Lack of Questioning Leads to Atheism?

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Bballer32

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Hello Everyone! My first major post in quite some time. 😃

Anyway, another seminarian and I were having quite an interesting discussion today. He had brought up how his cousin, being an atheist, challenged him with different reasons for why God cannot exist. So, he responded to these challenges.

One of the challenges this seminarian’s cousin made was:
People only believe God exists because of blind, unquestioning, superstition
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*this quote is paraphrasing to the best of my ability, since I don’t remember the actual quote.

First, obviously it’s absurd to think that we “God believers” don’t question God’s existence every now and then to different extremes (examples can be as simple as “Does God really exist”? or as complex as a Dark Knight like John of the Cross). It’s this questioning that leads us to research more and more into the existence of God to find satisfaction. (DISCLAIMER: I’m assuming that everyone already knows that Faith is required as well) Take for instance, Thomas Aquinas. His whole Summa starts with questioning God’s existence, which lead him to discover the 5 Proofs, and goes to prove everything else. So, questioning is not wrong. (Another DISCLAIMER: I am well aware that too much questioning can lead to curiositas and disbelief)

However, it led me to wonder if some atheists (or possibly a lot more than we think) actually refuse to believe in God because they stop questioning and put “blind faith” in things like Science or Nature. For instance, I ask an atheist how to explain, oh let’s say Miracles, and I myself question their existence, but immediately the atheist says “Well, there has to be some reason that this happens. It cannot be from a god or divine, all-powerful being.” And so he refuses to actually question properly and investigate, so to say.

I guess I just wanted to know your thought’s. Can atheism come from a lack of questioning?

I hope this makes sense

God Bless 😃
 
I think you can become close-minded for any position, including atheism. Certainly people can become locked into certain points of view and take various assumptions for granted and refuse to seriously consider opposing arguments because one already “knows” the other side is “intellectually deficient.” I know atheists who do this. I know religious people who do this.

I know taking that middle of the road “everybody does it” position can be annoying, but sometimes it’s true. In my personal experience, I felt like the more I questioned my assumptions and learned, the closer I was drawn to my faith. And there’s nothing more annoying than people who dismiss religion as something to be dropped “once a person can think for themselves.”

I’m reminded of G.K. Chesterton’s little story about rebelliously setting sail off into the world to find the real truth and not just what everyone has told you, finding it, planting your flag, and then realizing you’re back in the middle of society, finding you’ve discovered what you thought was new only to realize it’s been discovered for thousands of years already. Sorry for butchering Chesterton’s tale. He tells it much better.
 
I think poor catechesis is part of it. If people aren’t taught how to explain their faith to other people they aren’t going to be able to and I think that is what leads to unbelief it is not lack of questions it is lack of knowing the answers. To me, belief is a lot more logical than atheism. I think for an atheist to automatically assume that everyone who believes is superstitious is a misuse of the word superstition.
 
Wesrock said:
I think you can become close-minded for any position, including atheism. Certainly people can become locked into certain points of view and take various assumptions for granted and refuse to seriously consider opposing arguments because one already “knows” the other side is “intellectually deficient.” I know atheists who do this. I know religious people who do this.

I know taking that middle of the road “everybody does it” position can be annoying, but sometimes it’s true. In my personal experience, I felt like the more I questioned my assumptions and learned, the closer I was drawn to my faith. And there’s nothing more annoying than people who dismiss religion as something to be dropped “once a person can think for themselves.”

I’m reminded of G.K. Chesterton’s little story about rebelliously setting sail off into the world to find the real truth and not just what everyone has told you, finding it, planting your flag, and then realizing you’re back in the middle of society, finding you’ve discovered what you thought was new only to realize it’s been discovered for thousands of years already. Sorry for butchering Chesterton’s tale. He tells it much better.
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That’s a good point. So, the avoidance of close mindedness is just as necessary as freelance thinking. That makes sense.

Also, the GK Chesterton story is so true. 😃
 
Bballer32 said:
One of the challenges this seminarian’s cousin made was:

People only believe God exists because of blind, unquestioning, superstition
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Interesting claim. And, there might be a grain of truth in it. (Although, to tell the truth, it’s a not-too-uncommon self-congratulatory statement that we find the New Atheists (i.e., the self-proclaimed ‘brights’) making: “you believe what you believe because you’re sheeple. I believe what I believe because I’m honest, and intellectual, and I question all assumptions.”)

