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The Wishful Thinking of Atheists
“Atheism is wish-fulfillment, a giant Oedipus complex wishing the death of the heavenly Father.”
“Atheism is a projection onto the cosmos of sinful, rebellious desires that God not exist. Atheism is an opiate of the conscience. Atheism is wish-fulfillment, a giant Oedipus complex wishing the death of the heavenly Father.” — Arthur W. Lindsley, C.S. Lewis on Freud and Marx1
I have made significant progress writing a new book, exposing the embarrassing errors and logical inconsistencies of the so-called “New Atheists”. An introduction was published recently. Another sample chapter is included below. Very soon, we may be starting a crowdfunding project to bring this book to publication. If you would be interested in bringing this new book to completion, please provide your input and encouragement in the comment section below…
The Wishful Thinking of Atheists
When I was a small child, I didn’t like taking naps. My mom said to sleep, but I wanted to stay up. Hoping to avoid punishment, I wouldn’t openly rebel. I would pretend to take a nap. In my heart, I had no desire to listen to my mother. I might have looked like I was sleeping on the outside, but on the inside, I was awake. I wanted to rebel as much as I possibly could, without getting in trouble.
Caught in this frustrating situation, I used my budding powers of reason, and I devised a clever plan. My mother was sitting off to the right side of the room, and I knew she could see my right eye. But I believed my nose was just long enough, that it would obstruct her view of the left side of my face. I thought I could deceive my mother by keeping my right eye tightly closed, convincing her that I was sound asleep. Meanwhile, I kept my left eye open, in quiet rebellion against the unjust circumstances.
Alas, my brilliant plan did not succeed. Somehow, my mother managed to discern the fact that I was laying there with one eye open, and one eye shut, and she informed me in no uncertain terms that this did NOT constitute a proper nap. She instructed me to close my left eye, and to get to sleep, and not to complain, or else she would give me something to complain about. My plan had failed, and this early attempt at childhood rebellion ended in defeat.
Many young children do this sort of thing. Often, if a toddler has done something wrong, and doesn’t want to get caught, he will close his eyes tight. His logic seems to be, "If I can’t see you, then you can’t see me."
Thankfully, as we grow up, most of us get over this sort of thinking. But unfortunately, there are some who do not. There are a number of grown men who are afraid of getting in trouble. They are guilty of doing things which are not good, and they know that if God exists, then they deserve to be judged for what they have done. But these men are rebellious at heart, and they have no desire to change their ways. So to quiet their troubled conscience, they reduce their reason to the level of a small child, and they close their eyes tight, saying, "There is no God! There is no God!" They have chosen to close their eyes to God’s existence, in hope that if they cannot see Him, then He will not be able to see them. And presumably, if He cannot see them, then they will not have to answer for any of their wicked deeds.
Corrupting Atheists While They Are Young
When Christopher Hitchens was young, he had a series of sordid encounters with another teenage boy, and he describes the affair as his "first exposure to love as well as to sex." He said, "it helped teach me as vividly as anything could have that religion was cruel and stupid," thus connecting this degrading experience with his own atheistic beliefs.2 Richard Dawkins had pedophile teachers at all three boarding schools he attended as a child. One of the teachers molested Dawkins himself, but now that he is grown, he refers to it as a "harmless experience" and he says he would "defend" these teachers today if anyone dared to attack them.3 Sam Harris says he was subjected to a totally secular upbringing.4 Peter Singer admits that his mother was an atheist, and that she raised him accordingly.5
In admissions such as these, it becomes apparent that atheists themselves often endure various sorts of childhood abuse and indoctrination, with all sorts of negative influences that twist a young person's psyche, rendering a person resistant to believing in God.
If these men were to become Christians, they would have to acknowledge God's right to sit in judgment against both unbelief and sexual immorality. Dawkins would have to denounce his pedophile teachers, Hitchens would have to repudiate his first exposure to what he calls "love", and Singer would have to censure his own atheist mother! Considering their powerful motivations for avoiding such outcomes, it doesn't take a scientist to see why they may have avoided honest inquiry into God's existence and identity. Finding a God would mean finding a moral Judge, and that is not a risk these men are willing to take.
