Running head: RESPONDING TO AN ATHEISTIC VIEW 1 Responding to an Atheistic View Sheena Vogel Philosophy 201 Liberty University Online Abstract For the purposes of this paper we will consider an article written by H. J. McCloskey entitled, On Being an Atheist.The author addressed several reasons why a theist comes to believe in the existence of a supreme being, in this case God, and why these reasons represent a poor example for a strong foundation in theism. His oppositions include the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, the idea the God cannot exist at the same time evil exists and why it is more comforting in believe there is no God than believing there is a God. However, McCloskey’s version includes only one side of the arguments.This paper will respond to McCloskey’s oppositions as being to hasty and not thorough, these arguments are not there to prove God exists; merely that it is highly probable. For arguments sake this paper takes on the view of how a theist would respond to McCloskey’s article and refutes his opinions. Responding to an Atheistic View A.W.
Atheist vs. Theists: McCloskey vs. Me McCloskey in his article "On Being an Atheist" has a strong opinion on not only God but on the beliefs of the theists. According to McCloskey he disagrees with the theists argument on the uncaused cause. The uncaused cause states that a something or someone that has to have been here first to cause the cause to happen. In our case of theology we are saying that God was the "someone" that is the necessary being that had to have always have been here in order for the caused event which in this case is the creating of the universe to happen. He also has some strong opinion on the solutions that the theists have on the resolution to the problem of evil.
We need to investigate and see why it is valid or invalid. COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT On the subject of cosmological proof, God is the first cause. The universe is contingent because everything with in the universe is contingent, thus making the universe in need of a first cause (Foreman, 2012). McCloskey wrote that theists do not study or think far enough ahead to realize that one must be an existing being to be a first cause. “The first, or “no cause,” is a claim that some contingent objects have
Response to Being an Atheist Christina Yarbrough PHIL 210 Liberty University H.J McCloskey wrote an article entitled “On Being an Atheist” which dealt with the atheist approach to the cosmological and teleological approaches and the problem of evil. He calls his view of the arguments proofs, as he feels that the arguments offer no proof for the existence of God. He believes that atheism is a more comfortable way to believe than that of theism and that those who believe in theism should be upset just because they believe in God. I believe that McCloskey has a fallacy in his arguments and that the existence of God can not be proven through any one argument, and that all we can do is defend our beliefs within the realm of our own understanding. McCloskey is reminding atheists the ways theists argue for their belief in God.
Response to an Atheist In the article “On Being an Atheist”, H.J. McCloskey tells his readers that his intent is to remind his fellow atheist of the inadequacies of which theist base their beliefs in God upon, why atheist don’t believe there’s a God, why atheism is a much more comfortable belief than theism, and why theist should be miserable just because they’re theist. McCloskey opens his discourse directing our attention at the so-called “proofs” a theist has for their theism. The problem with this is that he doesn’t clarify what he means by “proofs”. The lack of clarification for the term “proofs” does a disservice to McCloskey’s opening.
This article was published in the Free Inquiry, a secular humanist magazine; therefore, the article's audience were atheist readers (ones who highly respect morals and logical thinking). The purpose of the article is to convince these atheists that their civil rights are in no way being attacked. Throughout the article, Grothe and Dacey use historical allusions, logistical appeals and hypothetical narrative, to effectively convince their audience that atheism is not a civil rights issue. Grothe and Dacey begin the article with a hypothetical narrative. They describe a scene of passionate atheists protesting at city hall yelling things like “we shall oversleep Sunday!” (68).
He would continue to disagree with this statement because he claimed that because everything in the universe is contingent, it must mean that the universe as a whole must have a cause behind it. Philosopher Gottfried Leibniz would have disagreed with this statement as his key idea was the principle of sufficient reason. His argument was that even if the universe had always been in existence it would still require an explanation, or a sufficient reason. He believed that we need to establish why there is something rather than nothing and to do this, we need to question why the universe exists and look outside the universe as there is nothing within the universe that tells us why it exists. The heart of Leibniz’s argument was that there must be a cause for the whole which explains the whole.
Anselm’s Ontological Argument states that one understands that God, as a being, cannot be conceived a greater. Anselm uses this psychology that if we conceive of such a being’s existence only in the understanding, a greater being could be conceived and also exists in reality (Anselm, p.169). He also goes on to say that it’s contradictory because we cannot conceive a greater being than God that it must exist (Anselm, p.169). Anselm then moves on to the admission that since one understands the concept of a being that cannot conceive a greater; God cannot be understood not to exist (Anselm, p.169). One example that Anselm used to back up his argument was a painter.
He talks about our consciences, both authoritarian and humanistic. He even goes into detail about why it’s better to Garra 2 obey out of love then out of fear. Erich also states that “For centuries, obedience was insisted as a virtue, and disobedience was insisted as a vice.”(Fromm 683). This statement implies that obeying was the right thing to do, and disobeying was the wrong thing to do. He even uses religion and terms that deal with religion throughout his article for more evidence.
On one hand you have the philosophers who believe you can speak and write about God, because God is reality. On the other hand, are the Logical Positivists who claim that statements about God have no meaning because they don’t relate to anything that is real. There are a number of philosophers who claimed to have proven conclusively that religious language is meaningful, for example Aquinas’ theory of analogy. An analogy is an attempt to explain the meaning of something which is difficult to understand and forming relations through attributes or relations that are similar. Aquinas rejected univocal and equivocal language when talking about God.