To get at the truth of what he’s trying to say ('cause after all, he’s parroting a common refrain, so even he might just be exhibiting “blind, unquestioning” behavior here!), he’s gonna need to define his terms:
  • What does he mean by ‘superstition’, especially in the context of the question of the belief in God?
  • How does he know that people (ostensibly, all people, the way it’s phrased) are blind and unquestioning? Does he have empirical data to back it up?

    Or, perhaps, is he making a much weaker statement…
… namely, that there exist some people who don’t question. I’d buy that one. Some folks will accept things more readily than others. And yet, that’s not a bad thing – after all, to steal a line from Isaac Newton, we stand on the shoulders of giants!

I mean… when’s the last time you experimented to confirm that gravity exists, or that the combustion engine in your car actually does what somebody told you it does, or tested that the safe temp to cook chicken to is 165? (Never, I’m guessing.) Rather, we rely on the results that others have discovered. That doesn’t mean we’re sheeple, but only that we have trusted sources who have already done the work.

That holds in the fields of theology and philosophy, too. Not everyone needs to be an expert in Aquinas, and a scholar in Biblical languages and cultures, and well-versed in the history of Christianity. It’s sufficient, often, to recognize that someone’s already done the research and therefore, I don’t have to.

What it comes down to, then, is a question of trust. If I trust those who have done the background work, then I don’t have to. Perhaps what your friend is expressing is a skepticism in those sources in which we trust. That’s ok – but it doesn’t mean that we’re any less reasonable people, if we trust sources that he doesn’t. It doesn’t mean that we, too, must adhere to his distrusts. (Of course, if he can substantiate and prove that our sources are untrustworthy, then it’s valuable to have those discussions.)
Take for instance, Thomas Aquinas. His whole Summa starts with questioning God’s existence, which lead him to discover the 5 Proofs, and goes to prove everything else.
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Well… not really. The Summa isn’t an exposition of Thomas’ discovery; it’s a post-graduate level handbook of theology. Looong before he wrote the questions about God’s existence, he had already put together his five demonstrations (not proofs, mind you ;)).

I think that it’s more accurate to suggest that atheism comes from a lack of trust than of questioning…
 
Bballer32 said:
(DISCLAIMER: I’m assuming that everyone already knows that Faith is required as well)
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Doesn’t the Church infallibly teach that man can “know with certainty” that God, as first principle, exists using only reason? It’s acceptance of Revelation that requires Faith.

Cf. CCC 1.1.1.36
 
Gorgias said:
I think that it’s more accurate to suggest that atheism comes from a lack of trust than of questioning…
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First, thanks for the corrections and deeper insights.

Second, this is an interesting point. Would it be a lack of trust? Or putting trust in something that is built on sand?

If this makes sense or is even relevant.
 
carefullytread said:
Doesn’t the Church infallibly teach that man can “know with certainty” that God, as first principle, exists using only reason? It’s acceptance of Revelation that requires Faith.

Cf. CCC 1.1.1.36
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Right. One can know a Singular, Ultimate Being exists via reason alone. However, it takes Faith to believe in the God of Christianity, since things like the Trinity cannot necessarily be known fully by human reason.
 
Questioning is good. Christ wants us to know him and God’s plan of salvation. He tells us to “seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be opened to you”. You can’t seek without questioning. The danger lies when we pose a question and allow it to become our answer without really seeking the truth of the matter. Sometimes we don’t like the answer so we reject it as it doesn’t conform to our world view about how we would like things to be or unfold. This is pride. We don’t ask in humility and sometimes aren’t prepare to accept the truth and act on it.

Pride is behind atheism as it is behind all sin. This was the sin of Lucifer and the fallen angels. “We will not serve!”. It was also the cause of the original sin of Adam and Eve. “eat this fruit and you will be like God” Science and nature were created by God and they reflect his glory. Trying to use them to prove God doesn.t exist is akin to walking down train tracks chanting “I don’t believe in trains!” When the train gets there all the chanting in the world is not going to make any difference!
 
I agree with Polycarp1. Pride and intellectual arrogance is behind the atheist’s beliefs. They do have a set of beliefs, just like people of faith, but because of their personality traits they shop around for a particular belief that is the most pleasing to them: that mankind has already discovered everything about how the universe works; science can explain everything. This belief takes on great importance because it feeds their pride and intellectual arrogance. “I am in control of my destiny,” they think.

Eventually this world view becomes so fossilized that it takes a supernatural event to snap them out of it, which is unlikely to happen given that they do not cooperate with the Almighty. These people must have a disaster and reach rock-bottom before they realize that they are not in control of everything. That is when the “crutch of religion” suddenly becomes palatable.

The “hardness of their hearts”: this is a phrase mentioned a lot in the bible, isn’t it? This describes the militant atheist.
 
