Aaron Brink, a member of the SDSMT Campus Atheists & Agnostics, has taken the iniative and formatted a web version of this newsletter. It has been enhanced with graphics and hypertext links, making the reading much more enjoyable and stimulating. If you have a web page, you can link to the most recent edition of the newsletter at http://www.sdsmt.edu/student_orgs/caa/cft/.
I would like to remind all members of our exceedingly liberal editorial policy for The Campus Freethinker. Two members have already agreed to write articles for the newsletter in the near future. I won't twist their arms by mentioning their names, but they will hopefully have sent in their articles by next publication. Don't hesitate to take advantage of this medium for free expression.
(2) Encourage the formation of local Freethought groups in colleges and universities.
(3) Promote rational discussion of religious and philosophical issues on the internet.
(4) Defeat the myths and stigmas associated with atheists, agnostics, skeptics, and others who reject religion in favor of independent rational thought.
(5) Defend human rights to freedom of religion and speech.
Atheists who have been posed this question or one of its myriad forms by the smug theists will recognize its irrational stench immediately. It is sickening not simply because it of its triteness, but because of the theists' uncritical regard for its infallibility. Having posed this question to the skeptic, the theist sees no need for further discussion of the issue--in his mind he has already won, and he goes his merry little way assuring himself with satisfaction, "What a bunch of fools those atheists are!"
What this question ultimately amounts to is this: "If I can't explain it, God must have done it." Examine for a moment the irrationality and absurdity of this statement. If we accept it as true, then the greater your ignorance, the more evidence you have for the existence of God!
The theist is profoundly impressed by what he does not know, and he doesn't hesitate to cite his own ignorance as evidence that there must a wonderfully mysterious God behind all of the things which he cannot explain. The theist simply cannot fathom how life could develop through natural processes, therefore God did it! The remarkable organization of life, the delicate patterns of snow flakes and salt crystals, the clockwork motion of the heavens are all simply too wonderful, too mind-boggling, too marvelous, too unfathomable to exist without the constant care of a wonderful, mysterious, transcendent creator God.
Humans naturally desire to have an ordered view of the universe. If we don't have an explanation for something, we tend to make one up. We fill in gaps, alter information and memories to fit our biases and in so doing, we arrive at a coherent, if not entirely correct, picture of an ordered universe. And that is exactly what a person is doing when he postulates the existence of a supernatural God in order to explain something for which he knows no natural explanation. The argument that God must exist because a person can't explain something hinges entirely on his own ignorance--hardly a sound basis for a logical argument.
Humans are of varying intelligence and are specialized in their fields of knowledge. I don't now exactly how a computer works, though there are certainly people in this world who do. I cannot fathom how a computer works, so if we apply our argument to the problem of explaining how a computer works, I would be left with no conclusion but that there is a little demon inside the computer which makes it work. Let us suppose that another person, who is just as ignorant as I am about the internal workings of a computer, doesn't believe in the demon and challenges my explanation. I quickly put the infidel in his place by retorting, "If there is no demon in the computer, then how do you explain how it works?" Supposing that this dirty little atheist wants proof of the demon's existence, I can simply demand that he prove the demon does not exist, and the skeptic, having no proof, can simply be denounced as a foolish and sinful heretic. These same tactics are used by the defenders of that great demon in the sky called "God."
The ancients postulated gods to explain all of the natural phenomena they observed. There were gods which made the volcanoes erupt, the trees grow, the ocean waves swell, and the clouds thunder. As human knowledge has increased through the application of science, these supernatural speculations have been discarded for naturalistic explanations. And yet in spite of all of the knowledge humanity has gained since ancient times, vestiges of primitive animism remain in the form of a belief in a God who is invoked as an explanation of everything for which science has not yet provided an answer. As science advances, or ignorance decreases, and the theists have less and less "proof" of their god's existence.
I am not at all impressed by the amount of things I don't know or can't explain. If something is beyond my ability to fathom, I conclude simply that I can't explain it, and leave it at that. Foolishly postulating unexplainable gods to explain everything of which we have no knowledge only serves to increase our ignorance, and all that increases our ignorance increases our suffering.
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March 15, 1996.