One of the torments atheists love to inflict upon me is a rambling dissertation on how they are materialists, couched sixty-two different ways as if I didn't comprehend the first sentence. I don't know why, but at least half of the atheists I have encountered in person seem to think that I have never met one, that I don't know what atheism is and what its implications are, and that I have never heard the profound insights which come from their enlightened mouths.
This is often followed by a theory on "why" religion exists at all, or how it originated. Never mind that serious study has been devoted to this question for, literally, millennia. Never mind that I have forgotten more about religion than these people have ever absorbed in their lives. Obviously I need to hear the Great Truth which no-one else has ever revealed unto me so I can be humbled and be freed from the bonds of illusion which have imprisoned me.
One of the most popular of these theories is that religion was invented to "control other people."
No scholar of religion--even the atheists among them, who are numerous--takes this idea seriously. Not only does it reflect a profound ignorance of anthropology, sociology, and history, but if anyone sat and actually thought about it he would see that it makes no sense.
For this absurdity to be true, one must posit a time in history when religion did not exist; one must suppose that no-one, anywhere, had any conception of a reality beyond the purely material one. Then one must conceive of an individual who, either through incompetence or physical weakness, is unable to acheive his ends. This individual must then invent the idea of religion in order to gain what he desires.
It's not only the idea of religion; he must invent an entirely new conception of reality which transcends the physical world. And he has to convince other people of this reality.
So imagine our philosopher (the first one, apparently) approaching an atheistic fellow-tribesman with this new idea:
"Hey, I want something."
"You can't have it!"
"Well, there are beings whom you can neither see nor hear, and they have decreed that I shall have it!"
Does anyone really think that the atheist tribesman would just believe this with no evidence at all, and abet the First Theist in the acheivement of his aims?
He'd be laughed out of the village!
It's a simple enough scenario to reconstruct; yet apparently no atheist who believes it has given the four minutes of thought it would require to demonstrate its sheer idiocy.
Religion has indeed been used to control others; but the fact that a thing may be used to an end does not mean that it was created for that end. Because of the weight of the bottle of Labatt that sits on my desk, combined with its hardness, balance, and the comfortable fit in my hand, it might make a convenient weapon. I might break the end off in order to make it efficacious for stabbing, too. And if I throw in the fact that not only has a beer bottle been used as a weapon in the past, but continues to be used as a weapon, and will probably be so used in the future--clearly, the "beer bottle" was invented in order to be a weapon, and its function of containing "beer" (whatever that is) is only secondary!
This line of reasoning would be absurd in the extreme. But that is par for the course for the vast majority of atheists; despite the fact that they are always blowing their own horns to declare how reasonable and thoughtful they are, it is a rare atheist who has actually given his beliefs a modicum of thought.
Comments