{"id":1520100,"date":"2022-06-17T08:06:09","date_gmt":"2022-06-17T12:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1520100"},"modified":"2022-06-17T08:07:37","modified_gmt":"2022-06-17T12:07:37","slug":"shapiro-debunking-atheism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/shapiro-debunking-atheism\/","title":{"rendered":"SHAPIRO: Debunking Atheism"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">6<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fshapiro-debunking-atheism%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1520100&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>During the early 19th century, so the story goes, French astronomer Pierre-Simon de Laplace was having a conversation with French emperor Napoleon, explaining to him his theory of the beginnings of the universe.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhere does God fit into all this?\u201d Napoleon supposedly asked.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have no need of such a hypothesis,\u201d de Laplace replied.<\/p>\n<p>God, according to atheists, is an unnecessary hypothesis. The universe just is.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>We just are.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>There is no reason to search for a Creator, to posit that He cares about us, to suggest that there is some Higher Power that bridges the gap from what is to how things ought to be.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Now, atheism is more than mere agnosticism, which suggests that it is impossible to know whether God exists. By that definition of agnosticism, many religious people are agnostic \u2013 although we have come to understand agnosticism as the generalized indifference to the question of God. Atheism, however, adamantly opposes the idea of a God who stands behind nature. Atheism often claims that religion corrupts mankind, that the notion of a God blinds men to the truths around them, that science is directly opposed to the idea of a Creator. In reality, none of these things are true.<\/p>\n<p>God: The Unnecessary Hypothesis?<\/p>\n<p>Let us begin with the idea that God is an unnecessary hypothesis. It is difficult to imagine an argument in which God is utterly unnecessary. That is because all human logic is rooted in certain basic assumptions about the nature of the world and about reason that are completely unmoored from the dictates of evolutionary biology. Let us examine just a few.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>First, we make claims of objective truth \u2013 truth that exists independent of human minds. How does such truth exist? Based on the dictates of evolutionary biology, our ability to comprehend a \u201ctruth\u201d should really be no more than our ability to think whatever is most evolutionarily beneficial for us and our genetic descendants. But we don\u2019t believe that we think 2+2=4 because it is most evolutionarily beneficial. We believe that 2+2=4 always and everywhere because it is true. And that bespeaks a truth beyond the merely material.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Second, we make claims with regard to morality. But what is morality without a baseline assumption that human beings have inherent worth? Even utilitarian philosophies \u2013 the attempt to ignore moral right and wrong in favor of consequentialist outcomes \u2013 has to assume something about what makes an outcome good or bad. And that has moral premises that have to be assumed. The belief in any moral oughts requires us to believe unprovable truths that must descend from outside ourselves.<\/p>\n<p>Third, we live as though we believe in choice \u2013 as though we are capable of making decisions in some way based on our own will. What in materialism would allow for such choice? How would such choice come about?<\/p>\n<p>God is necessary for these thoughts \u2013 or at least the possibility of God. Trash God altogether, and you cannot explain why you would believe in objective truth, or morality, or your own ability to choose.<\/p>\n<p>Does Logic Forbid God?<\/p>\n<p>There are those atheists who claim that logic ought to forbid God \u2013 that belief in God is not merely un-evidenced but actually irrational. In the words of Adam Gopnik writing for The New Yorker, those who are atheists have \u201ca monopoly on legitimate forms of knowledge about the natural world.\u201d But that isn\u2019t true. There are many religious believers who acknowledge scientific bases for knowledge but also knowledge that the scientific method itself is unprovable, unless you take for granted that the search for an objective truth is possible \u2013 an assumption the scientific method itself forbids.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>As it turns out, there are a bevy of logically consistent arguments offered on behalf of God. Take, for example, the First Cause proof advanced by Aristotle, as refined by Thomas Aquinas. Edward Feser lays out the argument in his book Five Proofs for the Existence of God. The argument goes something like this:\u00a0<\/p>\n<li aria-level=\"1\">Change exists in the world.\n<li aria-level=\"1\">But all change is the actualization of a potential for that change.\n<li aria-level=\"1\">This means that actualization of potential is a feature of the world.\n<li aria-level=\"1\">No potential can be actualized unless something already actual actualizes it.\n<li aria-level=\"1\">So all change is caused by something already actual.\n<li aria-level=\"1\">If there is change, there must be something changing.\n<li aria-level=\"1\">The existence of that something presupposes that some concurrent actualization of that something\u2019s potential for existing.\n<li aria-level=\"1\">This means that any substance has at any moment an actualizer of its existence.\n<li aria-level=\"1\">Either that actualizer presupposes the actualization of that actualizer, or that the actualizer is purely actual.\n<li aria-level=\"1\">This means that either there is an infinite regress of actualizers or that there is a purely actual actualizer.\n<li aria-level=\"1\">But an infinite regress is impossible, because there must be something at the bottom of the hierarchical causal series.\n<p>These are the opening steps<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During the early 19th century, so the story goes, French astronomer Pierre-Simon de Laplace was having a conversation with French emperor Napoleon, explaining to him his theory of the beginnings of the universe.\u00a0 \u201cWhere does God fit into all this?\u201d Napoleon supposedly asked.\u00a0 \u201cI have no need of such a hypothesis,\u201d de Laplace replied. God, &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":1520303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1520100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1520100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1520100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1520100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1520303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1520100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1520100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1520100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}