How To Be An Atheist: Chapter Analysis

While reading this book, I come away with three major thoughts. First, Stokes provides a clear understanding of naturalism. Being able to understand naturalism, removes all confusion that may occur if I were to talk to a person about my beliefs. During this semester the topics of naturalism, skepticism, and multiverse theory, were often very difficult to follow. However, it is clear in How to Be an Atheist, and lends itself to apologetics, giving clear reason of argument. My understanding of naturalism, is if we believe evolution is true, we do not have a reason to think our human mental abilities, memory, sense perception, and reason are dependable. Gaining a clear thought of what it means to be an atheist, arms me with more than just the usual Christian response to atheism. Understanding naturalism in a way where I can point out the shortfalls and conclusions it takes, gives me opportunity to talk to

When skepticism and philosophical naturalism meet, it unavoidably leads to absurd conclusions. For Naturalism to be true, even with science having some explanations, there are still things that cannot be explained, such as why is the earth exactly 479,002,624,672 feet away from the sun. The answer Hume, Dawkins, and others, would like us to believe, is that with an infinite number of possible universes, our perfect earth happened by chance. In a world where naturalism is true, there is no morality. Contrariwise, if morality exists, naturalism is false. This absurd, “you can’t prove me wrong theory” has many faults. If naturalism is used as the criteria for truth, we lose all sense of character and liberty. What will occur if naturalism were true? This was my favorite part of How to be an atheist, because I saw the consequences of absurd conclusions of a false theory. Morality defines the laws of right and wrong, and without that we cannot have common-sense