducible to the empirical; and the means by which we engage with these invisible realities is embedded in the epistemological process termed faith. Despite being manifest through evidence, they transcend the evidence, and so it is said that we have faith in something, say love, and then point to the visible evidences of it.”

In particular I would like to draw attention to the last sentence, because it provides a point which connects with a peculiarity present in the notion of proof, for despite being manifest through evidence, the objects of faith cannot be reduced to the empirical evidence. The objects of faith express themselves through the evidence, but the evidences considered in themselves are not an identity with the object of faith, therefore the evidence does not and cannot prove the object of faith, merely express it to those who “have eyes to see.”

The question many atheists ask is: “Can you prove that God exists?” And many well-meaning theists will attempt to oblige, but no matter what is said nothing can come of it. The atheist seems impervious to any sort of explanation, whether it be a point related to the meaning of a term, or to larger issues such as the complex and interrelated nature of the universe, and any number of things between. The frustrated theist reflects, reviews, and ruminates over what other approaches could have been taken, but none of them could have worked, and here’s why.

Epistemologically, no matter how obvious and true it is, nothing about empirical evidence proves an object of faith. Thus, the proofs of God cannot force a person to believe in God, and the reason has to do with the peculiar and non-empirical nature of the objects of faith, whether it be love, truth, justice, or whatever. Faith is not designed to force one’s hand. Faith implies trust, and so if there is force, even force of logic, then there is no trust, no faith.

Hearkening to the quote above, the empirical aspect of something is not the foundation or ground of the object of faith, say love, for the empirical is the vehicle of transmission or communication of the non-empirical. While the non-empirical exists independently from the empirical, it is transmitted empirically in a way which is necessarily unproveable on the basis of the empirical act considered in itself. Faith is the means by which the non-empirical object, say love, is communicated and connected with, but the object of faith, love, is not thereby proved.

For example, taking again the example of a mother giving her child a hot chocolate, the empirical act is not an identity with the love, for a hateful barista could give the same drink. The love is given through the drink, but it is not found in the drink or in the physical act of giving. By examining the mere empirical act of handing over a hot chocolate, there is nothing intrinsic to the empirical act that “proves” there is love. The love can only be perceived by faith, either in giving or in receiving, and thus the hot chocolate becomes evidence, but it is not proof.

It would be absurd for the mom to state that she just proved she loved the child by giving them a hot chocolate, for obviously one can give a drink without love. Likewise, one cannot prove the existence of gravity by examining the particular object that falls. One could take the object and put it under a microscope, but gravity will never be discovered that way. Gravity, like love, must be perceived through an act of mind which is distinct from the merely empirical percept.

In short, by looking merely at the empirical, there is nothing necessitating that one believe that there is also love, or hate, or gravity, or peace, or justice, etc. Therefore, the atheist is not compelled through the giving of evidence to believe in that which by nature transcends the evidence. No matter how many hot chocolates he is given by his loving mother, he is not compelled to believe his mother actually loves him. Technically, he can always doubt. Of course, his pleas of doubt are as completely unconvincing as a color blind man’s disputing of color, although to his own ears the atheist is bound to sound clever and technical.

He can doubt that a peaceful person has any peace, that a loving person has any love, that a beautiful sky has any beauty, that a court of law has any justice, etc., because doubt is a process, not a content. He can go on and on and on. Thus, when a theist tries to convince an atheist of the existence of God, even by giving mountains of evidence of exceeding perspicuity and logic, God is just one more item that can technically be subjected to doubt. Evidence does not bind him to believe, and since objects of faith cannot be reduced to their means of expression, their evidence, no amount of said evidence will prove the case. The hundredth cup of hot chocolate will not prove there is love, the gentle smile and warm handshake will not prove there is kindness, and in principle nothing can prove God to them. God can only be touched through faith.