Arguing with an atheist is like wrestling the mud with a pig...after awhile you realize the pig enjoys it.
Your question relies on multiple interpretations of the word “faith.” For example, in the first instance, it’s faith that the book is wrong; in the second, that the book is correct. Normally, “faith” means belief in the existence of God, or, more generally, belief in a proposition that is supported by neither direct evidence nor logical reasoning. Nearly everyone, including atheists, believe that *something* is true, or false, without having direct evidence or a sound logical reason to believe it, irrespective of their belief in God. Trying to show that *even atheists* have faith, when the faith is that the book might be wrong or right, is not to say that, therefore, they have faith *in God.*
An agnostic says, "I'm not at all sure about the God thing." -- I can understand that position.
An atheist says, "No way, no how. I am 100% certain that there is no God. It's true that I cannot prove a negative, and I have no real evidence of any kind -- but I know for a fact that God is a complete myth."
That's an expression of faith. It's pure emotion and nothing else. Every real atheist says that, and they all sound stupid when they say it.
I don’t have enough faitth to be an atheist.
Pray for America to Wake up
In a word...no. Let's look at it:
Suppose there exists a book simply titled "The Book of God's Existence" which, using formal logic and reasoning, proves the existence of God. However, if one who does not already believe in God reads this book that person is doomed to eternal damnation.
That's one heck of an assumption to start out with.
Many prominent and vocal atheists have read the book intending to prove it wrong, but in each case they immediately become depressed believing their fate in Hell is assured.
Why are they damned, since they now presumably believe in God?
You, as an atheist, are not convinced that the book is correct. In fact, you're almost certain that it can be proven wrong since you discover it is simply a modified ontological argument and have successfully found logical fallacies in numerous other similar arguments. What do you do?
Since I have discovered this, I must have already read the book, yes? How else would I know?
There are only 3 valid actions that an atheist may take:
Refuse to read the book, but continue to deny God's existence. Refuse to read the book, but accept God's existence. Read the book. Each action requires a display of faith, either in God or one's self. Here's why:
Since I already know that the book consists of a modified ontological argument, I must have already read the book.
If they respond to the question with "I would just read the book" they express a blind faith that their intuition of the book's fallibility is correct without any evidence.
In this instance, the atheist has simply expressed his willingness to examine the evidence, and has not necessarily made a judgement as to the the book's fallibility in advance.
Further, they show a faith that the testimony of all the atheists who read the book is misguided despite the fact that each person who read the book was a strong atheist before, most likely including others that had also successfully refuted other ontological arguments.
You never said how many atheists have already read the book. 10? 100? 2? In any case, the fact that many other people have drawn a conclusion about it doesn't make of necessity mean they're correct (or incorrect, for that matter).
However, the greatest faith they place is in their belief that they will not be damned to Hell for reading the book without assurance.
Why would someone base their actions upon the threat of something they don't believe exists (their soul) ending up someplace they don't believe exists (Hell)?
This thought experiment is, I'm afraid, fatally flawed.
An insomniac agnostic dyslexic stays up all night wondering if there is a dog.
Of course they have faith. They have faith that what they see and touch and the here and now are real and both are all that exists. That their consciousness, what we call “soul”, is nothing more than the result of electrochemical processes in a human brain. They can believe whatever they like. Most people on earth a thousand years ago probably believed the earth was flat and and the stars were pin holes in some black firmament. It did not make it so. I believe when the water tight bag of meat, bone, organs, and feces their consciousness peers into this world through gives out they will be in for a major surprise.
But, of course atheists express a simplistic religion-like faith that cannot be proven by facts. Just ask them about global warming.
It proves that some people are sophists. The argument presented here is utterly bogus and absurd.
If presented with this phony choice, I would take a fourth course of non-action; I would give the proposition the robust horselaugh it deserves, proving that I have faith in humor.
Of the few Atheists I know, they are mostly arrogant and self-centered.
If you’re an Atheist reading this, think about it. You believe there is nothing after this life and no God, naturally you’re going to center your life around yourself as you are the only thing you’ve got, and your days are numbered. Naturally you’re self-centered. Maybe family centered.
Faith is a foreign concept.
