Why the Theism vs Atheism Debate will never be "Solved"
Why the Theism vs Atheism Debate will never be "Solved"
Here's why this is primarily a matter of the heart as opposed to the mind
Theists accuse atheists of being reductive.
Atheists accuse theists of being additive.
This difference in perception is rooted in the heart ❤️, not the head 🧠.
This point is most obvious when considering an act of martyrdom, such as that of St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Catholic priest imprisoned by the Nazis.
In 1941, the Gestapo arrested Kolbe and sent him to Auschwitz, as prisoner 16670.
Kolbe was subjected to savage beatings while continuing to act as a priest.
One day, one of the other prisoners from the camp escaped.
To discourage further attempts at escape, a Nazi commander chose ten prisoners to starve to death in an underground bunker.
Upon hearing this sentence, one of the men, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out, “My wife! My children!"
Maximilian Kolbe saw his distress and volunteered to take his place.
So the starvation began. . .
Kolbe would lead the prisoners in prayer. And each time the guards checked on him, he was standing or kneeling in the middle of the cell, looking calmly at those who entered (Wiki).
After they had been starved and deprived of water for two weeks, only Kolbe and three others remained alive.
At this point the guards wanted the bunker empty, so they injected the remaining 4 men with carbolic acid to finish them off.
Kolbe calmly received his injection and died.
Franciszek went on to live another 54 years.
So back to the matter at hand, as it relates to the “additive” nature of theism and the “reductive” nature of atheism.
The question for you to answer is: What happened here?
St. Kolbe committed an act of martyrdom, selflessly giving his life so that someone else may live, expressing what he believed to be the ultimate act of Love (“Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” —Jesus).
Ok… but what does this act of martyrdom really mean? What is happening at the core of the event — at the precise moment of Kolbe’s decision? What is the mystery being revealed, if any?
Here are the two options:
Kolbe was connecting to something transcendent. He was acting in relationship to something greater… to Truth, Beauty, Goodness… Love… to God. What he did wasn’t just something neat or emotionally inspiring. But rather it was a truly Beautiful act. Objectively so. He was connected to some kind of higher plane of existence - a perfected spirit.
He was acting out basic evolutionary tendencies of survival and reproduction. While in this context it may seem paradoxical to give up one’s own life, Kolbe was merely acting out a latent desire to preserve the species, by saving someone younger than him with a family.
Which do you think it is?
To an atheist, option 1 seems too poetic. Like we are fantasizing and overly romanticizing something that should, in reality, be viewed as highly pragmatic, from some subconscious perspective of ancestral survival strategies. Option 1 is adding extra things to the mix.
To a theist, option 2 seems like it deletes a fundamental reality of humanity and personhood. To say that Kolbe giving his life up is actually motivated out of some distant causal chain ultimately emerging from a place of self-interest feels like an attempt to blatantly ignore the true phenomenon of the moment.
It should come as no surprise to you, my dear reader, that I find the reductionist narrative of Option 2 entirely absurd — or at least, to suggest that inherited survival strategies completely explain what’s happening in an act of ultimate Charity / Love is grossly cynical, and borderline Gnostic.
(This is not to suggest that Survival & Reproduction™ might not have some contribution to the equation here… the theist allows for this. The difference is that the atheist believes gene motivation is all there is, when all is said and done.)
But again, to give it its fair due, the idea of the reductive approach goes something like this:
You would sacrifice your life to protect your spouse and children ➡️ because genes.
Therefore, you might also do the same to protect your cousins, ➡️ because genes.
Therefore, you might also do the same to protect the life of someone in your village. . .
. . .(insert many layers of extrapolation here). . .
Therefore, out of the same motivation that drives a man to die for his wife and kids, you would die for a complete stranger ➡️ because genes.
And that’s it.
Any other “reason” you might consciously hold in your mind is, allegedly, just a rationalization or illusion behind what the real reason is. . .
Notice how such an explanation ironically falls under the Mind Reading Illusion
Atheist YouTuber Alex O’Connor and Catholic Bishop Robert Barron discussed this same event of St. Kolbe on their conversation about Meaning.
Except I don’t think they took it far enough to get the point which I’m about to share with you here.
The decision of whether you believe in the explanatory power of Option 1 or Option 2 is not one of the mind, but is rather about the heart.
Think about it.
Both Option 1 and Option 2 are unfalsifiable.
We have no way to “prove” to someone cynical that a direct sensory experience of Truth/Beauty/Goodness exists (Option 1) - in the same way that it’s impossible to prove to someone else that you are having an internal monologue in your head right now, or any other interior experience.
We also have no way to “prove” that the layers of extrapolation and “reasons” of survival and reproduction are “motivating” the martyr who is giving his life up.
You cannot empirically observe reasons.
The only “fact” we could gather in this scenario, would be to ask St. Kolbe (the martyr) to reveal to us his explicit reason for doing what he did.
What were the actual thoughts he was having in his head at the time of his decision?
What was he feeling? What images was he seeing?
What words would he have used to describe all of these sensations, as well as the worldview that drove them?
“I did this because XYZ” — how would Kolbe complete this sentence? How would he describe the intention behind his own actions?
This is the most credible way to determine his WHY.
And then after he would give you his answers, you would have to decide whether:
A) You accept his account at face value.
B) You place yourself in a presumptive, more enlightened position, where you tell him “that’s nice. . . but I know that despite what you were directly experiencing in that moment, your real reasons were actually gene propagation.”
Let’s leave aside the case of martyrdom and think about something from your own life.
Remember a moment in your life where you encountered a profound experience of Beauty.
Perhaps you saw a brilliant movie or a play. You listened to a piece of music or studied a painting that took your breath away. Perhaps you climbed to the top of a mountain and had a meaningful encounter with nature.
In that moment, you were deeply moved. Your spirits and perspective were elevated to something grander, beyond your immediate existence.
Ask yourself what better describes your experience of that moment, at the time you were experiencing that moment:
A) Did you perceive yourself to be connected to Something Greater?
B) Or did you catch yourself and laugh saying: “Aha… there are those funny chemical reactions masquerading as deep feelings again… strategies that my ancestors used to help them survive for some reason are being triggered here in this encounter with art, in a way that’s fairly arbitrary. How cute. LOL”
Notice that throughout the examples above, neither of the interpretations can be proven or disproven.
Which you pick is fundamentally a decision of the will.
A choice.
And that choice ultimately boils down to:
Do I want to act as if Love exists?
Do I want to act as if “love” is no more than just an arbitrary phenomenon being caused by atoms clashing into other atoms?
The final question for you is this:
Would you rather be accused of being BLIND or of HALLUCINATING?
Of missing out on something real that’s there
or
Of seeing something that’s not actually there.
THIS is what the atheism vs theism debate boils down to.
None of us will have a worldview that lands perfectly on the bullseye 🎯, where we are right about 100% our beliefs.
You will make a mistake.
The question is what side of the fence are you comfortable having your mistake land on.
A Type I or Type II Error
Do you see it?
—Drago