"The Causes of Atheism"

Originally posted by ThinkOfOne
Classic. GB keeps up the "game" by claiming that it's "not a game". His actions prove otherwise. Rather than own up to the fact that he was out of line when he took a couple of poster to task, he plays the "nobody's interested in fault" card.

As I said earlier:

With the way GB has chosen to dole the excerpts out, it's as if he's inviting peo ...[text shortened]... he content of the disagreement]). Seems like he's forever playing these types of games.

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Postscript: An OP of Five Pages would risk gagging all of us. One at a time within one day seemed best.

Originally posted by PatNovak
If you would summarize instead of cutting and pasting, your OP wouldn't be nearly so long. Like most of your other long posts, there is no need for this OP to be anywhere near an long as it is.

"The Causes of Atheism Written by James Spiegel, January 2010.

The Will To Disbelieve

"Let’s review my account of atheism to this point. In the previous chapter, we noted the “biblical diagnosis” of atheism as resulting from a hardening of the heart (Ephesians 4:18) and the suppression of truth by wickedness (Romans 1:18). In this chapter we have considered Paul Vitz’s thesis that a broken relationship with one’s father is often involved in this process. But this is at most a necessary condition, not a sufficient condition, for atheism. It appears that the psychological fallout from a defective father must be combined with rebellion—a persistent immoral response of some sort, such as resentment, hatred, vanity, unforgiveness, or abject pride. And when that rebellion is deep or protracted enough, atheism results.

An especially devastating form of rebellion is chronic sexual misbehavior. Historical studies by Paul Johnson and E. Michael Jones corroborate Aldous Huxley’s claim that the desire to justify one’s immoral sexual practices has motivated many scholars to embrace cultural relativism and religious skepticism. Some noteworthy scholars have even gone so far as to fabricate data and otherwise transgress scholarly standards to win support for these views, which permit or even encourage yet more immoral indulgence. This is a formula, if ever there was one, for producing “a depraved mind” (Romans 1:28), as the Apostle Paul puts it, which is capable of even “exchang[ing] the truth of God for a lie” (Romans 1:25).

But what of the role of the will when it comes to atheism? Recall Paul Vitz’s emphasis on freedom when it comes to moving toward or away from God. Recall also Huxley’s remark that “We don’t know because we don’t want to know. It is our will that decides how and upon what subjects we shall use our intelligence.” Although Vitz and Huxley have little else to say on the subject, there are good reasons to emphasize this point. One great American scholar who would affirm this emphasis is William James, the nineteenth-century Harvard philosopher and champion of human free will.

William James was one of the most fair-minded intellectuals in modern history. He seemed wired to resist extremes and deal even-handedly with every perspective. This quality served him well at a time and place in American history that was rife with extremes, from the emotional tumult of religious fanaticism to the cool-headed skepticism of scientific empiricism. Meanwhile, somewhere in the middle was James, applying a pragmatic method of analysis to every question under the philosophical sun. No doubt it was in part because of James’s gift for fair-mindedness that he was invited to present the 1901–02 Gifford Lectures on that most controversial of all subjects—religious experience. These lectures, published as The Varieties of Religious Experience, became a classic text and over a century later remain the definitive psychological treatment of the subject. Perhaps what is most remarkable about James’s study is that, despite his empirical bent, he not only remained open to the veracity of the hundreds of reports of spiritual encounters chronicled in his research, but he actually concludes by noting his belief in the supernatural:

"The further limits of our being plunge, it seems to me, into an altogether other dimension of existence from the sensible and merely ‘understandable’ world. Name it the mystical region, or the supernatural region, whichever you choose. So far as our ideal impulses originate in this region . . . we belong to it in a more intimate sense than that in which we belong to the visible world." James’s openness to the supernatural irked his fellow pragmatists, most notably his hardcore naturalist colleague John Dewey, who remained a firm atheist until the end. But it wasn’t only positive evidence for the supernatural that persuaded William James. There was a more basic psychological insight that drove him. James argued that there are significant truths in life,many of them practical in nature,which cannot be seen or understood until one believes. Likewise, one may willfully refuse to believe certain truths, even when there is strong evidence for them.

James makes his point using the illustration of a mountain climber who is unsure as to whether he can make it safely across a difficult pass. If he succeeds, he will go on to safety. But if he fails, death awaits. Can he make it? He will never know either way until he actually ventures. James makes a similar point about many philosophical issues, where the evidence alone is inconclusive. The lesson he draws is that faith is practically necessary. He concludes: “In the average man . . . the power to trust, to risk a little beyond the evidence, is an essential function. . . .We cannot live or think at all without some degree of faith.” James’s insight on the practical necessity of faith points to the crucial role played by the will and personal desires when it comes to belief. One of the absurd dogmas of the modern period—which, alas, remains alive and well in the academy today—was that the will is or, at any rate, can be perfectly neutral when it comes to the formation of belief. As a master psychologist, James saw the foolishness of this notion. In his short but influential essay, “The Will to Believe,” James explains how this is especially the case when it comes to belief in the reality of moral values. He declares, “If your heart does not want a world of moral reality, your head will assuredly never make you believe in one.”

More than a century after these words were penned, James’s insight is not very controversial, especially in our postmodern intellectual milieu, which prizes the diminution of reason in the formation of beliefs. But, of course, the new atheists are anything but postmodern. In fact, they are fierce modernists who regard the scientific method as the final tribunal of all truth claims. To them, James’s thesis about the will to believe (or to disbelieve) is no doubt bothersome. How much more so, then, must be the words of fellow atheists who confess this psychological dynamic in themselves when it comes to God. Recall the candid reflections of philosopher Thomas Nagel: “I want atheism to be true. . . . It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God, and, naturally, hope that I’m right about my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.” Nagel is to be commended for his honesty, though it is a shame that as a philosopher he should so blatantly subjugate his quest for truth to his personal desires. One can only wonder why he doesn’t want the universe “to be like that.”

