{"id":60408,"date":"2016-02-16T07:00:31","date_gmt":"2016-02-16T14:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/?p=60408"},"modified":"2016-02-16T10:16:26","modified_gmt":"2016-02-16T17:16:26","slug":"arrogance-of-theists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2016\/02\/16\/arrogance-of-theists\/","title":{"rendered":"Arrogance of Theists"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another day, another meme… I recently saw this one featuring\u00a0my fellow countryman, Ricky Gervais:<\/p>\n

\"Gervais\"<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Number?<\/h3>\n

Before we talk about the argument being made in this meme,\u00a0does anyone know from where Gerais obtains\u00a0the number 3,000? If you know the source, please leave a comment, I’d love\u00a0to find out…<\/p>\n

Personally, I think that\u00a0it would probably be\u00a0better to count theological systems<\/strong> rather than gods<\/strong>. I say this because I find it hard to believe that a\u00a0polytheist\u00a0would have believed in Zeus\u00a0and yet\u00a0deny the existence of\u00a0his son, Apollo. The two were part of the same theological system.\u00a0Likewise,\u00a0I wonder if, in this numeration of gods, the Greek gods and their Roman\u00a0counterparts were\u00a0counted separately or together, since they were essentially the same gods under different names<\/a>. Maybe the 3,000 figure has indeed conflated some of the gods. After all,\u00a0depending on who you count them, Hinduism alone has up to 330 million!<\/a><\/p>\n

The Argument?<\/h3>\n

So, what should we make of the meme’s actual argument? \u00a0Well, honestly, there’s a logical leap in this meme which\u00a0I don’t quite understand… Is he saying that because there have been many gods in human<\/strong> history<\/strong>, we can therefore say that\u00a0no gods exist<\/strong>? If so, I don’t\u00a0really see why\u00a0that’s a logical consequence.\u00a0Does the presence of counterfeit money in the USA\u00a0prove that there’s no such thing as a one dollar bill?<\/p>\n

The Category Error?<\/h3>\n

It is tempting to point out the problems with comparing the Greek and Roman gods to\u00a0what Christians mean\u00a0when they speak of “God”. However, for brevity’s sake, I don’t plan on doing that in this post. If you would like to know more about this line of argumentation, I would invite you to watch this video<\/a> by Fr. Barron.<\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n

The arrogance?<\/h3>\n

What I find interesting about this meme is that it attempts to shame theists for what is perceived to be their arrogance. “All these gods in history and yet yours<\/strong> is the only one that exists?!\u00a0What makes you<\/strong> so special?”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I find this underlying message a little ironic since\u00a0I would argue that the atheistic position<\/strong> appears, at least to me, to be the more\u00a0arrogant.\u00a0I say this because for most of human history people have believed in deity. Even today, belief in the supernatural is still the majority view, even if it isn’t always grounded in some formalized religion. While this isn’t proof that God exists, it should give one pause for thought.\u00a0Doesn’t it\u00a0seem to be at least a little bit<\/em> arrogant\u00a0to believe that,\u00a0on this\u00a0fundamental question,\u00a099.999% of humanity has been wrong<\/strong>\u00a0and that it is only the atheist who is smart enough to see the obvious truth?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another day, another meme… I recently saw this one featuring\u00a0my fellow countryman, Ricky Gervais:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[3596,1172,2969,2762,3594,3597,779,3595,3592,3533,3593,2754],"class_list":["post-60408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faith","tag-ares","tag-atheism","tag-featured","tag-gods","tag-greek-gods","tag-heremes","tag-hinduism","tag-jupiter","tag-polytheism","tag-ricky-gervais","tag-roman-gods","tag-thor"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Brent.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60408"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60869,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60408\/revisions\/60869"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}