Are atheists more rational than the Reverend Meshoe?

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my irrational, superstitious belief in God in a piece entitled “An irrational believer in God”. The sheer volume of emails I received in response was a bit overwhelming. The emails can be divided into four categories:

1. Other consciously irrational, superstitious religious types who emailed me to tell me how much they enjoyed the piece.
2. Unconsciously irrational, superstitious religious types who emailed me to castigate me for selling out Christians everywhere.
3. Unconsciously irrational, superstitious atheists rabidly frothing at the mouth at as a result of the fact that they hallucinated that I was taking swipes at atheism.
4. Weirdos with delusions of having dinner with me or humping my brains out.

I’m not particularly concerned with the people who fall in categories one and four. I can deal with them. It’s the angry, humourless people who bother me. One of the few things I actually learned in the corporate I used to slave for was the whole notion of consciousness.

In summary: a toddler cannot operate a motor vehicle but is not aware that he or she cannot drive (unconscious incompetence). A 14-year-old cannot operate a motor vehicle and is aware of this limitation (conscious incompetence). An 18-year-old with a brand new driver’s licence is very aware of the fact that he or she can drive (conscious competence) and a 50-year-old can operate a car and doesn’t even think about the fact that he or she can drive (unconscious competence).

I hope that I do not have to spell out the dangers of not being conscious of one’s incompetence. I am personally much more comfortable with my belief in God, however intellectually indefensible it may be to some. I stopped trying to rationalise my religious beliefs to non-believers a long time ago when I discovered that it was a moot exercise.

In order to have a discussion that even begins to resemble rational debate on the existence or non-existence of God; the starting point needs to be an agreement on certain basic premises. Atheists and religious people disagree on these very basic tenants upon which their arguments are based. For instance, religious people believe that the human being has a spiritual dimension. Atheists believe that the only spiritual dimension to the human being is vodka breath.

When I flirted with atheism during my youth, I used to find debates with fundamentalist Christian types greatly entertaining. They used to follow this pattern:

Me in high-pitched voice: Religion is hocus pocus! It is the opium fed to the gullible masses by powerful people obsessed with power and control.

Unconsciously irrational fundamentalist: Well, that is not true.

MIHV: You’ve got to advance a reason for your stance.

UIF: Because it is written in Ecclesiastes 5 (12–17) that …

And I would shake my head at the intellectual bankruptcy of the poor Bible-punching sheep. What kind of nitwit quotes the Bible to prove a point to a budding atheist?

One of the funniest attribute of atheists is the level to which they are blind-sighted from their own dogmatic irrationality. The levels of irrationality are more heightened than the religious right. Did I just say that atheists are as irrational as Jerry Falwell? Absolutely. A critical aspect of atheism, atheists argue, is that they base their belief in the non-existence of God on the lack of evidence of the existence of God. Read that again: “their belief in the non-existence of God”. Ignore the detail and how atheists will excitedly point out their actually have issues with the existence of deities — smoke and mirrors. Atheists have an issue with God.

Believe me; while atheists might start out on the path of atheism based on a natural, logical scepticism, this soon gives way to intransigent disbelief. Let’s agree that one would have to be a pretty weak atheist if one was open to the possibility that God existed. And I imagine that when atheists are congregated in an apartment for the purpose of mocking irrational believers, natural human competition creeps in. Hierarchy is a natural human condition and I am confident that when atheists sit around, everybody is clear who the alpha atheist is. It is the guy who is probably the strongest atheist; the one with unwavering atheism and an unshakable non-belief in God.

Atheists pride themselves on their rationality and would never go down the irrational path of priesthood. But even without the anointment, the alpha atheist is the high priest of atheists. I think we can take it to the bank that when Richard Dawkins stands up to deliver a speech and quote liberally from the Gospel of Dawkins (The God Delusion), his ~~disciples~~ followers listen much more attentively than if, say, an admitted 99% (weaker) atheist such as Jarred Cinman addresses the Church of Atheists. The same thing happens in my church when those senile old men in shiny purple robes and tiny hats speak. They are more efficient purveyors of truth than, say, this sinful blogger.

