<---back to Words of Wisdom index

Certainly, emotionalism and the ability to rationalize go hand-in-hand. When people desire with all their hearts for something to be true, they are not likely to be dissuaded by rational argumentation that contradicts it. Instead, they will search for any facts that seem to bolster their conclusions, no matter how remote and superficial the relationship of these facts to reality might be. Facts that disagree with these conclusions must be falsified at all costs, since the believer has an emotional vested interest in maintaining their fantasy. 

Rationalizing can and does take many different forms. One of these can be seen when believers credit their god whenever something goes right for them or with the world. If they get a promotion at work, the credit goes to god rather than to their own efforts. If they are in an airplane that barely avoids a midair collision, they thank god rather than the skills of the pilot for saving their lives. Why are they so afraid to give or take credit where credit is due?

Simply because the biblical notion to "Beware the sin of pride" is alive and well in the third millenium. Religions in general, and Christianity in particular, have managed to survive lo these many centuries due to two primary factors. The first of these is the fact that religions have literally stolen their adherents from the cradle. The Jesuits said it best in their famous injunction to "Give us a child until he is six years old and we have a convert for life." When people raised in this way encounter atheists, those atheists pose a challenge to their overall worldview. Once again, the atheist is not likely to dissuade religionists with so much emotionally vested interest in religion. It is, after all, much easier to believe than to think.

This leads us to the second reason why religions have managed to survive for so long. Simply put, they tend to make abject mental slaves of their adherents. This is particularly true with Western religions (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism), but it is certainly present in Eastern religions as well, including Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism. To challenge the worldview one has been raised to believe in is so daunting and anxiety provoking as to be virtually unthinkable to most religionists. Many Christians, for example, would never even consider the notion that God doesn't exist, or that Jesus Christ was probably a mythical figure. Such ideas are simply too unsettling for most of them. They have far too much at stake in these ideas to ever critically examine them.

This is not to say that every single Christian is a slave to mindless dogma. What it does mean is that fear and guilt, rather than love, are the primary emotions Christianity seeks to inculcate in its followers. If its hold is not as great or as universal as it was in earlier times, it is unquestionably still there. "Jesus died for you" is a message guaranteed to invoke feelings of guilt if literally believed. We see its noxious manifestations every day in our newspapers.

The flip side of rationalizing credit to god for all positive things is the steadfast refusal to blame him for anything that goes wrong. While devout believers never hesitate to credit their god at every opportunity, they are never willing to admit to the possibility that this deity (who by their own definition must know everything and be powerful enough to do anything) is in any way responsible for their misfortunes, or for those of others.

If an earthquake kills thousands of innocent people, believers should condemn their "all-powerful" god who, supposedly being all-powerful and all-good, would certainly possess the power to save the victims but instead, for reasons the believer can never explain, chooses not to. If a child is murdered by a madman, shouldn't the believing parents condemn their god for failing to prevent the act from happening? They wouldn't hesitate to do so if a human stood by and watched it happen. Why is it immoral for humans to turn away from helping someone in need but not immoral when a god does so? Why the double standard?

How can believers have it both ways? Logically of course, they can't. But, since they believe on emotional rather than rational grounds, they are not likely to be dissuaded from their beliefs by logical arguments.

That is where rationalizing comes in. Giving up their belief in god is of course not an option. Neither is giving up their particular conception of what they think god is. Accordingly, they will grasp at any available straw in their attempt to salvage their imaginary celestial comforter from the clutches of rationality. They will deny. They will evade. They will obfuscate. And when all else fails, they will lie. As pathetic and immoral as all this is to atheists, it is the essence of that "respectable" discipline taught in religious schools the world over: Theology. 

What does that say about the believers sense of honesty? What does it say about how they value truth?
It is high time for theology to be exposed for the intellectual fraud that it is. Philosophical ideas should never be closed to further examination and re-thinking, yet theology begins with a conclusion it wants to believe to be true, i.e., that a god exists, and then makes every effort to bolster that idea. However, any idea that is to be taken seriously must in principle be falsifiable. Yet theology does not allow this; the theologian will make any argument, twist any idea, and convolute any thought in order to hold onto their imaginary deity. For the theologian, truth must be measured according to the degree with which it corresponds to their mystical notions of god and religion. The relationship of truth to the objective facts is simply not part of the equation. 

Thus, for most religionists, the truth is secondary at best. While they claim to value truth (or to possess it via faith), what they really want is validation. For them, their emotions are the primary source of truth when properly it is the intellect that should be the source. They utilize argumentation in order to make reality conform to their emotional desires and wishes. And when the facts fail them, as they inevitably must, they will invent new "facts" or else "re-interpret" pre-existing facts. 

Rationalizing their faith in God is by no means restricted to the less intelligent believers. No less a renowned Christian apologist than William Lane Craig habitually employs rationalizing when rational arguments fail him. To cite but one example, Craig, in a 1998 debate with atheist Eddie Tabash, was asked by Atheists United member Henry Farber why Craigs god stood by without lifting a finger to help the six million Jews who were massacred during the Second World War. True to form, Craig replied that the genocide served a greater purpose because the Jews "got Israel" because of it. What is this if not rationalizing? Doesn't this illustrate the paucity of logic in the theistic mindset? More importantly, doesn't it also illustrate how the theist is more than willing to abandon morality and all human feeling in order to salvage an imaginary, comforting deity?

Of course, many believers will claim that their religion represents "absolute truth." But this is another rationalization; something that is ultimately subjective in nature, with no supporting objective evidence, cannot be said to be "true" in any meaningful sense: nothing could possibly be more subjective in nature than belief in a god. Given that all believers imagine their god according to what they want it to be, it is certainly rational to point out that such a being could only exist in their minds. There is, simply put, no objective proof for the existence of a god or gods. If subjective faith was in fact a valid method by which we could obtain knowledge and truth, there wouldn't be all the competing religions in the world. Thus, mystical "intuition," religious faith, and absolute "truth" are objectively unprovable and of no value. 

Let them rationalize. It is their fantasy. Where we as atheists draw the line is when these fantasies are supported by our tax dollars. The degree to which faith, magical thinking, and mysticism become interwoven into the fabric of secular society is the degree to which that society is a repressive totalitarian state. 

If religious history has taught us any single lesson, that is it.

<---back to Words of Wisdom index