I just had the unfortunate pleasure of reading this, dare I say, wretched article by Frederick Meekins titled “Have Yourself A Theistic (Not Atheistic) Little Christmas.” While he begins by complaining about how rabid atheists are trying to elimenate public recognition that Jesus is the Son of God – nothing unusual there – the bulk of it is a terribly misguided critique of atheist morals. I don’t want to talk about that – yet. First I would like to draw out this one little paragraph buried near the middle, squeezed between an acknowledgement that children should be exposed to, among other evils, atheism before they are shocked by it in adulthood and his moral arguments:

Secondly, lack of a belief in something is a belief about it. For too long, Christians and allied theists have played into the hands of atheists and agnostics by going along with the notion that those professing unbelief are objective and unfettered by preconceived epistemological commitments and that the believers are the ones holding onto bedrock dogmatic foundations. Many atheists are just as rabid in their assumptions as the most zealous of pulpit-pounding evangelists.

To lack a belief in X only tells you that I do not believe that X is true. It does not mean that I believe that X must be false. I have not been persuaded that it is true, but not necessarily persuaded that it is false. So, if, as an atheist, I do not believe that God exists, this is not equivalent to saying that I am certain that God does not exist or that I dogmatically deny God’s existence. That might be case, but it is not necessarily the case.

More important, however, is the charge that Frederick makes at the end of this paragraph: that atheists are just as rapid and presumably dogmatic in our assumptions as “the most zealous” evangelist.

All right. Let’s examine some of our assumptions, then?

-Christians in general, not just the most zealous, assume that there is a supernatural world that exists and that there are beings within that supernatural world that can influence the course of events here in the natural world.

-Christians assume that, not only does a God exist, but that this said God communicated to mankind through a book, and that this book contains important revelations.

-Christians assume that if you talk to this God, He will actually listen to you.

-Christians assume that our physical bodies are not our entire selves and that there is a non-natural ’self’ which can survive death and, therefore, we will be eternally ‘alive.’ 

-Christians assume that, based on the weak evidence of their special book, a man was once both a man and god and rose from the dead, and that this action remedies that actions of two people they assume to have existed in the beginning.

-Christians assume that this same man, Jesus, will return to Earth someday in the ever distant future to usher in the end of the world.

-Am I missing any?

Okay. That’s a good start. What do atheists rabidly assume?

-Atheists assume that the natural world exists (obviously) and that, as far as we know from the available evidence, this is all that exists.

Gee, I don’t know – which assumptions seem more reasonable to you?