There are atheists, and then there are atheists. One is your 19th-century intellectual, smoking a cigar and calmly giving arguments for why he thinks there is no God. The other is perhaps best represented by the rebel — someone who doesn’t want to be told what to do and rejects the idea of God out of anger or selfishness.
One of these types of atheists is easier to debate than the other.
Here’s the difference between them.
Objective truth versus relativism.
“The Ball and the Cross” is a book by G.K. Chesterton. The two main characters are Evan Maclan, a Catholic, and an atheist named James Turnbull. They’re two completely different people, yet they have one thing in common: They both believe in the existence of truth and are willing to fight a duel over it.
This shared belief puts them at odds with the many other belief systems of the time, which were variations of relativism—the belief that there is no objective truth. (To be clear, there are religious and atheist relativists.)
Turnbull is what we could call a “noble” atheist. He may not have had the fullness of truth found in God, but he had the disposition to get there. He and Maclan shared a common foundation on which to dispute ideas.
In the past, one could find many atheists like Turnbull who passionately believed in the concept of truth. Though they were mistaken in denying God, they were led to that belief through study and thought.
Such atheists seem in short supply today. One usually finds people who don’t want God to exist, so they abandon Him and then later try to come up with arguments to disprove His existence. These arguments are often fueled more by anger or rebellion than logic.
That’s one reason why it’s hard to debate atheists. Unlike Turnbull, many of them have joined forces with the relativist crowd. They don’t think objective truth exists. (By the way, some Catholics also betray a disregard for objective truth, such as those people who believe in God only because they want the comfort of knowing that someone’s watching over them at all times or that their deceased relatives are in a better place.)
There are noble atheists, and their example among other atheists is needed. In a time when relativism reigns supreme, our world needs to re-establish a belief in the existence of objective truth, even if we don’t yet agree on what the truth is. We need noble atheists to convince relativist atheists to pursue truth despite their feelings.
Otherwise, we won’t get anywhere, and we’ll keep talking past each other.
