Second Suggestment

In December 2014, over 2,800 atheists responded to a challenge to rewrite the Decalogue (Ten Commandments) with modern, humanist alternatives. After collating and condensing the submissions, thirteen judges voted on the top ten atheist Ten Commandments – or perhaps to avoid the hierarchical implications of the word, we ought to call them Suggestments. I would like to offer a few, brief observations to this list, which aren’t so much chiseled into immutable stone as they are finger-sketched into the sand at low tide. The original CNN article can be found here.

Strive to understand what is most likely to be true, not to believe what you wish to be true

John Locke believed humans to be born blank slates upon which truth is written via experience. If this is the case, we may merrily adopt this suggestment and set our minds to ardent striving for the truth. The Apostle Paul offers a different relationship humans have with truth, however, namely that all of us are ready and willing to smother with a pillow the truth of God we clearly see in nature (Romans 1:18-19). If this is true, which it is, then this Lockean purity is a myth, and none of us are magically unbiased.

Just now, I assumed the Bible’s truth without bothering to offer proof for why it is true. If one of the atheists who wrote the commandment asked me why I believe the Bible is true, I would open the Bible and point to a chapter and verse where it testifies about its veracity. One could justly call this begging the question. However, when I ask him why he trusts in reason, and he starts giving me reasons, he is opening his own bible, citing chapter and verse. All axioms are assumed, necessary, and ultimately circular.

How does one determine what is ‘likely’ true? Likelihood infers probability, and probability is a science only useful in the physical world. This works with weather forecasts and traffic patterns, but not with metaphysical realities. Richard Dawkins said, “I cannot know for certain, but I think God is very improbable…” The idea of probability applied to God, an uncreated, self-existent being, is like Hamlet and Horatio deciding Shakespeare is unlikely to be real because the ratio of his lines to all other characters is extremely out of proportion.

Now, about that funny word ‘wish’. Assuming for a moment the materialist view of the world is true, why in the world would anyone not wish for it to be false? “You are a little lump of something randomly stuck together,” Leo Tolstoy said, recounting the nadir of his journey out of atheism to Christianity. “The lump decomposes. The decomposition of this lump is known as your life. The lump falls apart, and thus the decomposition ends, as do all your questions.” What noble reason exists to cleave to the truth if the truth is so bleak, so forlorn? The universe does not care, and neither will it fault you for believing lies. If what is true is depressing, dreary, and pointless, why not believe what is false and be happy, peaceful, and purpose-driven?

On the other hand, if God does exist, and if the God of the Bible is that God, and if He will judge the quick and the dead, then there are very strong reasons to wish that He does not exist. Deciding to believe God does not exist, which just happens to coincide with my desire to get sexy as much as I want, with whom or whatever I want, without any divine interdictions, is not a wish-less proposition. Wish-casting goes both ways.