I think the arrogant part comes in as a defense mechanism. All those Christians/Jews, I know better! But I’ve always thought behind every arrogant Atheist there is a person masking a pain/emptiness that God
could take away. Of course they couldn’t or wouldn’t ever admit to such a thing.
Probably not every Atheist is like this, but those I’ve encountered are.
A hypocrite is a man who writes a book extolling atheism and then prays that it sells well.
(old joke that Woody Allen wrote when 16)
I don’t think atheists believe they have NO faith in ANYTHING. Faith is a belief in something they haven’t totally proven. For example they believe in cold fusion or warp speed space travel, even though they aren’t totally proven or understood.
This is a nice try but atheists are masters at rationalization. Rationalization is the second greatest human drive. If they don’t attack your argument, they attack how you’ve said it, or they attack you personally, or they attack the way you are spreading your argument, or there’s always something to object to.
Atheism is a faith itself because one has to have faith in order to believe in nothing.
I only have faith in what I can see hear smell taste and touch. Everything else is Voodoo.
Of course atheists have faith. Just suggest that they either decline to celebrate Thanksgiving or rebrand it as “Plumb Dumb Lucky Day” to fit their belief in random, disconnected events. I did this in a blog a few years ago. The atheists were outraged because they were “thankful” for all sorts of things. But when asked where they directed their “thanks”, they became unglued. Atheists need the argument because they are the insecure side. They know they are wrong, but can’t admit it.
Pascal’s Wager is an argument in apologetic philosophy which was devised by the seventeenth-century French philosopher, mathematician, and physicist, Blaise Pascal. It posits that humans all bet with their lives either that God exists or does not exist. Given the possibility that God actually does exist and assuming the infinite gain or loss associated with belief in God or with unbelief, a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.).[1]
Pascal formulated the wager within a Christian framework. The wager was set out in section 233 of Pascal’s posthumously published Pensées. Pensées, meaning thoughts, was the name given to the collection of unpublished notes which, after Pascal’s death, were assembled to form an incomplete treatise on Christian apologetics.
Historically, Pascal’s Wager was groundbreaking because it charted new territory in probability theory, marked the first formal use of decision theory, and anticipated future philosophies such as existentialism, pragmatism, and voluntarism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager
For me, its easier to convince them they’re agnostic, like everybody else.
It’s one thing to say you aren’t sure. It’s another to say there is no God.
Most of the time, I say, “So, prove God doesn’t exist. I’d like my Sunday morning’s back.”
They inevitably say, “You can’t prove a negative.”
To which I say, “I can prove you aren’t dead, so let’s dispense with that and let’s see your evidence that the Earth and everything in it could have come about as a great cosmic accident. Proceed.”
The answer for most atheists will be: I’m not going to read the book because I don’t care. Most atheists aren’t of the driven kind that give all the speeches and make all the headlines, we just aren’t into the whole God thing, it’s an avenue of interacting to the world that we can’t relate to. And then we see the weird (at least to us) stuff religious people obsess on (like the current thread here on why Mary’s sins didn’t transfer to Jesus), and we’re glad we’re not in that club. You guys think about things that just don’t rate for us, and I’m sure we think about things that don’t rate for you. And yeah, if you use an ridiculously broad definition of the word “faith” we have “faith” in a lot of stuff, but that’s more the definition your using than actual faith. It’s really more just assumptive behavior, we all assume (”faith”) when we go to bed at night we’ll wake up in the morning, doesn’t mean we have a God concept, just means if you honestly didn’t think you’d wake up on the morning nobody would ever go to bed.
You confuse faith with a decision based on imperfect knowledge. Most decisions are based on imperfect knowledge. By your use of the term “faith” everything is a matter of faith. But you are wrong, that’s not faith.
Whichever choice is made in your scenario, it would be one the person made for rational reasons. Let’s say I didn’t read the book. That choice is a judgement about the best possible outcome and the probability of being right. It doesn’t demand faith in the right answer. You can make the choice while still acknowleding that one of the other choices might turn out to have been better.
Faith is believing without evidence. These choices aren’t about believing.
What do you think? Does this argument prove even atheists have faith?
<><><><><><<>
This argument is an answer desperately searching for a question.
Of course atheists can have faith; it’s just not in an otherworldly, unseen, unprovable God.