Argumentum ad imbecilus

"Honest? Akma, the simplest explanation of most of these stories is that [God] sends true dreams. [God] intervenes sometimes in people's lives. To avoid believing that you have to come up with the most convoluted, twisted, insulting speculations."

Orson Scott Card - Earthborn


Two decades after I first tried reading them, I finally gritted my teeth to actually finish Card's Homecoming novels. (a.k.a. Mormons from Beyond the Moon) Long review short, the less preachy parts prove surprisingly enjoyable... but few and far between. For now, that quote gives me an "in" to address one of the many nonsensical arguments spouted by sufferers of the cerebral disease faithosis: simplicity. It's one that doesn't get knocked down nearly often enough, and best summarized by Richard Dawkins in his excellent lecture* at Berkeley in 2008** (starting ~8:15 in this video)

"I can't understand how Theory A explains X; therefore Theory B must be right. I bet you don't know how the elbow joint of the lesser spotted weasel-frog evolved. You don't? Right then! God did it!"

To put it another way, since complicated explanations are hard to understand, religious types would rather slap the word "God" on anything and everything around them and pretend it's an explanation. It's very similar (and not accidentally) to those who see Unidentified Flying Objects everywhere and claim to know exactly what they are and from which galaxy they hail, conveniently forgetting the definition of the word "unidentified" !

Unexplained phenomena are just that: un-explained. Not explained. They are not positive indicators of the existence of anything. This holds both for the sum total of human knowledge and for us as individuals. Not knowing how something works does not excuse you latching on to it as proof of your magic sky daddy. Your ignorance proves nothing except ignorance.

And sure, I could get into the nuts and bolts of this argument. It doesn't matter how convoluted a chain of causality is if it's verifiable, falsifiable and consistent. Sometimes the world's demonstrably weird. Deal with it. Also, the "simple" explanation of the supernatural proves indescribably more complex once you start trying to explain the explanation itself. "God did it" - ok, how? Medieval theology is full of those sorts of attempts at rationalizing the irrational, and the sheer volume spewed from Aquinas' mouth alone could've filled Augeas' stables.

No, I'm more interested in the wording chosen by Card, that rational, materialistic explanations (or "speculations") are convoluted, twisted and most importantly insulting. Yeah, the universe is insulting to us. From the alpha and omega of our own world as we are at our mother's breast, decades' worth of intellectual growth relegates us to minute, ephemeral, irrelevant specks of ape shit subject to uncaring physical laws, historical circumstance and microscopic malfeasance.Yes, it is insulting to realize your mystical vision was the result of dehydration from having the runs that day because you ate a stale bagel for breakfast. Yes, it is insulting to discover that what you explained by childish fables does in fact have a perfectly logical explanation, requiring no leaps of faith, but that you simply lacked or will always lack the intelligence to grasp it.

I keep hearing apologists and activists tell us to be nicer to the irrational, not to insult them for fear of alienating them. But what's the point? They'd better get used to it, because no invective we evil atheists can hurl at them will ever compare to reality's infinite ability to insult the human need for self-importance. If they can't take the strain of me calling them cretins, they will never accept the insulting realization that they're not important enough to get happy dreams from a magic sky daddy.


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* If you're not going to actually read The God Delusion, I at least highly recommend watching that entire lecture from start to finish. The man was on fire that day. Or on as much fire as a slightly musty Oxford professor will sustain, at any rate.

** This was before the town of Berkeley infamously "disinvited" one of the world's greatest minds for fear he might bruise the egos of the irrational.