Atheism Is a Delusion: Expounding the Aftermath of Examining the Claims and Objections of Disbelief

By Michael P. Barro

Deep down, everyone, with very few exceptions, badly wants and needs clarity and assurance, especially when it comes to the deepest most profound existential questions of life--where did we come from (origin)? Why are we here (purpose)? What are we meant to do (morality)? And where are we going (destiny)? Much more, do heaven and hell exist? Is death the end of everything, or is there life in the hereafter?

Thousands of Christians, at some point in their lives, admit being in doubt of their faith, especially when confronted with pressing questions on the Bible, God, Jesus, evil, death, suffering, science, evolution, etc. This book was painstakingly written to hopefully help provide philosophical and theological clarity and for them to be academically informed and be better assured of their Christian faith.

As for the religious skeptics, and downright anti-theists, they similarly at some point may have been confronted with the same nagging question from the believers--What if you're wrong? This book is also written to enjoin them to assess the bases of their objections and justifications of their disbelief, inspire them to reconsider their positions, and keep an open-minded attitude to the gospel of Christ.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Aug 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666775921

Michael P. Barro

Michael P. Barro is a public senior high school teacher in the Philippines, teaching philosophy and scholastic research. He was a recipient of two research awards—the Scholarly Researcher Award (2014) and the Special Merit Award during the first National Action Research Competition in 2018. He received his master’s degree in public administration in 2020. Barro uses his background knowledge in formal academic research in Christian apologetic endeavors, including the writing of this book.

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Preface

Purpose of the Book (The Game of Hide and Seek)

Why write another apologetics material? Why endure the painstaking crafting of another book devoted to defending the Christian Faith? Was there not enough already?

True enough. There has been enough literature defending the Christian God already. So why add another?

In fact, many even from among devoted circles do not condone apologetics as much, stating it is not as necessary as doing actual evangelization and living out the tenets.

While doing evangelization and living out the faith are of utmost importance, it is equally true as it was nicely put by some groups (this author does not know really know who exactly to give credit to regarding this statement)—God does not need defending, but people need help understanding.

First, this book was written for the obvious spiritual reason, above everything else. Apologetics has admittedly two very tempting motives—to satiate the pride of proving one’s self right, and/or escape the humiliation of being proven wrong. But this should not be the case. At its very core, and the very purpose and sense of being of apologetics, is spiritual. Apologetics, and the writing of literature on apologetics, should be beyond the motive of winning arguments against unbelievers, but foremost of all, about winning the souls of unbelievers. Christian Apologetics—the defense of the Christian Faith, and the writing of this particular book of apologetics, is actually the fulfillment of one of Jesus’ final commands to Peter and perhaps to the rest of others in the ministry—Feed my Sheep! Apologetics, before anything else, is feeding the Christians from within the church with spiritual food, and at the same time, sharing to those from without, the same spiritual food they are made to realize they need.

Secondly, there is another motivation to apologetics aside from the spiritual. It is much of a concern for the body as much as it is for the soul. It should be noted this early on that, apologetics, or in this particular sense the engagement in a philosophical clash with atheism, also has practical reasons and benefits to it. In actuality, this book is only partly apologetics (defense) material, and mostly a polemic one (offense) on atheism (the belief that God, or any gods, does/do not exist). At least in the academic level, this effort and enterprise is to encourage atheists and most especially the militant anti-theists to, at the very least, reconsider their positions and scrutinize the logical outworking of their counterpropositions, and for very important material practical reasons that many of them do not care to admit exists.

Many anti-theists, especially from the scholastic inner circles in the likes of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennet, Sam Harris, and many other popular and less popular ones, clamor and demand for ever-increasing secularization of public institutions. Most of their efforts were concentrated on the removal of religiosity and theistic worldview from public life, and the removal of any of religious indications thereof in education, in politics, laws, economics, etc. However, natura abhorret a vacuo—nature hates vacuum. Sanitizing modern civil life with anything and everything religious would require that something else as grand be able to supplant them. There is a need for a more formal and philosophic conversation most especially in answering the deepest metaphysical existential questions of who we are (identity), where we came from (origin), why we are here (purpose), how we should live (morality), and where we are heading (destiny). Which means that atheism, if it really aims to replace the established theistic worldview of much of humanity, must provide a tangible and functional replacement to the contributions of theism in all realms of civilization. A strict purely secular worldview that aims to remove religion from public and individual consciousness must offer something that can truly fill the void it aims to create, especially in the psychological aspect and moral landscape. If so, then atheism must first prove itself a feasible belief system impregnable from philosophical logical inspection. Is it? In the end, disbelief will bear its own fruits. Are they worth the while?

