My brother the Catholic Priest enjoys defending his Catholicism by equating atheism and a lack of belief in his particular brand of God with a “belief.” But is his comparison correct or in anyway accurate, and even if it is in some way, does that mean atheism is really “just a belief,” as he loves to say, and therefore no different than his own brand of Catholicism?
First, notice the double-standard my brother is relying on when he insists that “atheism is just a belief.” When he does this, he is not only choosing to “believe” his comparison is accurate (which is highly debatable because it is like saying that darkness is the same as light, even though one is the absence of the other), but between the two beliefs he is simply choosing to “believe” can be compared – the orange of atheism to the apple of Catholicism – he is simply assuming the former is false and the latter is true; and all because he chooses to “believe” this is the case. But between two possible "beliefs" that may both be equally as true as they may be false, choosing to "believe" that one is true and the other is false is simply a choice that requires a "Belief" about both "Beliefs" prior to deciding which "belief" is "true" and which is "false."
To do this, he rejects any reliance on reason, which he is using in a biased way that allows him to equate the two as the same thing, and inserts a value judgement as to which he prefers to “believe” is a “fact” and which is really just a “faith” in one's own disbelief. In other words, although he is equating a “belief” in atheism (which is actually a "disbelief") as being no different than his own belief in Catholicism, which means both “beliefs” would cancel each other out and lead him to have to admit some degree of agnosticism (the way 2 – 2 = 0), he chooses to “believe” that his own “belief” of Catholicism is superior to a “belief” in atheism (i.e., disbelief).
He "believies" his own "beliefs" are superior to all others for a couple of reasons. One is that God apparently leaves petrified corpes strew about like Easter eggs for Christians to dig up like young Frankenstien and all so God can assure those grave robbing Christians that there is life after death. After Christians do this, they become convinced that the ONLY interpretation of the fact that some bodies have NOT decomposed is because God is trying to convince the Christian to believe in an afterlife. The Christian could learn the same thing from fertiziler that, becasue it is made of minerals, hardens into a rock. But that would be preposterous to think that way. So it is best to assume that undecomposed bodies are clearly signs from God that an afterlife awaits us, and hell awaits those who dare to consider they could be anything other than that.
Another way my brother concludes his own brand of "beliefs" are cearly "infallible" is by assuming that his own assessment of statistics about deaths caused by atheistic belief systems (like Communism under Stalin) prove that a “belief” in Christianity is therefore the superior brand of “beliefs.” Yet this conclusion is simply based on his "beliefs" about the infallibility of statistics and how infallible he is in interpreting those statistics. By asserting that atheism is a “belief” system, of which Communism is a derivative the same way Anglicanism is a derivative of Christianity, my brother easily compares how many deaths have been caused by his Catholicism vs Communism. Of course, the latter had the advantage of being a political system that, because it arrived on the scene thousands of years later, had access to both far greater numbers of people and industries that allowed for killing on a far greater scale due to science and technology, which the Catholic Church surely would've used to kill far more "witches" had it had access to such technology and so many people under its total control. Stalin's purges, after all, were merely his version of the Inquistions, and St. Augustine's justification of torture of unbelievers opened wide the door for the Salem Witch trials. (Indeed, one can imagine whole concentration camps of "witches" if the technology had existed four centuries ago.) The Reformation, as such, becomes an important point from this perspective, because it allows my brother to separate those deaths caused by Catholic Christianity from any deaths caused by Protestant Christianity. How convenient indeed.
But the real point of difference between equating atheism with a “belief” just like his Catholicism, is that he does not actually consider his Catholicism to be a “belief” at all – which would mean he would have to accept it is only as true as it may be untrue, and reaching such an intellectual stalemate he would then have to stop trying to convince the world that it is definitely the former and not the latter (and thus look for another job) – but a fact, more true than anything else in the universe.
