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Simon

(Text as at 12/08/2007 10:17:46)

Dear Theo,

I was thinking of you the other day when I was having a spirited debate with my 16year old daughter, Rebecca, about altruism and religion. Although I’ve been atheist as long as I can remember, and my wife has been agnostic, Rebecca ‘found’ Christianity in the form of the US Presbyterian church a few years ago and has fully immersed herself into it. It’s a little ironic, because as a political ‘Libertarian’, I happily defend her right to 'be' anything she wants, but I can’t help myself from being a bit cynical on the religious front especially living in the US during this age of TV-evangelism, which includes our President with his fundamentalist cronies.

As usual our discussion veered off into a basic argument on providing proof on God’s existence, and your ‘Tractatus’ sprang to my mind. My daughter’s view seems to be that: “if you can’t prove he doesn’t exist, then he must exist”. Of course my position is the exact opposite. Having reached stalemate on that front, the more interesting question is “why do so many people need to believe in something”? I have never felt this ‘need’, being content with: “when I’m dead, I’m dead”. But anyway our argument stalls at my sudden childish desire to have a fish symbol with legs as a bumper sticker – of course it’s deliberately antagonistic.

But back to the argument… So we get to her point: “If people didn’t believe in God and heaven and hell then they’d all do bad things”. Now this is more like it. The question then circles back to altruism and whether we are able to sustain any form of civilization without a ‘greater power’ keeping us in fear and hence in check? I offer: “Well I’m atheist and I don’t murder or rob people?”, to which she delivers her best counter-argument: “Well not everyone is like you, Daddy”… And that Theo, is where my argument for spreading atheism breaks down…not on the question of whether God exists or not, but on whether [a] God is needed, to ensure order and ultimately our survival.

So I do hope that you have been able to progress your argument further and haven’t pulled a ‘360’. I especially need you to recommend a book with a title such as: “Daddy, are you going to hell because you don’t believe in God?” I could put it on the bookshelf next to: “Stay out of my life, but first can you drive me to the church?”!

Simon (2^nd January 2007)

Theo’s Response¹.