Isaac Asimov’s remark about the childishness of pseudoscience is just as applicable to atheism: ‘Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold.’ Likewise, if you closely inspect every detail of atheism, you will always find a security blanket — a warm, comforting reassurance that you will never have to face the consequences of your actions.
Thomas Nagel, a famous atheist philosopher and writer, admits his bias with refreshing candor:
"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 in 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."6
Indeed, atheism is the opiate of the masses. It is a powerful drug which deludes people into believing that they can live any way they want, committing any number of injustices, without ever having to face the consequences for their actions. Atheism convinces men that they may live like the devil in this life, without being punished with him in the next.
Atheists Promoting Self-Delusion
Of course, grown men use this childish strategy in a way which is much more sophisticated than it is used by children. Instead of merely closing their eyes and chanting, "There is no God", they devise a clever labyrinth of tortured arguments, carefully crafted in such a way that they succeed not only in deceiving the masses, but more importantly, in deceiving themselves. This is what Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Bertrand Russell, Karl Marx, and all high profile atheists have done. In the course of promoting their fictional story of the so-called "God Delusion", the only thing they have accomplished is self-delusion.
Now, for the sake of charity, I should clarify, and point out the fact that delusion is not the same as dishonesty. I am not suggesting that Dawkins and crew are intentionally telling falsehoods. No doubt, if lie detectors were perfectly trustworthy, and if such a test were administered to a group of high profile atheists, then Richard and his comrades would pass with flying colors. As far as I can tell, they genuinely believe in a materialistic universe which pulled itself up by its own bootstraps, and brought itself into existence without any help from God.
By way of comparison, we can consider the plight of those who are currently suffering the effects of mind altering drugs. They may see blinding lights and stark colors which are not actually present. They may think they are floating through space or flying through the air, even when they are actually confined to a hospital bed or wheelchair. Their complete break with reality is a result of their own actions, yet they may have no memory of taking drugs at all. Even though their delusion is self-inflicted, it is still a genuine delusion, which has clouded their ability to reason. And as a result, they believe many things which have no basis in truth. Yet if you were to interview them in this state, they would think themselves perfectly rational.
As some pundits have quipped, atheism is the belief that there was nothing, and then nothing happened to nothing, and then nothing magically exploded for no reason, creating everything, and then a bunch of everything magically rearranged itself — for no reason whatsoever — into self-replicating bits which then turned into dinosaurs. Makes perfect sense.
There are grown men who actually believe such things, and teach such things in books and in universities, and still they think themselves rational. They have no memory of that point in their past when they were intentionally running away from the very concept of God, not because there is any rational reason to do so, but simply because they feared judgment, and they just did not wish to believe that there is a God who sees everything they do.
Wish Fulfillment for those who Don’t Want to Believe
It appears that this line of reasoning resonates with Dawkins himself. Providing a clue that this is so, he has written a bestselling work of fiction called "The God Delusion", in which he reveals the identity of his intended audience:
"I suspect—well, I am sure—that there are lots of people out there who have been brought up in some religion or other, are unhappy in it, don’t believe it, or are worried about the evils that are done in its name; people who feel vague yearnings to leave their parents’ religion and wish they could, but just don’t realize that leaving is an option. If you are one of them, this book is for you."
Rather than appealing to rationally minded men who are primarily interested in weighing the evidence, he admits that his primary targets are "people who feel vague yearnings to leave their parents’ religion and wish they could". In other words, if you have already decided that you do not wish to believe in God, then Dawkins is here to help you feel comfortable in your lack of belief.
Thus atheism, rather than Christianity, seems to be a prime candidate for wishful thinking. As Dawkins himself says:
"I think a lot of people, when they give up God, feel a great sense of release and freedom... I have had a lot of letters saying that."7
Not prepared to counter the best evidence that Christianity has to offer, he aims for low hanging fruit, knitting a security blanket for those timid souls who have already made up their minds that they want to be convinced of a universe without judgment, without justice, and without any ultimate consequences. This is the cowardly way in which atheism perpetuates itself.
