Atheism and Belief

The debate between believers and atheists—perhaps the most important philosophical debate in the history of human culture—has continued since the Renaissance with periods of increase and abatement. Generally, the United States has been spared this conflict, until the recent and currently persistent preoccupation with Peter Hitchens, et al. 

While this debate is generally a terrible development—taking atheism seriously did Europe no good in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—it has had the benefit of requiring clear thinking from believers. 

For all their vaunted confidence in the ability of science to erode belief in God, atheists have rather surprisingly managed to evade the philosophical crux of the debate.

This crux may be formulated as follows:

1. In heated, polarizing, and significant debates, it is well to begin with a statement on which virtually everyone can agree.
2. In the debate over the existence of God, the statement with which virtually everyone can agree is as follows: The world exists, and it is imperfect.

Now it is a matter of fact that Christianity attempts to provide an explanation for both halves of this statement, whereas atheism simply does not. It is of course possible that the explanation provided by Christianity for this state of affairs is incorrect, but it is surely very odd that those who offer no explanation whatever (while simultaneously demanding one of others) feel superior to those offering such an explanation.

This very peculiar state of the debate ought to encourage humility in the atheists and a certain respect for their opponents; in fact, one too often finds just the opposite: that atheism tends to an arrogant certainty about matters that are far less certain than their bravado suggests.