That’s ridiculous and a sweeping generalization. For me, it is not “willful rebellion”. The more I studied the Bible, the more I realized how much it contradicted itself and reality. I was a strong believer before and it was a hard thing to admit to myself that I no longer believed. Most of the people I know who do not believe in a god did not come to that decision lightly.

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Come on, it’s obvious God exists because people have morals, the universe is big, biology is complicated, we’re concious, and sometimes things happen that we can’t explain right away.  You obviously just like to sin and “flout reason itself”.

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I’m an atheist from a broken home so I’ll be taking Dan Dennett as a father figure.

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I thought these few gems were particularly hilarious:

“Drawing from Scripture, Spiegel says the atheist’s problem is rebellion against the plain truth of God, as clearly revealed in nature.”

So they keep drawing from their little book to confirm what they believe, rather than from the real world.  No shock there; we’re used to that.  What was funny about this gem is the spin:  I read my book to clearly reveal things about nature to me.

”“There is a phenomenon that I call ‘paradigm-induced blindness,’ where a person’s false worldview prevents them from seeing truths which would otherwise be obvious.”

Woa!  Hello, pot?  This is the kettle.  You’re black.

“Their path from Christianity to atheism involved: moral slippage (such as infidelity, resentment or unforgiveness); followed by withdrawal from contact with fellow believers; followed by growing doubts about their faith, accompanied by continued indulgence in the respective sin; and culminating in a conscious rejection of God.”

Nice roadmap they put there for the slippage-into-atheism.  First, sin.  Then, separation.  Then sin again.  Then more separation.  Finally, sin AND separation.  Our conclusion:  it’s all about sin.  See how neat and tidy?  Yawn…

”“However, when one’s earthly father is defective, whether because of death, abandonment, or abuse, this necessarily impacts one’s thinking about God.”“

This is actually hugely offensive and small-minded.  This one actually made me mad.  And I don’t even come from a broken home.  But then it got funny again when they did a Paternal Roll-call of Notable Atheists.  That was cute.  ‘A’ for effort.

But the coup de gras?  Their shocking conclusion:  “atheists ultimately choose not to believe in God,”

Ummm, yeah.  Kinda the point.

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Nothing in the article about the real reasons people become atheists. It is lack of empirical evidence for a deity that drives many to atheism, not rebellion.

It seems likely to me that Spiegel is having major doubts about his own beliefs. He appears to want to blame atheism on sin so that his own doubts are due to his alleged innate sinfulness instead of reason and evidence. He is teetering on the edge of atheism and just needs a little gentle push to bring him to his senses

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To draw anything from scripture is “to flout reason itself”.  I have always been fascinated with philisophical thinking.  I don’t understand how we can go from God as a first cause to the biblical (special revelation) God.  That is not what philosophy teaches.

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Let me see now.  If I understand it, the arguement is:  some atheists’ fathers are dead, therefore, deat fathers causes atheism.

And, some atheists I know were unfaithful, therefore that is why they are atheists.

Wow!  How cogent. 

So… I will assert that most people’s fathers die before they die.  Therefore most people are atheists.
And,
Some Christians I know are unfaithful; therefore that is why they are Christians.  Because of their moral imperfections.

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The author writes:

”  While atheists insist that their foundational reason for rejecting God is the problem of evil or the scientific irrelevance of the supernatural, the Christian philosopher says the argument is “only a ruse” or “a conceptual smoke screen to mask the real issue – personal rebellion.”  “

Can we take a little time to evaluate the problem of evil and the scientific irrelevance of the supernatural before dismissing the two points and moving on to the “ruse”?

I think Mr. Spiegel’s argument is a ruse.

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Haha, Sam, how is you relationship with your father?  The Speigel was humble enough to admit that he doesn’t have enough information to psychologically evaluate you from afar.

Actually, I find it funny that he mentions fathers.
Perhaps the philosophy is already out there, but I’ve personally thought that strong religious tendencies are related to parent abandonment issues.
It’s comforting to have a strong authoritative figure that always knows what’s best.  When we were all young, our parents filled this role because they were all we knew.
But as we get older and go out into the real world, we have to take on more responsibilities and make our own decisions.  We are personally accountable for the decisions we make and the failures we may face.  We are our own parents, and that’s scary to some people, so the idea of an all-knowing heavenly father is a comforting one that people will cling to for dear life.

Also, if we want to talk about the ultimate abusive, absent father figure, we need not look further than the god of the bible…

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I wonder if Spiegel would agree that his own implicit rejection of most of the world’s religions was a matter of sinful rebellion against their gods, or due to an application of intellect?

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When a person uses the phrase “clear, biblical truth,” you know they’re a either a fraud or full of shit.

