The sole debate that I had with a Scripture lecturer at Harrison College in 1990 elicited the question; Just what responsibilities do atheists have? To provide the context, this question session came after the debate headed: "Demons: Fact or Fiction?" Most of the 1,000 student attendees had been "knocked for six" by the final part of my arguments that demons were pure fiction, e.g.;
"Consider after the alleged Fall, the world began with only 2,000 demons, imps and Devils, sprung from the original "fallen angels". I submit they would never be able to keep up with the temptation burden as the human population increased to hundreds of millions then billions.
If, for example, the demonic hierarchy population stayed fixed at 2,000 then it follows that when the human population hit 6 billion each demon would have 3 million humans (each) to try to tempt into a Hell bound act each day – by dividing the labor equally. Given a uniform load, each demon would only have about 0.028 seconds per day for a Hell bound temptation. This isn’t even enough time for a demon to fart. Thus, a way had to be found to increase the demon population."
This "demolition" of my opponent's claim for demon existence preceded a drove of questions including the one cited at the top of this post, as well as: "If there are no demons to tempt you how do you remain on the straight and narrow?" But again, this all falls under the umbrella of the atheist's adherence to reason, which is his or her ultimate responsibility. Once there is adherence to reason, then idiocy, bunkum and bilge - like the assorted "demonic families" i.e.
"When you put your faith in reason you are taking responsibility for your choices. If you instead accept someone else's belief on faith - without reason - you are really surrendering responsibility to some authority besides your own mind. Religious authorities are everywhere, ready to tell you that this or that scripture passage is the genuine word of a god. And so many people are ready to tell you that only they can interpret the will of this or that god."
Shook, to make his point, then pulls the age old trick of the steadfast atheist: Said in response to a diehard Christian convinced it is his or her charge to get you to believe in his particular version of god. You first present him with the full spectrum of existing gods as claimed by other religions, say Hinduism, Jainism, and others. Then ask him which if any of those he believes in. His answer will surely be: "Well none, of course!" To which you respond: ""Well I only believe in one less than you do!"
Shook's other point is equally cogent and often missed in arguments with religionists (ibid.):
"I am not an atheist because I made a willful blind choice against religion. I am holding myself to the same standard and responsibility that I hold you to: we should all base our beliefs on the best reasons available. When there is not enough reason to believe we should choose not to believe."
In the case of the demons that were the subject of the Harrison College debate, the choice not to believe in demons is easy. Since "temptation" comprises the core of demonic activity then demons must have the ability to reproduce from their original numbers - to keep pace with exploding human population- else their "temptation time" dwindles to almost nil. Since the whole concept of demonic reproduction is preposterous (they are not physical beings after all) then demons themselves must be preposterous.
Didn't the Bible have "demons" prancing about in those olden days? Well, uh...no, not exactly! Back then, two thousand odd years ago, psychiatry hadn't even been discovered yet. No one knew a neurosis from halitosis or a psychosis. So when the ancients were afflicted with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anti-social disorder and even just simply epilepsy (sending them into paroxysms of rictus and spasms) people of the day naturally assumed "demons" were responsible and possessing the person. What else could they think? They had no coherent science of the mind, or brain! It would be another 1800 years or more before Wilder Penfield would insert electric pens into various brain centers to elicit responses, or Freud would arrive at his remarkable theory of the subconscious.
One can then understand why a religion grounded in supernaturalist demonology, say, cannot be true. This will also include any belief in a personification of "evil" such as "Satan". The point? Evil exists, but not as an infinite negative absolute, or personified in a spirit entity, but rather as a recessive evolutionary manifestation of our own brains. The Devil or Satan is simply the mental projection of the most primitive brain imperatives onto the external world. And yes, this imperative is capable of rape, economic exploitation and mass murder as well as genocide. A supernatural Satan need not be invoked, only the ancient brain residue of reptiles (R-complex) acting collectively – aided and abetted by a language -obsessed neocortex. The latter finds it as easy to create neologisms to represent non-existent phantasms as to think. It thereby does the reptile brain’s bidding, manufacturing sins, as opposed to attempting to halt it.
This exercise in choice and the application of reason is not without purpose. As I have shown, if reason demonstrates the superfluous nature of demons and Satan, then it means these can't be invoked as excuses for human bad behavior. ("The Devil made me do it!" "I was temporarily possessed!") If such personal manifestations of evil are merely hobgoblins of the naive believer's mind, then clearly HE must accept responsibility for his own actions and not be so quick to blame an unseen demonic or Satanic force. This is also why it is important for all religions to drop their demonic fantasies if they really want their flocks to assume responsibility for their own behaviors.
As for the atheist, he or she has already made his pact with reason and there is no going back to the realm of fantastic beliefs, or supernatural drivel. As science writer Jagjit Singh put it on the last page of his monograph, 'Great Ideas and Theories of Modern Cosmology';
"The practice of rationalism is an irreversible process. If once one loses the innocence of naive belief by venturing to stray into rational thought there can be no honest way of recovering it. Like Voltaire's Good Brahmin he has no choice other than to prefer knowledge in spite of its misery to ignorance with all its accompanying bliss."
No comments:
Post a Comment