More Spaghetti

A reader writes:

As a former philosophy major, and an atheist, I feel compelled to reply to the other philosophy major who insists that atheists are missing the point because theism is actually only about "the consequences of God".

This is, indeed, the sort of theism that appeals to philosophy majors but I think that it's disingenuous to pretend that theism does not ultimately rely on the proposition that some sort of God or gods actually exist (and not merely as some sort of abstract motivation for moral behavior).

I don't know any atheists who would deny that the idea of God exists, nor do I think that there are any that would think to suggest that the existence of that idea has no impact on human society.  Quite to the contrary, many of us are rather concerned about the precise form that this impact takes given that there have been enough cases where those consequences have had, in our opinions, an adverse impact on the world.

I am not, of course, suggesting that a belief in God can't lead to positive outcomes as well. I appreciate the positive impact that theism has had on our culture, including aspects of the "moral compunction, cultural taboo, social phenomena" that the previous reader alluded to.  Never the less, the claim that these, and these alone, amount to a "de facto eschatology" is ludicrous.

You, yourself, has said that the belief in the Incarnation is central to your Catholicism.  If your reader were to be taken as seriously, it would follow that it wouldn't actually matter whether or not the Incarnation actually happened.  Somehow, I don't think that you would be all that quick to agree.  At the end of the day, the vast majority of people who say they believe in God mean that they believe that there is an actual entity -- an intelligence -- that corresponds to that concept and it takes a philosophy major to pretend that theism is only about the consequences of that belief.