Timothy Morgan

I had to ruminate on this one for a bit. It was a book I knew would be challenging for me, and it definitely was. But I have to commend Morgan for both being so fair and respectful, and also for teaching me a crash course in atheist thinkers that I never would have bothered reading.

I'm the kind of atheist who just doesn't care and isn't going to fight. I'm not about to read The God Delusion just to feel proud of myself and hoard evidence and cackle over it. I spent time in a Bible study that I couldn't argue a single word against because it all made irrefutable sense, and yet I'm still here in the atheist camp, because it's the most basic of my thoughts and feelings that can't be swayed. That said, I was presented with a ton of new information on both sides, and also found myself disagreeing incredibly profoundly with Morgan about all sorts of things. Especially the constant discussion about the origin of ethics/morals. In fact, I disagreed with almost everyone.

At least judging by what Morgan presented, many of the atheist thinkers weren't even dealing with the real world when they addressed ethics, but were instead creating this weird alternate looking-glass reality in which we operate with "godless" morals that were so incredibly, profoundly untrue and heartless that I couldn't imagine why they were ever presented. Many of the thinkers seemed to be intent on dealing with a world that we don't live in as if that proved something. It made Morgan's job easy (even if he did consistently avoid valid questions, like 'if everything has a creator, then what created God?' When he sidestepped that one with a pathetic metaphor without even humouring the question, he lost a ton of credibility for me).

Overall, the negatives would be that I could see Morgan easily side-stepping evidence against his points and was arguing from the point of view that there already is a God, not from a neutral position (ie. pointing out that the Constitution had "God-given rights" as if God came down and penned them himself). I got really irritated at this constant assertion that we couldn't just be a species lucky enough to have an ingrained moral system that was altruistic like those damn birds that kept coming up, rather than that of gorillas - and not considering that maybe our morals aren't completely, utterly pure after all, like he believes since God gave them to him. Also was tired with this dry sarcasm about how atheist arguments have been repeated for centuries and that "they" don't all agree on philosophy and mind-twisting hypotheticals about ethics - like, duh, we don't have a secret club where we're all taught the same things.

In his favour, I liked how he defended the legitimacy of multiple religions besides Christianity, devoting many sections defending how atheists attack Muslims and also attack Christians. There were quite a few sections that gave me realizations about how the argument is often formatted - it's always up to theists to provide evidence, the cruelties done in the name of God/your opinion of if religion should exist or not (which all the atheists mentioned used as seemingly their backbone of their arguments) doesn't say anything about if God exists or not, so on. He was also very easy to read and understand which I'm always grateful for in nonfiction. Especially one so heavy on the theorizing.

In the end...completely still unconvinced. But I gained new perspective on just how deep these disagreements and fundamental differences in priorities and beliefs run, between me and theists, and also these "great atheists."… (mais)