Some atheists claim to have a sure and certain knowledge about spiritual things. "I know -- through reason, logic, and evidence -- that God does not exist." These atheists feel that their position is intellectually superior to a belief in God. God does not exist because what cannot be established through "reason, logic, or evidence" is not real.
This sounds rational and objective, but there is a lot of belief tucked away in this assertion. Atheists do not know God does not exist; they believe it.
Any atheist that says that they know God does not exist is a fool though I haven't met any such atheist and I'd like to see people like Enns actually give examples of says they know. Ok, so I don't believe God exists? What's wrong with that?
To say that God's existence is detectable with certainty through reason, logic, and evidence is a belief because it makes some crucial assumptions. For one thing, it assumes that our intellectual faculties are the best, or only, ways of accessing God. This is an assumption that privileges Western ways of knowing and excludes other wholly human qualities like emotion and intuition.
Here Enns is defining God in a way that puts God beyond of the realm of science. He may very well be. Again though I do not actually see how we can even attempt to detect God and I've never heard an atheist make a good case for it. Leave it to a writer for the HuffPo to attack "Western ways". There's nothing Western about excluding emotion and intuition. It's simply something science does not allow for. You may have emotions and feelings about God's existence but that is not proof for God anymore than someone saying they have emotions about the existence of aliens.
I know some real live atheists, and they do not claim to know as much as some others do. The reason that they are atheists is that "God is" is a less compelling proposition to explain their reality than "God is not."
They did not come to this sure and certain conclusion by a calm and logical assessment of the evidence (as opposed to the unreasonable and illogical faith of religious types). Rather, they came to their atheism for many different types of reasons, some of which are too subtle to quantify.
They do not claim to know that God does not exist; they believe it to be so because it makes most sense of their own lives and the world around them. This is not sure and certain knowledge; it is a belief.
Oddly, some Christian fundamentalists and some atheist fundamentalists suffer under the same delusion, that their view on ultimate reality is fully supported by reason, logic, and evidence.
Both are wrong.
We are in agreement that anyone who claims to know is wrong, however, I've never meant an atheist who claims to "know".
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