Consider now the double standard he is using. Although he equates atheism with a “belief” that is no different than his Catholicism, he is insisting one is true and the other is false, rather than admitting that the relationship between two "beliefs" is that both have the same chance of being both true or false, or even true AND false, depending upon how we look at them. This means he is first choosing to "believe" that atheism and Catholicism are equals, but then he uses a second “belief” that Catholicism is the “superior” belief, because it is true, and all because his own bias for “believing” it is true – which affords him a job and a level of job security unmatched in the world – leads him to conclude that it must be. This is no different than Thomas Jefferson concluding that, while he “believed” slavery was evil, he must be prospering as much as he was because he was a “good” slave master. Read “The Half Has Never Been Told,” by Edward Baptiste, and we see how nothing contributed more to increasing profits during the days of slavery than brutality and torture, which proves Jefferson’s theory about his own benevolence being the result of what a great slave master he was, as simply a false belief.
Also, even if we are willing to agree for the sake of argument that we could characterize a “disbelief” in something as the same as a “belief” in that same thing (which again is like equating cold air with hot air) notice that a “belief” must always come BEFORE the disbelief, for the former is always the cause of the latter effect, and never can the two swap sides. There are an infinite number of things we could invent in our mind that we could then claim to “believe” are true. We could choose to “believe,” for example, that every movie or TV show we have ever seen are all perfectly “true.” In fact, that is exactly how we watch such entertainment, suspending disbelief in order to enjoy the show. But once the show is over, we recognize that it was just a movie, and not real. But if a person decides to persist in the “belief” that the movie was perfectly true, then and only then would the “belief” that such a “belief” were untrue need to come into being. A "disbelief," in other words, is simply the rejection of someone else's "belief."
My brother does not conciously walk around "disblieving" that he has aliens living inside of his brain that make him insane even as he "believes" he is perfectly sane. But if I told he did, in fact, have such aliens living inside his brain, only then would he "disbelieve" that this were true. But how would he ever prove to anyone that his "disbelief" was somehow more factual than my "belief"? And if he asked "what proof do you have that such aliens exist and are making me insane?" I would simply have to point out that his belief in a brand of God, when he rejects every other brand of God, is clear evidence that he is insane. And since he assumed his "belief" is better than a "disbelief," than the mere fact that I "believe" he is insane proves that my "belief" is better than his doubts. Of course, this doesn't convince him to doubt the idea that he was born with the stain of orininal sin, and that he MUST teach children everywhere to "believe" the same thing or they're likely to end up in hell. But then, those aliens in his brain are clearly making his choices for him - obviously!
First, notice the double-standard my brother is relying on when he insists that “atheism is just a belief.” When he does this, he is not only choosing to “believe” his comparison is accurate (which is highly debatable because it is like saying that darkness is the same as light, even though one is the absence of the other), but between the two beliefs he is simply choosing to “believe” can be compared – the orange of atheism to the apple of Catholicism – he is simply assuming the former is false and the latter is true; and all because he chooses to “believe” this is the case. But between two possible "beliefs" that may both be equally as true as they may be false, choosing to "believe" that one is true and the other is false is simply a choice that requires a "Belief" about both "Beliefs" prior to deciding which "belief" is "true" and which is "false."
To do this, he rejects any reliance on reason, which he is using in a biased way that allows him to equate the two as the same thing, and inserts a value judgement as to which he prefers to “believe” is a “fact” and which is really just a “faith” in one's own disbelief. In other words, although he is equating a “belief” in atheism (which is actually a "disbelief") as being no different than his own belief in Catholicism, which means both “beliefs” would cancel each other out and lead him to have to admit some degree of agnosticism (the way 2 – 2 = 0), he chooses to “believe” that his own “belief” of Catholicism is superior to a “belief” in atheism (i.e., disbelief).
He "believies" his own "beliefs" are superior to all others for a couple of reasons. One is that God apparently leaves petrified corpes strew about like Easter eggs for Christians to dig up like young Frankenstien and all so God can assure those grave robbing Christians that there is life after death. After Christians do this, they become convinced that the ONLY interpretation of the fact that some bodies have NOT decomposed is because God is trying to convince the Christian to believe in an afterlife. The Christian could learn the same thing from fertiziler that, becasue it is made of minerals, hardens into a rock. But that would be preposterous to think that way. So it is best to assume that undecomposed bodies are clearly signs from God that an afterlife awaits us, and hell awaits those who dare to consider they could be anything other than that.
