Why Atheism Always Wins
Whenever the great atheism versus religion debate arises, one side always comes out worse. And it’s not the side of Richard Dawkins and the non-believers. Indeed, when entering the ring for a session of intellectual sparring, religion is always in receipt of a battering. Conversely, atheism invariably remains unscathed.
So why is it that atheism is so difficult to attack? Why, in contrast to religions, do vigorous debates headed by the most learned opponents rarely crack the confidence of the atheistic standpoint?
Simply put, atheism is virtually impossible to attack because there’s nothing to it to attack.
The atheistic standpoint, generally speaking, is simply that there is no God, and no reason to believe in one. That’s about it. That is the extent of atheism summarised in a single sentence. There are no rituals, holy books, creeds or prophets. Atheism is simply an absence of belief.
Contrast this to religion. Any and all religions come with lengthy texts, age-old rituals, and long-observed traditions. And this is a big problem for the religious apologist when it comes to the debating arena. There’s a vast wealth of material for the atheist to attack.
And attack they will. Gleefully the atheist adversary will pull apart parables, eviscerate verses, and throw shade onto the moral worthiness of preachers and prophets.
Taking religions to pieces is no difficult feat. It doesn’t take a robust intellectual mind to point out that snakes can’t talk, that killing non-believers isn’t compatible with modern day ethics, and that it’s more likely for men to tell fibs than to walk on water.
In short, it is easy to administer a blow to the veracity of religious creeds — even to question its inherent good — because there is just so much fertile ground for attack.
When it comes to atheism, however, there’s simply nothing to attack. No books, no beliefs, no bloviating bishops.
But the point I want to make from this asymmetry is not that atheism is right and religion wrong, nor that religions are rich and atheism barren. I am merely observing that the two positions are perhaps not as suitable to place in opposition to each other in the arena as is typically supposed.
To draw a concluding analogy, religions are rather like the buildings erected in their honour. They are like cathedrals, mosques and temples — huge, often beautiful constructions that inspire awe and command respect.
But owing both to their advancing age and to the devastating power of modern technology, they are easy to demolish. In our day and It wouldn’t take much to raze those great cathedrals into the ground and turn them to rubble.
Atheism, on the other hand, is not a building of any kind. Rather, it is but a pile of rubble. And it cannot be demolished, because it has no structure or shape to be compromised. It simply isn’t anything other than an absence of what might otherwise be in its place.