It should be reiterated that it is not the goal of the writer to be antagonistic of atheists, or anyone who are having doubts regarding their religious faith. It should be noted emphatically that atheists are not the target and that focusing on the atheists’ personhood and character would only tantamount to ad hominem parochial and uneducated style of discussion. Atheists are not the enemy; atheism, with all its pretense and corollary presumptions and reasoning, is. This book was written by the author to ostentatiously demonstrate the flaws in atheism as a philosophy, as a worldview, and how it is consistently and holistically impractical. On this note, this book will not demonstrate in the succeeding pages why being a Christian or promoting Christianity will bring about automatic economic prosperity or financial success (as it is not always the case). It will however aim to illustrate how atheism is actually counter-intuitive and philosophically unsound. This literature is fastidious crafted to demonstrate that atheism is nothing short of a delusion of playing hide-and-seek with God, and why and how it is so.

Chapter 1. Philosophical Technicalities

(Rules of the game)

At least in the thematic approach of this material, it seems though that the ongoing debate between theism and atheism is a game of playing hide-and-seek with two different perspectives as to which one is hiding. To the atheists, if ever God does exist, he is hiding. To the Christians, the atheist is the one hiding from any indication of God’s existence. In order to have a more functional, substantial dialogue with some sense of direction between the two worldviews, then both camps must agree on and adhere to some ‘rules’, philosophical technicalities if you will—mechanics of proposition-met-by-response. Like the game of hide-and-seek, the conversation between the believer and the atheist must at least achieve consensus to a set of logical rules and philosophical reasoning.

This is the purpose of this chapter—to lay down the basics of these philosophical technicalities that will be gradually applied in the succeeding chapters as the need arises.

Epistemology: What is it and how is it related to atheism being a delusion?

Professors of Philosophy Martinich and Stroll define Epistemology as, ". . . the philosophical study of the nature, origin, and limits of human knowledge."

¹

In other words, it is the science and art of knowing what we know, and knowing what we do not know. It is a branch of philosophy that deals with knowledge and its acquisition. Under this discipline, there are two main methods since its conception as a philosophical branch—Empiricism and Rationalism.

²

To put it bluntly, Empiricism is the principle in which knowledge, data, or information, is acquired through direct experiences of the five senses (sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch). It is about direct experiential acquisition of information. In simplest terms—it is knowing something because of what one has seen, heard, tasted, touched, or smelt first hand. Rationalism on the other hand, focuses more on logic and rationalization. It is an epistemology that focuses on knowledge that is being acquired through reasoning and logic, through deduction and induction, rather than experiencing first hand.

Here is real-life example for a clearer delineation of these two terms:

"Two persons conversing. First person confides with second person regarding his/her previous experience of falling off a tree, and confides feeling body pains after the experience. Second person need not experience the fall himself/herself to know that it is painful should he/she experience the same. He/She will simply rationalize, reason out, deduce, to also know, that should he/she also fall from a tree, it would be painful as well."

This is basic philosophy 101 though, and Seising explains the difference between the two terms: the empiricists’ point-of-view is that knowledge is sensory-based while rationalists view knowledge as based on intellectual and deductive methods.

³

Practically speaking, humans have been using either and both depending on the occasion of need. The sum of human knowledge has never been purely based on direct experience. The science of criminal investigation could not expound this any better. In the vast majority of cases, crime scene investigators have never experienced seeing the commission of the crime first hand. They were not present while the crime was being committed. In most cases, CSI personnel come to the crime scene ex post facto (after the fact). These professionals investigate the physical evidences therein, review the testimonies of eye-witnesses, and using reason and logic in the interpretation of available information, try their very best to make sense of the puzzle pieces. And yet, hardly one finds any public question as to the reasonableness of the verdict garnered by the investigation.

The same ‘empirical aided by rational’ endeavors in criminal investigations are afterwards applied in the courts. Testimonies and physical evidences (the most empirical part) are presented in hearings and litigations. The judge and the jury then afterwards, also not having experienced directly seeing and hearing the deeds being done, will scrutinize physical evidences, testimonies, and arguments seriously. They will then base their judgments not on their own empirical data, but on how they sort out (rationalization) the available information as to what all these mean and where they lead to.

Here is the crux of the epistemological matter as to why atheism is unsound and unreasonable. Atheism as a worldview, and many atheists, have a limited epistemology. Many atheists have been complaining and badgering the same old line of "If God really exists, why is it that he never showed himself to me or at least appeared to me in a dream?" In other words, for atheism to survive, atheists need to forcefully and intentionally limit their own acquisition of knowledge. In atheism, only the direct sensory experience of seeing and hearing God to physically appear and speak to these atheists could satisfy their quest for knowing that he exists. In the mind of many atheists, only the strictest empiricism narrowed down to the most direct is acceptable and valid. This could explain why in many cases, even before the start of any dialogue or discussion on this matter, the atheists shoot down any rationalization and reasoning from believers as though these reasons, these sources of faith and belief, are invalid and unacceptable. In many instances of apologetics endeavors, there may be an appearance of dialogue or debate, but if the atheists have closed their minds and positions from the rational aspect of the matter and limit the discussion on only the most directly empirical, then everything has become superficial and thus useless.

The Canned Goods Argument

The writer of this book, a Senior High School humanities teacher, developed what is termed as the ‘canned goods’ argument for theism applying the concepts of epistemology, empiricism, and rationalism. A class of senior high students were asked to enumerate the reasons why they still eat canned foods such as corned beef,