Hardly anything in the Bible is clear or true. I’d enjoy watching a debate between this man and Sam Harris or Christopher Hitchens.

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What’s amusing about this article is that Freud pointed out the psychological connection between God and our fathers 100 years ago, in “On the Future of an Illusion”. But Freud looked at it the other way… that we create God as a more powerful father figure because, as children, we feel comfortable and secure because of our actual fathers… but as we grow older, we recognize our real fathers’ limitations. This is a naturalistic explanation for the ubiquity of religious belief; if it were true that atheists could generally be characterized as having problems with their fathers, it only goes to show that theistic belief is based on the fulfillment of a human emotional need, not evidence or rationality… (as everyone else has said).

And the rest was absurd, too.

- Matt

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First, two words:  Baby rapers.

Now where were we… oh yeah, us atheists are supposed to be defending our morality.  Oh, I give up.

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Matt, (#12)
Thanks for the info on Freud’s theory.  That makes a lot of sense.

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@2. Rigamortus
“Come on, it’s obvious God exists because people have morals, the universe is big, biology is complicated, we’re concious, and sometimes things happen that we can’t explain right away.  You obviously just like to sin and “flout reason itself”.” 
Do you realy expect us to buy that sh*t?

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Here’s a first line to a rhyme about abusive fathers:

“There once was a god named Jehovah….”

next?....

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So, atheists are atheists because we are rebellious at heart? Then how does he explain people like me? I’m an atheist in the closet and I am a believer as far as my father knows, because I don’t want to hurt him. I lie to him because I’ve seen the pain on his face when I would ask questions and/or say that I have doubts. He is happy thinking that I will one day join him in heaven and at 70, I’m not going to make him suffer thinking his daughter is going to hell.

Yes, you could call me immoral for lying to my father, but as I see it, it is the far lesser of the two evils. Evils created by religion.

This article pissed me off. It shouldn’t though. He is obviously a profoundly distrubed individual.

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@15. kinghunter95
No, I was being sarcastic.  Sorry, I should have written /sarcasm or something I suppose.

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“He admits that it could appear unseemly or offensive to suggest that a person’s lack of belief in God is a form of rebellion. But he said in a recent interview with the Evangelical Philosophical Society that he was compelled to write the book because he is convinced that “it is a clear biblical truth.”

That’s it - debate over - it’s a clear biblical truth!

Although sarcasm is employed here - the reality is that this argument takes the discussion outside the realm of reasoned dialogue. Giving this too much attention may just have the impact of getting more people to hear this bunk and have it burned into their memory cells.

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Doesn’t take much to be labeled a philosopher these days does it?  After reading some Swineburne I’ve realized the word has lost any real meaning similar to the word ‘Historian’.

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ClearPursuit wrote:

“There once was a god named Jehovah….”

...Who told his one son to bend over

Call it divine inspiration maybe, but that verse ending just popped in my head when I read that. Thanks.

As far as the article goes, I mean what is there to say? It’s completely absurd. It poses no real threat or thought to anyone not satisfied by the proposition that a god exists. I see at as nothing but more biblical sounding reinforcement for bible thumpers to gobble up. To them, this theory makes perfect sense. And the author knows it so he manages to sit down for an afternoon and write this garbage down then sells it for a new caddy. So now the suckers who read it have more insanity to regurgitate to their bible study friends. Thus the circle of reinforcement continues unchallenged.

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This guy is comically ignorant.  He seems so angry at the thought that someone may be compelled by reason and logic to not believe in god.  Is it really that hard to understand? 

I can’t help but laugh at this.

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This is pure nonsense.  The religous have no evidence of a God.  The Brigths have science to show their stance.  http://www.the-brights.net

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I’m new to the Project (glad to have found it).  I come at this article from a different perspective.  I can completely accept the premise of Spiegel, the so-called “philospher”: that the path from Christianity to Atheism often contains moral slippage, withdrawal, doubts and ultimately rejection and rebellion.  But my response to Spiegel is this:  (1) Given the power that religion holds over people’s minds and lives, why would you expect that path to look any different? and (2) Even if you’re right about the path, how does that prove that Christianity is true and Atheism is false?

I was a Mormon for the first 34 years of my life.  Very devout, a true, true believer.  Was that the result of an objective, comprehensive search for truth?  Of course not; it was the result of birth—my parents are devout Mormons, as were five generations before them.  I was educated at BYU; I went on a Mormon mission, trying (mostly in vain, thankfully) to convert Spanish Catholics to Mormonism; I was married in a Mormon Temple; I served in high positions of leadership in the Momon Church; it is not an exaggeration to say that virtually everyone I was close to in my life was affiliated with Mormonism—in fact, everything I knew in life, I knew through the extreme filter that is Mormon doctrine.