There is also the popular author and educator Mortimer Adler, who recognized that the nature of religious belief is such that it “lies in the state of one’s will, not in the state of one’s mind.” Adler rejected religious commitment because it “would require a radical change in my way of life, a basic alteration in the direction of day-to-day choices as well as in the ultimate objectives to be sought or hoped for. . . . The simple truth of the matter is that I did not wish to live up to being a genuinely religious person.” Happily, Adler did not reject the faith his entire life but converted to Christianity in his eighties.

Recently Slate editor David Plotz provided another confirmation of James’s thesis. Reflecting on his reading of the Old Testament, Plotz says, “How do I as a Jew cling to a God who seems to be so unmerciful so much of the time and so cruel so much of the time? That’s very troubling.Do I want such a God to exist? I don’t know that I do.” In one sense, Plotz’s point is quite understandable. Who wants to believe in an unmerciful and cruel deity? But notice his apparent willingness to reject belief even if such a deity does exist. This is a conscious choice on his part and another case in point when it comes to the will to deny God. To the frank testimonies of these intellectuals we can add many of the cases chronicled by Johnson and Jones that well illustrate the “will to believe”—or, in this case, the will to disbelieve—when it comes to God and religious faith.

Atheists ultimately choose not to believe in God. But, as we have seen, this choice does not occur in a psychological vacuum. It is made in response to deep challenges to faith, such as defective fathers and perhaps other emotional or psychological trials. Nor is the choice made in a moral vacuum. Sin and its consequences also impact the will in significant ways (as will be discussed further in the next chapter).These moral-psychological dynamics make it possible to deny the reality of the divine without any (or much) sense of incoherence in one’s worldview.This constitutes the general pattern of the rejection of God and all things religious.

Therefore, however much an atheist scholar, celebrity, or layperson might insist that his or her foundational “reason” for rejecting God is the problem of evil or the scientific irrelevance of the supernatural or some other “rational” consideration, this is only a ruse, a conceptual smokescreen to mask the real issue—personal rebellion. Admirably, some thinkers, such as Nagel and Adler, have admitted that their spurning of faith is based in the will, not reason. Most atheists refuse to admit this. However, as we will see shortly, there are factors involved in the psychology of atheism that make it surprising that anyone would recognize their own will to disbelieve." (4 of 4 excerpts)

https://www.apologetics.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=469:the-causes-of-atheism&catid=96:bonus-content&Itemid=80

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Postscript: An OP of Five Pages would risk gagging all of us. One at a time within one day seemed best.

Classic. GB keeps up the "game" by claiming that it's "not a game". His actions prove otherwise. Rather than own up to the fact that he was out of line when he took a couple of poster[s] to task, he plays the "nobody's interested in fault" card.

As I said earlier:
With the way GB has chosen to dole the excerpts out, it's as if he's inviting people to air their disagreements. Which would be fine except for the fact that he takes people to task for doing so (especially when he has no answer [to the content of the disagreement]). Seems like he's forever playing these types of games.

Originally posted by Suzianne
I would agree with this. Often the sheer volume turns people away, just ask jaywill. I understand there being so much information and so little time, but like with small children, little hands can only hold so much at one time.

Originally posted by ThinkOfOne
Well, GB could have done something really wild like summarizing what he believed to be valid points from the article and then simply providing the links for those who were interested in the details.

Originally posted by PatNovak
If you would summarize instead of cutting and pasting, your OP wouldn't be nearly so long. Like most of your other long posts, there is no need for this OP to be anywhere near an long as it is.

Originally posted by ThinkOfOne
Well, GB could have done something really wild like summarizing what he believed to be valid points from the article and then simply providing the links for those who were interested in the details.

Originally posted by Suzianne
I would agree with this. Often the sheer volume turns people away, just ask jaywill. I understand there being so much information and so little time, but like with small children, little hands can only hold so much at one time.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
I don't want to answer for GB, but I like your question... so sue me.

I know I've asked you repeatedly this question: Why are you here?
And your one answer is: Because I want to be.

But I think my confrontational style may have imparted the wrong message.
I actually want you here, probably more than you want me here!

I think you are smart.
The ...[text shortened]... beliefs and leave me with a clearer view of reality.

We all just really want clarity, right?

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Excerpts from "The Causes of Atheism" have been presented for each thread contributor to ponder and to determine what he or she believes to be valid. Summarizing what I believed to be valid in lieu of presenting an open book to all would have been impossible since... I'm still feeling my way and learning about atheism from vantage points I'd never considered.

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Pat, granted the thread's unusual in format and presentation. Think of it as a full five course meal, rather than a sandwich.

Originally posted by Suzianne
Yes, I would find that usually preferable myself.

It's similar to a question I asked robbie carrobie in another thread.

I also believe that direct targeting to those who would more likely ingest the info might be preferable to sowing the info far and wide and letting nature take its course. But the thing is, posting one message on an internet forum f ...[text shortened]... y trying to catch a few who might be too lazy to follow the links, even if they were interested.

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Excerpts from "The Causes of Atheism" have been presented for each thread contributor to ponder and to determine what he or she believes to be valid. Summarizing what I believed to be valid in lieu of presenting an open book to all would have been impossible since... I'm still feeling my way and learning about atheism from vantage points I'd never considered.