If the evidence for God is so strong, why are so many smart people unconvinced?
by Scott Youngren
“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.” –Contemporary philosopher Thomas Nagel–
Recently, a reader posted a comment to this website which read “GOD IS NOT REAL” …with a string of obscenities appearing before and after these four words (which I have removed to maintain a PG rating). It does not take a trained psychologist to perceive that there is more than just bare logic shaping these atheistic views. If this person had arrived at atheism purely from logical reasoning, he would have calmly posted a response to the arguments posted on this website or would have simply chosen to ignore them.
But this person is hardly alone. Why do so many people take offense at the idea that there is a God? Further, why are so many smart people unconvinced despite the wealth of evidence? And if the evidence is so strong, as this website contends, why isn’t it more commonly known?
R.C. Sproul comments in his book If There Is a God, Why Are There Atheists?:
The New Testament maintains that unbelief is generated not so much by intellectual causes as by moral and psychological ones. The problem is not that there is insufficient evidence to convince rational beings that there is a God, but that rational beings have a natural antipathy to the being of God. In a word, the nature of God (at least the Christian God) is repugnant to man and is not the focus of desire or wish-projection” [as Sigmund Freud suggested].
Why is the idea of God repugnant to so many people? Sproul continues:
God’s presence is severely threatening to man. God manifests a threat to man’s moral standards, a threat to his quest for autonomy, and a threat to his desire for concealment. God’s revelation involves the intrusion and indeed invasion of the ‘other,’ the ‘different,’ the alien and strange to human circumstances. In a word, it represents the invasion of light into the darkness to which man is accustomed.
The notion of God, put another way, is a threat to humanity’s desire to be free from burdensome moral constraints…to fashion one’s own morals and be the king of one’s castle — answerable to no one. Jean-Paul Sartre, the French existentialist philosopher, put it succinctly when he said, “all is permissible if God does not exist.”
As a result of the revulsion that so many secular people feel toward the concept of God, there is a strong cultural current present (especially in academia and the media) to suppress or deny any knowledge of him. At first reading, this may sound like a fantastical conspiracy theory, but the claim becomes more plausible when one consults experts in psychology…
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If the evidence for God is so strong, why are so many smart people unconvinced? « GodEvidence.com
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Why I Am a Christian: Leading Thinkers Explain Why They Believe
God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible
1) One atheist was once emotional.
2) Therefore he is an atheist *because* he is emotional.
3) Therefore all atheists are so because they are emotional.
Well I’m convinced.
God is like light, and people are like darkness. So God is painful to people (but in a nice way). That’s why they don’t like God.
Well I see. Except that I don’t. It may be because I am apt to be represented by darkness, or it may be that the entire thing would be a load of unsubstantiated assertions, shouting into the void. Except that there aren’t assertions, because you don’t even make enough sense to assert something. Men are like darkness you say. How? In that they fill caves? Because they are insubstantial?
Also – if you’d bothered to read any Sartre, you’d know that he had an ethical system in place and talked a lot about responsibility. He said that actions have no a priori moral problems but we are never the less responsible for them (see opening remarks in ‘Existentialism is a Humanism’).
So atheists value privacy and desire to do nasty things. That’s my motivation, eh? Well that’s quite an assertion, but lucky for me, not a single speck of a datum has been provided to back it up.
Now it’s my turn: people who are religious were almost invariably raised religious. People who are of a certain religion are almost invariably raised in that religion – the religious upbringing causes people to be religious. So you’re just religious because you were raised that way. Care to give me a counter example? How about a statistically significant counterexample (p > 0.05)? No, I didn’t think so.
Why are smart people still religious? Well, on average they’re not. According to studies (Howell 1927, Poythress 1975, Terman 1959, et c. et alia ad nausium) religious people tend not to be as smart as the non-religious. There are three possibilities: (a) religion makes you stupid, (b) something else makes you both stupid and religious and (c) stupidity makes you religious. If you don’t find (a) or (b) plausible then you are left with (c).
So people are religious because they were brought up that way, and possibly because they’re not so bright.
Your arguments are unintelligible and insulting. Mine have evidence.
1) One Atheist defends their convictions only through emotional techniques, implying a complete lack of ability to rationally defend his view.
2) Therefore he is an atheist for emotional rather than logical reasons.
3) Therefore all (and there are many) atheists for whom that comment is representative are so for emotional rather than rational reasons.
Unfortunately this does fail to answer the question of why smart people are unconvinced, as this example may not be representative of them.
Incidentally, I would suggest that in addition to considering God an interference in their life as Scott implies, that emotion could also come from feelings that God betrayed you, anger against other people such as parents who told you about God, or just being a generally foul-mouthed sort looking for something to malign.
Atheism is not an emotional thing as has already been said in this thread. Give a intellectual atheist scientific proof and evidence supporting your claim there is a god, and if that proof and evidence actually scientifically supports your claim there is a god, they will be forced to accept it. It’s as easy as that. However, so far no scientific proof or evidence has been put forward that can do so.
Atheist also don’t find moral’s burdensome. Atheist’s live by a moral code. They believe in not harming others and doing right by others. They just don’t need a god to tell them how to behave. Yes there is the odd one who does something horrid, but that’s true in the Christian community too. There always seems to be a rotten egg somewhere.
Atheist’s also don’t find god a threat to their autonomy, because they don’t believe in god. Actually, just getting to the point Atheist’s don’t find god a threat to them in any way, because they don’t believe in god. How can something you don’t believe in be a threat? It’s just like telling an Atheist that they are going to hell. It has no meaning to them, since they don’t believe in it’s existence.