So, realistically, was there going to be a NON-traumatic path for me away from Mormonism and towards Atheism?  Of course not.  It isn’t as though Mormon leadership (or the leadership of any dominant religion) encourages its membership to study alternative religious (or areligious) belief systems.  Hell, the Mormon church doesn’t even want its membership to study in depth ITS OWN historic beliefs (as preached and written by early Mormon leaders).  In order for me to get from where I was then, to where I am now—in order to loose the mental shackles that had been willfully worn for generations by my ancestors—it was going to take a significant, traumatic break. 

In my case, it did involve a breach from the Mormon code of conduct, followed by a church “court” (just like it sounds, with witnesses and a jury), and a rather public excommunication.  There was a time when, believe it or not, I viewed that as the worst period of my life.  I now know it was the first of a pivotal chain of events that allowed me to be where I am today. 

I spent nearly a year tryng to claw my way back into the church—weekly ecclesiastical meetings, therapy, intense personal study.  But a funny thing also happened during that period:  I began to realize that the longer the duration of my separation from full immersion in the church, the more independent my ability to think became.  My weekly meetings became bi-weekly, then monthly, then they stopped; my intense studies continued, but they shifted from Mormon propaganda to studies of epistemology, skepticism and reason.  I was (and continue to be) fascinated by the fact that I—someone who is intelligent (but hardly brilliant) and highly educated—could FULLY believe, even KNOW (at least I said I knew)—that a guy named Joseph Smith received angelic visits, translated gold plates he found under a rock, and reestablised god’s one true church (indeed, the literal Church of Jesus Christ) on Earth.  It absolutely fascinates me that the human mind can really believe that stuff, with a (misguided)sense of complete certainty, in the face of not only a lack of evidence, but strong evidence to the contrary.  Crazy.

Anyway, the point is ... sure, I went down a path the Mormon church deemed to be “sin,” which resulted in separation from the church (and from all of my Mormon friends and many family members for a time); I withdrew (i.e., was cast out) from the Mormon church; eventually, I discovered myriad reasons to doubt, which had never been apparent to me on the inside, so I abandoned my efforts to re-enter the church; and now I reject the Mormon teachings, and that of all Christianity.  Hell yes I do.

I fully admit that if not for that trauma, I probably wouldn’t be where I am.  There would have been no other way for me to get out of that psychological “compound.”  Does that make Mormonism true?  And atheism/skepticism false?  Of course not.  I presume even Spiegel (who is definitely not Mormon) would agree with that. 

It is a practice as old as religion itself to attack the non-believers, to engender fear in the minds of believers that those who do not believe are a threat to their faith.  Spiegel’s “philosophy” is nothing new.  It is also nothing near to proof that christian beliefs are correct and atheists are wrong.

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Korihor,  thanks for sharing that story.

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What a fucking idiot.  How can we be both rebelling against “god” and also not believing that he exists?

This plague of stupidity will probably never die, and it isn’t limited to christians like Lillian Kwon.  In any subject, there is at least one dumbass who can’t form a theory about his opponent which actually includes comprehension of the fact that his opponent disagrees with him.  That’s why christians say atheists are “rejecting god” and people of any political bent think their other parties must only hold their positions from bribery.

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Inversely, a truly good (and intelligent) person, who already did believe in the Christian god, would have plenty of reason to rebel.  It would be a bold move, but surely someone must do it.

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That gave me such a pain in my head . WTF, You are KIDDING!! Excerpt does not merit comment !!! BIOYA

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Yawn. “Philosopher” seeks to get name in paper by regurgitating an old argument.

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My father is a narcissist, of the oblivious subtype, and as such I have a very poor relationship with him.  I hold a great deal of anger towards him for various complicated reasons.  Unhealthy I know…

I was a raised to become a Christian, and was for many years.  But I have now been an atheist for several years.

I have been charged by several Christian friends as rejecting Christianity (or theism from my point of view) out of rebellion and anger stemming from the issues with my father.

My feelings are this:

a) I think it is safe to say that it is a fact that the relationship I have with my father has no implications for the *existence or non-existence* of “god”.

b) The poor relationship I have with my father has resulted in a *fundamental* trust being broken.

There must be a biological basis for *unquestioning* trust in a parent, at least as a toddler or young child, otherwise our species could not have survived to this point.

Perhaps this fundamental loss of trust in a parent, or both parents, breaks a generally unbreakable protective mechanism in the brain, which then allows one to *more freely* criticize other “fundamental” aspects of the developed personality.

Of course there will be some cases when people are simply rebelling.  Hopefully in these cases people can identify their motivation and continue to examine the issue.

This is a very superficial argument when applied to any and all.

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If having no father or a distanced father causes people to be atheists then certainly having two fathers should essentially guarantee that a person becomes a christian. Why then are christians so against the concept of gay marrige?

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