It is my firm argument that the height of irrationality is no more aptly exhibited than in individuals who believe that they are more rational than the average person. The path to rationality starts with an acknowledgement that one is just an irrational being who is a victim of cause-and-effect natural laws. And the phenomenon of ascribing great rationality to oneself is the cornerstone of atheists’ psyche. Atheists spend their lives in the pursuit of evidence that God does not exist and think this is rational. Do not believe an atheist who tells you he or she dispassionately and demurely looks for evidence that may or may not prove the existence of God. That wouldn’t be a very good atheist. All mainstream atheists are believers in the scientific model — make that the Einsteinian relativist scientific paradigm. And scientific methodology follows this pattern:

1. Observation
2. Hypothesis
3. Evidence seeking

Yeah, yeah — there are more steps. Yawn. But what this means is that evidence gathering follows hypothesis. And because the evidence is sought by human beings, it follows that only that evidence that supports the hypothesis will see the light of day. Am I saying that scientific methodology is flawed? No. I’m saying that human beings are intrinsically flawed. Some dead physicist made this very point when he came up with the observer effect theory. If an atheist were to, for instance, be accosted by a talking, burning cactus in the Karoo, you best believe that this would never make it into any journal. (Negative points will be awarded to the first person to say: “But a cactus would never speak!” in a shrill, girly voice.)

Thomas Kuhn wrote a compelling work entitled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962 in which he coined the modern usage of the phrase “paradigm shifts”. In simple (simplistic?) terms, one’s paradigm refers to one’s internalised outlook on the world. For instance, physicists see the world in terms of atoms and energy. Economists see the world in terms of rands and cents. Psychologists see the world in terms of healthy and unhealthy minds. These are their respective paradigms. Not to be overly silly about this, but I think we’d probably have a shrink committed if he started arguing that physicists were talking gibberish because atoms had no brains. Yet we hardly raise an eyebrow when atheists, trapped in their scientific paradigm, ridicule religious people because the existence of God fails to satisfy scientific methodology. Er, duh. Of course it doesn’t, despite some gallant efforts by religious scientists.

In his excellent book Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes, Bishop Shelby Spong makes exactly just this point. He argues that the Jewish writers who authored the Bible wrote in a Jewish tradition called midrash — essentially writing in poetic parables. No, they did not suffer from hives, as the mischievous bishop points out with a glint in his eye.

Bishop Spong makes a very compelling argument that reading the Bible literally is the height of stupidity. Unless you’re the ever-eager Reverend Meshoe and co, most people in 2007 are unlikely to believe that a bearded oke in sandals literally cracked a rock and got water streaming out. Coz if the Bible is literal, then the esteemed reverend will be hanging out with Deon Maas in the place of wailing and gnashing of teeth come Judgement Day. His sin? I doubt that the reverend has ever given an offering of “kidneys with the fat on them near the loins, and the covering of the liver, which he will remove with the kidneys”. Yet Leviticus 3: 15-16 is very clear on this point and how it is that when this fat burns, the aroma is “pleasing to the Lord” and how all fat belongs to the Lord.

If it sounds like I’m mocking happy-clappy types and their whole literal angle on the Bible, it’s because I am. That’s how we transmitters of the more “palatable”, 21st-century-friendly contextual (revisionist) theology keep ourselves amused. Does that make me any more right than the kidney-braaiing okes? Of course not, don’t be daft. Within the confines of their paradigm, I think that they are 100% correct. Gate-crashing this-or-that Jesus Dome and haranguing the born-agains about what I perceive to be their hallucinatory views on homosexuality would make me the delusional moron. Making it my life’s sole reason for living to prove how wrong the reverend is about the whole kidney situation would make no sense. It would make just as much sense as me addressing an exclusively Spanish-speaking individual in Zulu and shouting at him progressively louder to try to make him understand me.

By their own rational, scientific paradigmatic worldview, atheists’ entire existence makes little sense. They spend their lives proving that Spanish makes absolutely no sense in Zulu.

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