The other day O’Reilly had Deepak Chopra as a guest to talk about a “backlash” against atheists for their attacks on religion. He never got around to mentioning any backlash, however, and instead simply commiserated with Chopra about how Richard Dawkins and his ilk are mean and arrogant and disrespectful toward people of faith. Funny that everyone always says that about Dawkins – but hardly anyone ever gets around to actually refuting his claims.
O’Reilly and Chopra didn’t even address them. Aside from pointing out that some very smart scientists believe in God (oh, well God must be real then!), Deepak Chopra’s entire argument for why God exists seems to be built around the “I Win by Default” argument. This is the most common bromide used by Christian apologists today, and I understand why: When you have no evidence for your position, your only alternative is to try to poke a hole in what you see as the opposing view. Chopra, like his intellectual comrade Dinesh D’Souza, asserts that since science cannot use the laws of physics to explain the lack of laws of physics before the Big Bang, then the alternative is “the heart.” Yes, apparently when science can’t explain something, that constitutes evidence that faith and feelings can. The question these apologists never answer is this: Even if you are right that reason fails at some level (and I’m certainly not saying that it does), what makes you think that your heart or faith or feelings are any better? Just because the intellect fails to grasp something doesn’t mean that feelings will do it any better. Drop the false dichotomy and provide some actual, positive evidence for your position.
But the false dichotomy is all they have. They hope to win by default, because they have no positive evidence. Their argument is exactly the same as the one utilized by a primitive caveman watching a volcano explode and thinking, “I can’t explain that, so it must be magic.” In fact, they often go whole-hog and say, “Not only can I not explain that, no one can explain that. It’s unknowable. So I have to feel it and pray on it.”
They deny the efficacy of their own minds – but why shouldn’t they? They have a sacred belief, and their minds can tell them nothing about it, so they are reduced to using the method of small children (emotional pleas) to affirm their position.
