Just watched an old video on you tube where Ricky Gervais talks about God and Jesus, you can see it here. I found it really sad – although some people seemed to like his jokes about God.
I found it sad for several reasons.
First, he seemed to think that being honest and interested in the truth was what atheists do, this is not my experience. If by truth we mean knowing what is actually out there then the atheist can make no more claim to truth than the believer. There are plenty of examples of the philosophical argument around the existence of God available and, despite what some dismissive atheists say, there is every reason to believe that God does exist. Here is a good place to read some of the arguments for the existence of God … My experience with atheists is that they don’t usually want to talk sensibly about truth but increasingly treat it all as a joke. Atheism is a step of faith just as much as belief in God and they really need to understand this.
Second, I was sad to hear that he became an atheist in an hour because of what is brother said whilst his mum had nothing to counter the argument. This is sad because so often atheists are given lots of reasons why it’s wrong to believe in God yet Christians never seem to have any reasons why you should believe in God. I often hear very sensible and learned Christians say that there is no point in trying to argue that God exists because we can’t win. This is very disturbing. In academic philosophy there are plenty who believe and argue the case for God (for instance Swimburne and Plantinga) – if it was not possible to win an argument then no philosopher would ever believe in God but many do. The same could be said for scientists, of course. I wonder if his mum had some of those arguments available maybe Ricky would not be an atheist today?
Third, like many atheists what he seems to want to attack is the dum side of religion (can’t think of a better phrase but hopefully you get what I mean). They attack things like biblical literalism (which actually very few Christians believe) and stifling religion – that is religion stops exploration and enjoyment of life (by this they usually mean those religious people who are nit picking about rules to follow or rather a whole list of things we are not allowed to do). I understand that there are things that are just plain right or wrong but there is an awful lot of so called Christian rules that don’t come from the bible and have no place in a Christians life. If the rules are also claimed to stop scientific exploration then this is simply not true – the church has always encouraged scientific exploration and indeed the first scientists were mainly people of faith. I can’t deny there have been some mistakes along the way but this is true of all philosophies and not just those with religious belief. Surely, claiming that just believing in God is a joke stifles free exploration after truth (something new atheists like Ricky are fond of doing). Please stop tilting at the straw men, it really helps no one.
Fourth, he said that as a child he really thought Jesus was wonderful. It seemed to me that he went off Jesus because he was made to feel he was being silly believing in God as a vulnerable child. His mother seemed to treat the subject like it was believing in father Christmas – just don’t talk about it. In our society there are plenty of people who want to bring this approach into our education system. It is about time that belief in God be defended academically – perhaps it should be part of the RE syllabus? but at the very least the right to believe should be heavily defended.
Throughout the interview Ricky suggested that he really would like to believe in God because it sounds such a wonderful idea – my prayer is that he finds someone who can help him with this.