In my experience, adults who believe in God have asked a lot of deep and important questions in order to arrive at their faith. The key is that they have asked out loud, and kept asking until they got sensible answers.

Atheists seem to give up asking before they’ve even really begun.
 
It worked the other way with me. I started asking questions and the answers I got didn’t ring true. The more I asked and the more I found out, the less I believed.

Your mileage may vary.
 
One of the great eastern traditions is that of the Holy Fool, which can be a man. Try Alyosha the Pot by Tolstoy for a brief example of the life of a holy fool.

I think a more thoughtful answer is that questioning or not questioning suits different people and we’re too eager to draw generalizations from the people we know. I’ve never known a holy fool and I think my life is poorer for it.
 
People like Scientific evidence ,something you can prove in a scientific laboratory ,
The same could be said for the study of Astronomy , how can you prove a planet orbiting a Star 400 light years away has Clouds of a Particular Type ?
I can’t prove it, but there are people that study these things and we could either take there word for it, or we could simply believe it , because our inner being tells us it’s true ,
In the Case of Spiritual belief we can go by our own personal experiences of Faith which you can’t take into a Scientific Laboratory put it on a Bench for all to see & Examine
 
Bradski said:
It worked the other way with me. I started asking questions and the answers I got didn’t ring true. The more I asked and the more I found out, the less I believed.

Your mileage may vary.
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When I first started asking questions, I left. But later, when I started asking questions on other, non-religious things I’d been taking for granted, I came back.

An atheist could have had the opposite experience, of course.
 
Wesrock said:
When I first started asking questions, I left. But later, when I started asking questions on other, non-religious things I’d been taking for granted, I came back.

An atheist could have had the opposite experience, of course.
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I know one person who gave up his faith because a 16 year old Sunday School teacher couldn’t explain the Trinity to him. Instead of asking someone more knowledgeable, he just decided that Christianity makes no sense. 🤷
 
jmcrae said:
I know one person who gave up his faith because a 16 year old Sunday School teacher couldn’t explain the Trinity to him. Instead of asking someone more knowledgeable, he just decided that Christianity makes no sense. 🤷
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I have seen people like that, too. I want to be clear I wasn’t trying to comment ON Bradski. He’s an intelligent person, from what I’ve seen. His post made me want to expand on my first comment.
 
jmcrae said:
I know one person who gave up his faith because a 16 year old Sunday School teacher couldn’t explain the Trinity to him. Instead of asking someone more knowledgeable, he just decided that Christianity makes no sense. 🤷
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Sounds like that person wasn’t really looking for answers to begin with.
 
I guess I just wanted to know your thought’s. Can atheism come from a lack of questioning?
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Well, if someone is faced with a doubt in their mind (like the claim that people who believe in God are superstitious), then they should ask questions and find sources that would respond to this objection and satisfy this doubt. Within the past year or two, I was faced with radical doubts that completely questioned my foundations of belief. It really robs this person of peace, even if the doubt naturally doesn’t make sense. I found that it’s important to look up these doubts, to see how to Church would respond. If one is tempted to stop being Catholic, then one should at least see what the Church has to say about the doubt that’s moving one to give up belief.

If someone already has the answer they need but then places an unfounded and voluntary doubt, then they would simply not be able to believe in anything (like absolute relativists who doubt whether 2+2=4, or that someone is automatically a cow just because everyone else treats them like a cow, or the Mythicists who claim that Christ never existed as a person, despite ample historical evidence favoring a historical Christ).

If someone questions reasonably, without too much skepticism–as well as without unfounded belief–then they would be able to make an accurate judgement of what is true. Since we are Catholics, we know that it is God who gives us the supernatural virtue of Faith, so that we may assent to truths that human reason cannot reach.
 
It’s hard to group atheists together as either all having done or failed to do something. Just as there are different types of Christians (in the sense of how they arrived to their conclusions) so too are there different types of atheists.

I know poor catechism has been blamed for some people becoming atheists, but I don’t really buy that. When someone says if a person doesn’t believe in X he or she must not have studied or understood X, it implies that not only is X true but is evident and comprehensible. Obviously we are going to greatly disagree on it, but from what I’ve studied it doesn’t seem true, evident, or comprehensible. Now I realize that I could be very wrong, as could anyone – and not just on religion but practically anything.

Though I do find that when a person’s non-belief is quickly attributed to lack of study or questioning it greatly undercuts the sometimes great effort such a person may have made, and it neglects the questions that person may have asked repeatedly but not gotten what they believe are answers that add up.
 
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