Atheism is the view that it's more plausible than not that no god exists. As such, atheism is a belief system that leads to logical inconsistencies, leaps of faith, and bizarre conclusions. In this article I'm going to briefly touch upon several reasons for why atheism is irrational.
For the sake of clarity, my definition of world will mean all of existence--which is how most philosophers define it. I'd also like to draw your attention to the difference between an actual infinite and a potential infinite. An example of a potential infinite would be if one were to start at zero, and then continually add one, forever (i.e. 1, 2, 3...); this is normally understood to be the natural numbers. An example of an actual infinite would be if all of the natural numbers were present at once. I'm also going to assume the truth of the basic proposition that the world has either always existed or it hasn't. With all of this in mind, let's explore the ramifications of atheism and its ability to explain the origin of the world.
The atheist must believe that the world has always existed or it hasn't, but neither of these beliefs make logical sense under atheism. If the atheist believes the world has always existed, then they believe there has been an actually infinite number of changes leading up to the present. But how can an actually infinite number of changes transpire? It would be like having an actually infinite number of black dominoes all leading up to a white domino that represents the front, and before the white domino can be touched, all of the black dominoes must first fall down one after the other. The idea of the white domino ever being touched seems to be logically impossible; and if the white domino were ever touched by the long series of black dominoes, then it'd be rational to conclude that there wasn't an actually infinite number of black dominoes. Similarly, it would make more sense to believe that the reason why we can observe the present is because there has only been a finite number of changes prior to it.
As for the idea of the world being past-finite, that runs into its own problems under atheism. For the atheist would have to believe that the past-finite world came into being from literally nothing. But literally nothing has zero potentiality and no properties. In a state of affairs where there is only nonbeing, there is literally nothing to cause anything, let alone the world. Please remember that by world I mean all of existence, which would include something like the quantum field; and if the atheist wants to say the quantum field is past-infinite, then they're brought back to the problem raised earlier.
A third problem for atheism comes in the form of evolution. Put in rough terms, the theory of evolution posits that there are random genetic mutations and these mutations are passed down if the organisms that possess them survive and reproduce. This means the atheist must believe that our brains are the byproducts of an unsupervised process that favors these sorts of genetic mutations. The problem here is if this is how evolution functions and if there's no oversight by an intelligence, then evolution wouldn't necessarily lead to the creation of brains that are reliable for ascertaining truth. For a false belief or a predisposition towards producing a false belief may lead to increasing the chances of an organism surviving and reproducing. For example, let's say there was an organism whose predators were most active during the day time. In this scenario, the true belief that the organism should hide during the day lest it be eaten and the false belief that the organism should hide during the day lest it be burned up by the sun's rays would do equally well for increasing the organism's survivability with respect to avoiding its predators. The second problem is it'd be possible for false beliefs to be developed that neither increase or decrease the survivability and reproductive capacity of a species, and so these kinds of genetic mutations would neither filter out nor be favored. After millions of years of evolution, this could lead to species that possess a plethora of these kinds of false beliefs. What follows from all of this is good grounds for the atheist who accepts evolution to doubt the reliability of their brains and the beliefs that they produce, including atheism itself.
The last problem with atheism that I'll write about is that it is too narrow in its explanation for the ontology of the world. There may come a day when scientists can completely describe the workings of the world, but that wouldn't tell us why the world exists. To use an analogy, let's say that while hiking through the woods one evening a person comes across a piece of unknown technology and they take it home to study and tinker with. After months of observing, predicting, and testing, they're able to completely describe how the piece of technology works. However, despite this new found knowledge, the person still knows nothing about why the piece of technology exists, or who (if anyone) created it. The same holds true for the world. Atheists tend to forget about this other kind of explanation.
As you can see, the atheist has some explaining to do. How can there be a set of an actually infinite number of things; and how can that series of things be sequentially traversed? How can nonbeing produce being? How can unsupervised evolution lead to brains that are aimed at finding truth? Why are our brains not filled with false beliefs? What does atheism tell us about why the world exists? There are other issues and questions regarding atheism, but for now, this article will have to do.
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