But I am being too tough on Richard and company. I have to admit, this state of affairs is not entirely their fault. They can’t help the fact that they were raised and schooled during a time in which skepticism and unbelief had become relatively widespread (compared to previous generations). For centuries, many of the greatest scientists were devout Christians, and if Richard had been born a couple centuries earlier, he might have become a serious Christian too. But during this present time, when so many scientists have deemed it fashionable to turn their backs on God, one can imagine how Richard and his friends got caught up in the confusion and jumped onto their bandwagon.
Atheists Peddling Illusions
Atheist arguments often resemble a popular form of optical illusions which are classified as "impossible objects", including such items as Penrose Stairs, Penrose Triangles, Borromean Rings, the Impossible Trident, and the Shepard Elephant. At first glance, on paper, they look elegant, and their initial appearance makes it seem as if they could represent actual objects in the real world. However, these optical illusions are drawn in a deceptive way, including incoherence at a fundamental level, with internal inconsistencies which make their actual existence impossible. Such objects can be drawn, but never built. Many of the popular arguments for atheism bear conceptual similarities to these impossible objects.
Many high profile atheists demonstrate an ability to formulate arguments which, on paper, have the appearance of coherence. Yet upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that they lack internal consistency. When they use arguments to construct one pillar at the foundation of atheism, those same arguments only succeed in destroying one of the other pillars. It is as if they included Penrose Stairs and Impossible Tridents in the drawings of their blueprints for atheism. They may appear sound and reasonable, but only as long as they are not inspected too closely.
Thus, countering Dawkins’ arguments is a task which is often best left to Dawkins himself. The same goes for Hitchens, Harris, and company. In the context of their overall arguments against the existence of God, they rely on a significant number of contradictory statements and incoherent assumptions. At various points throughout this presentation, we will return to this theme.
Indeed, this phenomenon may prove to be an additional proof for the existence of God. After all, if an alternative to theism cannot be presented in a way that is internally consistent and logically coherent, then the only sound conclusion would be that God's existence is not only reasonable, but is logically necessary.
Here are some of the atheist illusions we will be exploring in the next several chapters:
Intellectually Dishonest Atheists - Pascal’s Wager
Self Indulgent Atheists - The Problem of Suffering
Immoral Atheists Lecturing Christians on Morality
Atheists Promoting Pseudoscience
Atheists who are Bad at Math
Atheists Tripping on the Origin of Life
Atheists Swooning at Cosmic Fine Tuning
Atheists Ignoring History & Archaeology
And much more! . . .
I have made significant progress writing a new book, exposing the embarrassing errors and logical inconsistencies of the so-called “New Atheists”. The above chapter is a sample. Very soon, we may be starting a crowdfunding project to bring this new book to publication. If you would be interested in bringing this new book to completion, please provide your input and encouragement in the comment section below…
1 Lindsley, Arthur. C.S. Lewis on Freud and Marx.
https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/resources/c-s-lewis-on-freud-and-marx/,
accessed August 5, 2023.
2 Ireland, Doug. My Queer Friend Christopher Hitchens. Gay City News.
https://gaycitynews.com/my-queer-friend-christopher-hitchens/, accessed June 26, 2023.
3 Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
4 "I don’t have a religious upbringing that I’m rebelling against. I had a totally secular upbringing" - Sam Harris Extended Interview. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2007/01/05/january-5-2007-sam-harris-extended-interview/3736/, accessed July 30, 2023.
5 Is There a God? Debate between Peter Singer and John Lennox. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoTILnpd3q8, accessed June 26, 2023.
6 Nagel, Thomas. The Last Word (pp. 130-131). Oxford University Press: 1997.
7 Dr. Richard Dawkins on God & Intelligent Design. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pckg3Kud8_A, accessed June 28, 2023
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