Another way my brother concludes his own brand of "beliefs" are cearly "infallible" is by assuming that his own assessment of statistics about deaths caused by atheistic belief systems (like Communism under Stalin) prove that a “belief” in Christianity is therefore the superior brand of “beliefs.” Yet this conclusion is simply based on his "beliefs" about the infallibility of statistics and how infallible he is in interpreting those statistics. By asserting that atheism is a “belief” system, of which Communism is a derivative the same way Anglicanism is a derivative of Christianity, my brother easily compares how many deaths have been caused by his Catholicism vs Communism. Of course, the latter had the advantage of being a political system that, because it arrived on the scene thousands of years later, had access to both far greater numbers of people and industries that allowed for killing on a far greater scale due to science and technology, which the Catholic Church surely would've used to kill far more "witches" had it had access to such technology and so many people under its total control. Stalin's purges, after all, were merely his version of the Inquistions, and St. Augustine's justification of torture of unbelievers opened wide the door for the Salem Witch trials. (Indeed, one can imagine whole concentration camps of "witches" if the technology had existed four centuries ago.) The Reformation, as such, becomes an important point from this perspective, because it allows my brother to separate those deaths caused by Catholic Christianity from any deaths caused by Protestant Christianity. How convenient indeed.
But the real point of difference between equating atheism with a “belief” just like his Catholicism, is that he does not actually consider his Catholicism to be a “belief” at all – which would mean he would have to accept it is only as true as it may be untrue, and reaching such an intellectual stalemate he would then have to stop trying to convince the world that it is definitely the former and not the latter (and thus look for another job) – but a fact, more true than anything else in the universe.
Consider now the double standard he is using. Although he equates atheism with a “belief” that is no different than his Catholicism, he is insisting one is true and the other is false, rather than admitting that the relationship between two "beliefs" is that both have the same chance of being both true or false, or even true AND false, depending upon how we look at them. This means he is first choosing to "believe" that atheism and Catholicism are equals, but then he uses a second “belief” that Catholicism is the “superior” belief, because it is true, and all because his own bias for “believing” it is true – which affords him a job and a level of job security unmatched in the world – leads him to conclude that it must be. This is no different than Thomas Jefferson concluding that, while he “believed” slavery was evil, he must be prospering as much as he was because he was a “good” slave master. Read “The Half Has Never Been Told,” by Edward Baptiste, and we see how nothing contributed more to increasing profits during the days of slavery than brutality and torture, which proves Jefferson’s theory about his own benevolence being the result of what a great slave master he was, as simply a false belief.
Also, even if we are willing to agree for the sake of argument that we could characterize a “disbelief” in something as the same as a “belief” in that same thing (which again is like equating cold air with hot air) notice that a “belief” must always come BEFORE the disbelief, for the former is always the cause of the latter effect, and never can the two swap sides. There are an infinite number of things we could invent in our mind that we could then claim to “believe” are true. We could choose to “believe,” for example, that every movie or TV show we have ever seen are all perfectly “true.” In fact, that is exactly how we watch such entertainment, suspending disbelief in order to enjoy the show. But once the show is over, we recognize that it was just a movie, and not real. But if a person decides to persist in the “belief” that the movie was perfectly true, then and only then would the “belief” that such a “belief” were untrue need to come into being. A "disbelief," in other words, is simply the rejection of someone else's "belief."
My brother does not conciously walk around "disblieving" that he has aliens living inside of his brain that make him insane even as he "believes" he is perfectly sane. But if I told he did, in fact, have such aliens living inside his brain, only then would he "disbelieve" that this were true. But how would he ever prove to anyone that his "disbelief" was somehow more factual than my "belief"? And if he asked "what proof do you have that such aliens exist and are making me insane?" I would simply have to point out that his belief in a brand of God, when he rejects every other brand of God, is clear evidence that he is insane. And since he assumed his "belief" is better than a "disbelief," than the mere fact that I "believe" he is insane proves that my "belief" is better than his doubts. Of course, this doesn't convince him to doubt the idea that he was born with the stain of orininal sin, and that he MUST teach children everywhere to "believe" the same thing or they're likely to end up in hell. But then, those aliens in his brain are clearly making his choices for him - obviously!
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