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Denying God is not just an insult to God; more than that, it is an insult to humanity.
Religious faith is not just another belief that one can do with or without. It is one of the most fundamental and central forces that have shaped humanity, from its earliest days to the present. All of world culture, in all generations, has been shaped by the influence of religion. Art, politics, philosophy, science, family and social life - there is no human field that has not been greatly influenced by religious faith, and these in turn have influenced it back, creating a fruitful dialogue that continues to this day. Even today in the 21st century, more than 80% of the world's population define themselves as religious, and less than 3% as atheists. Disbelief in God has always been the domain of a minority only, however noisy it may be.
Only a rude boor would claim that religious faith is the domain of primitive simpletons. Stupidity is the last thing one can accuse the ancient cultures of, which developed language, architecture, agriculture, engineering, metallurgy, astronomy and medicine from scratch, and achieved amazing achievements in them. They were not some retarded ape-men who invented gods for themselves because they were afraid of thunder; these are people who built the pyramids, and knew how to accurately predict the course of the stars, anticipate solar eclipses, and also perform brain surgeries. Not like today, but still.
Speaking of intelligence, an average 15-year-old boy 5,000 years ago already knew how to hunt buffaloes, process their skins, and survive in the jungle, desert, or ice age - while all his contemporary counterpart knows how to do is play on the iPhone and watch reality shows. If we were to switch places between them, there is no doubt who would get along better with his new environment.
Among the believers were some of the greatest philosophers and scientists of all time, thinkers and intellectuals, and this is not the place to list them because they are many. Not exactly hallucinating dreamers or thunder-fearing cowards. The Bible is the cornerstone of all Western culture in its various branches, and continues to be the best-selling book, read and studied even today.
And what does atheism say about this? That human culture is based on delusions, lies and superstitions. That the visions of the prophets, which have inspired entire cultures for thousands of years, are nothing but an expression of madness and mental illness. That millions of people who have experienced divine revelation, individually or in groups, are nothing but hallucinating dreamers who do not distinguish between imagination and reality. That billions of people are fools and simpletons, and that all of humanity suffers from psychological complexes that distort their minds.
But like that driver who drives on the highway, and is sure that everyone except him is driving against the direction of traffic - so too that heretic does not stop for a moment to ask himself: perhaps they are the sane and wise, and I am the one who is wrong? If according to his method the faith of most of humanity stems from a mental complex - perhaps his disbelief is an expression of a complex, and the rest are healthy? You can't dig a pit under everyone without falling into it yourself. Whoever claims that everyone is hallucinating, it is more likely that he is the blind one.
According to religion, human culture is based on a sublime divine vision. According to atheism, it is based on delusions and mental illnesses. Who then is the true humanist, and who humiliates the dignity of humanity?
The problem with the atheist, in fact, is that he lives in a bubble. He approaches the questions of faith as if he is the first person to deal with the subject, and as if it is some abstract theoretical question, disconnected from actual reality. In doing so, he ignores the human factor, which is most significant in this matter - ignores human culture, tradition, the wisdom of generations, testimonies of revelation and miracles, and so on. Like a monk who grew up in an isolated monastery, and has never seen the form of a woman in his life, and he sits and philosophically discusses the concept of love, and comes to the conclusion that love does not exist. So if love were a theoretical concept, maybe he would be right; but anyone who knows the real world and human society as it is, will of course laugh at such a ridiculous conclusion. You can't talk about love without knowing humanity as it actually is - and so it is with religion.
The priests of the Church of Reason, set strict requirements for any position that wants to receive their approval. Anyone who makes an argument must meet the strict standards of formal logic. If he deviates from them, his argument will be considered a failure, and will be rejected outright. Like the Church in the Middle Ages, which formulated a list of heresies and deviant opinions, so too the Church of Reason holds a list of what it calls "logical fallacies". Among these fallacies are formal fallacies, which are nothing but basic mathematical-like errors - but also a list of what are called "informal fallacies". Informal fallacies are an attempt to argue a claim based on facts that do not constitute logical proof for it. For example, "ad populum" - to argue that something is true because that's what everyone thinks, or "ad hominem" - to argue that something is true because that's what a certain great person thought. Reliance on tradition is also considered a type of informal fallacy, and so are many others.
But as with the Catholic Church, the very fact that a certain position is defined as heresy, or as a fallacy, does not prove its untruth. In fact, when examining the list of "informal fallacies" of the Church of Reason, one discovers that most of them are actually very successful ways to reach the truth. The opinion of the majority has significant weight when it comes to forming an opinion, sometimes even more than the opinion of individual experts, as recent studies on the subject of "wisdom of the crowds" show. Of course, the opinions of great and wise people also have more weight than those of small and stupid people - if you had to make a decision, with which of the two would you consult? And so it is with tradition, and with the other "fallacies" on the list. These are not fallacies, but highly useful epistemic tools, which usually lead to success, even more than strict logic.
True, ad-populum and ad-hominem do not constitute a clear and irrefutable proof, like formal logical inferences. It is also true that if we have strong evidence to the contrary, then the opinion of the masses and the wise will indeed be rejected in its favor. But as long as there is no such evidence on the other side, the most rational way to decide on important questions is to use precisely those means that logic calls informal fallacies. Whoever ignores the opinion of the majority, the wise and the tradition without a good reason, is an irrational person, and is likely to err seriously.
And that is exactly what atheism does. If it had some conclusive proof that the existence of God is nothing but an illusion, a mass delusion, or a psychological complex of the human race - it would be justified in holding its position even against the opinion of the vast majority of humanity. But since it has no such proof, and all its claim is by way of negation - that it has not been proven that God does exist - then it has no justification to belittle the vast majority of the human race, and to see itself as wiser than them. And what does it know, that they don't? What mistake are they making, that it can point out?
Atheism accuses humanity of holding a false belief, massively and persistently. Consequently, it requires belittling the intelligence and judgment of most of humanity. But can another similar mistake be found, which most people hold for so long? Perhaps surprisingly, you will find it difficult to find a good example of such a mistake. Usually in discussions on the subject, atheists pull out the only example that comes to their mind: "Once everyone also thought that the world was flat." True, and they had quite a few other mistakes on scientific topics, just as scientists in the future will claim against the scientists of our generation; but the important point is that once it became clear that the world is indeed round (and later also that it revolves around its axis, and around the sun, etc.) - it was not long before all of humanity abandoned its previous opinion, and adopted the new opinion. They did not insist on closing their eyes and sticking to familiar positions. So this example actually proves that people are not stupid - if they are proven, they are convinced. Only what to do, that for thousands of years atheists have tried to prove that God does not exist, and yet the vast majority of humanity still believes in him, despite all that Darwin, Freud, Einstein and Hawking said? So one of two things: either these scientific theories really do not prove anything about the non-existence of God - or people are stupid or psychologically complex, and therefore they refuse to give up the comforting belief in the existence of God. Guess which position the atheists take.
In conclusion: as a theoretical-hypothetical position, floating in some ivory tower that floats in empty space, it might have been possible to discuss atheism in a detached philosophical way (and even then we would have come to the conclusion that it is wrong). But in actual reality, it is impossible to be an atheist without belittling all of humanity, without seeing people as childish fools, who believe in meaningless fairy tales to fulfill their psychological needs. Consequently, atheism is the most anti-human position. It not only denies God, but also man.
In the words of Arik Einstein: "Your Honor, don't be such a heretic \ Why don't you believe in man?"...
Translated from מסטריום
