In argument and debate we’re often critical of circular arguments that assume what the argument is trying to prove/establish/argue for. This is the logical fallacy known as circular reasoning or begging the question. Arguments have to be linear: if we assume A, then B follows and therefore we can conclude C. But if you come to the conclusion C by assuming C, then you are making an assertion, not an argument. One of the most frustrating examples of this for atheists is when Christians argue that God exists because the Bible says that God exists. The reliability of the Bible as the word of God depends upon God’s existence – it’s assuming that God exists in order to conclude that God exists. Occasionally atheists make the equal and opposite fallacy of assuming that the Bible is always wrong because God doesn’t exist, though usually atheists will concede that the Bible is sometimes right on some things.
Recently however, atheists seem to have been persuaded by a circular argument which they continue to propagate in discussions and debates with theists. Atheists such as Daniel Dennett and Andy Thomson have written books that attempt to explain why people believe in God when no such God actually exists. The argument is that people will always try to attribute agency to things because our ancestors who did so realised that a sound and/or movement could be a predator to avoid, and so they survived and passed on their genes. Those who didn’t try to attribute an agent to the phenomenon that they observed were killed when there was a hostile agent, and so we’re genetically conditioned to look for agency. Therefore when we observe things that we can’t explain, the human mind needs to find an agent and so we say that God did it.
This argument has been used to counter the “god of the gaps” argument without having to close the gaps. When theists point out that naturalism is yet to explain things like the origin of the universe, the universal constants, the origin of life etc; atheists who follow Dennett or Thomson counter by arguing that it’s only because we’re genetically conditioned to look for agency that we point to God for an explanation. This argument however, proves too much, for Dennett, Thomson, and indeed every scientist in the world are driven by a curiosity for an explanation. Dismissing God or design or special creation etc because these explanations involve an agent is a fairly biased and somewhat arbitrary assumption in approaching the quest for an explanation. Practically speaking they are not explanations we can test and so we may not pursue them scientifically (methodological naturalism), but that doesn’t mean we can rule them out as explanations (philosophical naturalism). Until science can close the gaps, scientists who are continuously seeking explanations can’t just dismiss other explanations on the basis that people seek explanations involving agency.
But most disturbing of all is the circular reasoning behind this argument that atheists (who are generally quite critical of circular reasoning) fail to recognise. Proposing an explanation for why people believe in a god who doesn’t exist assumes that their god doesn’t exist. The argument is: God doesn’t exist, and so here’s the psychology of why people believe in god, and so therefore god doesn’t exist. It’s assuming the very thing that it’s trying to prove: God’s non-existence. In fact, when Andy Thomson was asked how he would answer someone who suggested that all of his evidence for the human propensity to believe in God only demonstrates that God created people in order to know him, he said that the best response was that of Christopher Hitchens: that it would mean that God let lots of people die before he revealed himself certain people (whom he described in derogatory terms). Aside from the fact that this is not an argument against the God of the Bible who punishes sin, but against the god of his imagination who punishes for no good reason; it’s also a logical fallacy known as the argument from personal incredulity: God can’t exist because I don’t want him to exist.
Atheists often criticise theists of circular reasoning and of believing because they want to believe; and yet this proposed psychology of belief based on circular reasoning and not believing because they don’t want to believe is currently being put forward as an argument that theists are supposed to take seriously. While believers can often be hypocritical in condemning sinners while they themselves are sinners, unbelievers can also be prone to hypocrisy and double standards. I take atheists seriously because they often appeal to reason and logic, but this is not a case in point. Atheism does not have the monopoly on reason and logic. Like theists, atheists can also be prone to thinking that an argument that supports their position is stronger than it actually is.
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