Locked in Atheistic Delusion

James S. Spiegel, in his book The Making of an Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief, suggests that the more one is confirmed in an atheistic worldview, and the longer one remains in the corrupting impact of the influence of sin, the more hardened one becomes to the natural awareness of the presence and reality of the Creator, God, which God Himself substantiated (cf. Rom. 1:19).

In college, as an English major, I learned about naïve realism: a perspective claiming a common sense reading or understanding of texts and worldview. For instance, while the sentence "God loves you" might seem easy enough to understand, from the perspective of naïve realism at least, the notion of God (or gods) will differ significantly from the various worldviews of people of varying cultures and religions (or non-religious societies).

Moreover, what does "love" mean, and in what sense does God love you? How has God demonstrated His love for you? Is His love object-oriented and conditional? Does His love have any limits? Does God's love impose any standards on how I should perceive Him?  

Furthermore, to whom might "you" refer? To say "God loves you" might not be a claim that God loves all people. Does God love you but not some other person? Does God love anyone else? Does "you" refer to only a subset of people, whether Jewish or non-Jewish, Caucasian or non-Caucasian?

No, naïve realism will not work because universal objectivity is, in our imperfect, human condition, an impossibility. What this means to atheists, moreover, is that they are not free to claim universal objectivity, either, not even from alleged scientific methods of interpretation.

James Spiegel writes, "Perfect objectivity is impossible, at least for mere mortals. Yet some persist in claiming that science gives us an objective, unfiltered view of the world."¹ Science cannot even be objective by its own standards. Taking his cue from Thomas Kuhn's coining of the paradigm, Spiegel underscores the fact that

scientists do not observe the world objectively but always interpret what they see in light of the scientific theory to which they are committed. Their theoretical framework, or paradigm, impacts all of their experimenting, data gathering, and analysis of results. Thus, even the most carefully constructed scientific research is biased. When data is collected that might threaten to undermine the paradigm, the scientist is likely to interpret the data in a way that is favorable to it. Scientists, Kuhn emphasized, are no different from other people, insofar as their values and beliefs skew their observations of the world. They, like the rest of us, tend to see what they expect or want to see.² 

That latter concept (of wanting to see a particular result) is even admitted by some honest atheists, as with Thomas Nagel, quoted below. Spiegel comments that "what one believes about the world is always deeply impacted by one's values. People are inclined to believe according to their desires; we tend to believe what we want to be true."³ This is true, I think, and I have been wanting to explore this concept more in-depth; for it covers every single opinion and belief which each of us holds to be true.

Atheistic philosopher Thomas Nagel, as quoted by Spiegel, admitted:

I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. 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.⁴ 

Spiegel appreciates Nagel's honesty here and thinks, as do I, that such a view is merely consistent atheism. Atheists do not reject the concept of God on a simple or objective, intellectual notion that there is no evidence for a Creator or Designer. That there is design in the universe, scientifically demonstrated, nonetheless, should expose the irrationality of even the slightest rejection of design. No, there is an underlying cause and instigation for atheistic dogmatics, and that cause is sin.

The atheist will scoff at this conclusion beyond any doubt. The notion of sin derives from both religious and metaphysical presuppositions. Since the atheist is entrenched in a naturalistic hermeneutic, then any notion of sin or a soul in need of redemption is entirely unwarranted.

But what naturalistic atheists are woefully and blithely unaware of is that their sinful and immoral, fallen condition is undermining their ability to think rationally about such religious and metaphysical realities. Spiegel notes that, from the biblical perspective of Romans 1:24, 28-29, atheists maintain a depraved mind that is blind to such realities as God, ethics, and certain aspects of human nature.⁵ He continues:

The atheist's problem is rebellion against the plain truth of God, as clearly revealed in nature. This rebellion is prompted by immorality, which diminishes understanding, and a genuine ignorance results. This is not a loss of intelligence so much as a selective intellectual obtuseness [blunting or dullness of the intellect] or imperviousness [a mind incapable of being affected] to truths related to God, ethics, and human nature. But the root of this obtuseness is moral in nature.⁶

Atheists are trapped in their own delusion because of their moral rebellion against their Creator. From a biblical view, rejection of God "deadens the mind when it comes to theological and moral truths. Atheists are cognitively handicapped, and their quest for understanding is compromised."⁷ The tragedy of atheism is its rejection of its only source of intellectual and spiritual redemption -- Christ Jesus Himself.               

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¹ James S. Spiegel, The Making of an Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2010), 92. Spiegel continues: "But then again, most of us are fed an idealistic image of science and scientists from the earliest years of grade school, which is very difficult to shake. We are conditioned to think of scientists (the best of them, anyway) as unbiased, dispassionate, purely logical, Spock-like automatons who simply report the facts and devise general theories, without any ulterior motives or besetting influences to interfere with their work."

² Ibid., 15. The research of Thomas Kuhn into the history of science, from his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, writes Spiegel, revealed that "not only is this popular view of science specious, but the notion that scientists are routinely objective in their research is quite mistaken. Using dozens of historical cases, Kuhn showed that researchers are often far from neutral when it comes to testing and evaluating results. Rather, they tend to hold tenaciously to their theories, even in spite of contradictory data." (92-93) We all need to remember the vast difference between science and scientism, the latter of which is "the collection of attitudes and practices considered typical of scientists"; or the belief that "the investigative methods of the physical sciences are applicable or justifiable in all fields of inquiry." (link)

³ Ibid., 13.

⁴ Ibid., 11. Spiegel asks, "These comments by Nagel . . . reveal strong emotions. Could it be that [his] opposition to religious faith has more to do with the will than with reason?"

⁵ Ibid., 54. Still, the atheist is not excused: "God has made His existence and attributes so 'plain' and 'clearly seen' from creation [cf. Rom. 1:19-20] that unbelief is inexcusable." (53)

⁶ Ibid., 56. He adds, "It follows from the biblical diagnosis that atheists' arguments are an intellectual ruse masking their rebellion."

⁷ Ibid., 57.