Is Atheism Irrational?

As a part of a series, philosophy-inspired blog The Stone is dedicating a series to religion, which questions theism and atheism alike. In this installment, Gary Gutting interviewed Alvin Plantinga, a professor of philosophy at Notre Dame.  Gutting addresses several pressing issues of both sides of the debate from what (Plantinga believes) are the best arguments for atheism ("the so-called 'problem of evil'") and the best arguments for theism (the 'fine-tuned' nature of the universe).

I always find articles like this interesting, especially when theists are willing to logically pull apart their beliefs despite the usual inclination to leave it at "you cannot question God's authority" (which, this past weekend, was my uncle's response to me questioning the bible).

While Plantinga's argument does fall short as soon as he says, "I should make clear first that I don’t think arguments are needed for rational belief in God." This is interesting because he directly goes on to make an argument for the belief in God (but I'm not complaining, just kind of... contradictory). He goes on to say, "In this regard belief in God is like belief in other minds, or belief in the past." I've never liked this argument because it presumes that there needs to be a "belief" in other minds/the past for them to exist. It is not exactly a belief, but an acknowledgement by awareness. While they are all abstract concepts, an omniscient, unknowable being is not as concrete a thing as the recognition that there is such a notion as five minutes ago, a time in the past.

Bertrand Russell's analogy for theism with teapotism is alluded to, which has always been my favorite.

"Russell’s idea, I take it, is we don’t really have any evidence against teapotism, but we don’t need any; the absence of evidence is evidence of absence, and is enough to support a-teapotism. We don’t need any positive evidence against it to be justified in a-teapotism; and perhaps the same is true of theism.
I disagree: Clearly we have a great deal of evidence against teapotism. For example, as far as we know, the only way a teapot could have gotten into orbit around the sun would be if some country with sufficiently developed space-shot capabilities had shot this pot into orbit. No country with such capabilities is sufficiently frivolous to waste its resources by trying to send a teapot into orbit. Furthermore, if some country had done so, it would have been all over the news; we would certainly have heard about it. But we haven’t. And so on. There is plenty of evidence against teapotism. So if, à la Russell, theism is like teapotism, the atheist, to be justified, would (like the a-teapotist) have to have powerful evidence against theism."

I think Plantinga misses the point of the analogy, but also (rather awesomely) confirms it, by concluding that a teapot, a manmade object, obviously had to be put into orbit around the sun by man. That is his automatic position. Now replace the idea of the "teapot" with God, or supernatural, unacknowledgable, and invisible deity. A god couldn't have possibly been placed by man, but a teapot sure can.

Plantinga later says, "Some people simply don’t want there to be a God. It would pose a serious limitation for human autonomy." While this can be seen as a criticism of atheism/agnosticism, I think it is quite positive. I like to think of myself as a human trying her hardest and making positive choices (though they may not always be the best) for herself. And that's it.

(But the main question, I guess: Is Atheism Irrational? I don't think so. It would be, however, hilarious that a god created beings that are supposed to follow his words absolutely but give them the capacity to stop believing in him.)