There’s a now infamous video starring Ray Comfort and produced by Kirk Cameron about how the banana is supposedly an atheist’s nightmare. Their reasoning behind this (if we can call it such) is that the banana exemplifies the result of a benevolent god, who created it specifically for human consumption. Its ridges match the grooves on our hands, it comes in a biodegradable container and it’s delicious. Therefore, it could only have been the work of god.
I could write about how preposterous this is and talk about how the evolutionary theory applies to fruits, but that’s been done many times already.
I want to focus on the word “nightmare” because I think that’s what I found most interesting.
What exactly is an atheist’s nightmare like? What is it that we fear above all other things? What would prompt us to suddenly wake up in a cold sweat, relieved beyond relief that it was all just a bad dream? Let’s think on that for a second.
For most of us, a bad dream can involve being chased by a dangerous predator. Equally common are dreams about falling, being unprepared for an important task, suddenly being naked in public, or being visited by someone who has passed away. Some of these dreams may be so uncomfortable or palpably terrifying that we may wake up from them and not be able to fall back asleep for an hour.
But they’re mostly universal experiences. What would a nightmare look like to the atheist worldview?
Since atheists are far from a homogenous group, I want to confidently assert that there isn’t an atheist nightmare. If we were to learn tomorrow that there is a kind, benevolent god who made the world for us to enjoy, we’d probably rejoice. There would inevitably be a moment of shock, perhaps embarrassment, but for the most part we would embrace this new knowledge.
Because atheists aren’t like believers. We don’t clasp our hands to our ears against evidence, or its lack thereof, and simply believe what we want because it makes us feel better. We’ve looked at the world around us, analyzed it critically and have come to realize that god isn’t a real thing. It wouldn’t be a nightmare in the least to learn the opposite (unless god turns out to be the intractable brute from the Old Testament, in which case, maybe there will be a chilling hellscape after all).
Conversely, the religious flock does have a nightmare scenario and that is why they framed this argument in such a way. In the unlikely (but still plausible) case that devout Christians reason to the point of accepting god’s non-existence, their entire worldview has fallen apart. Though not irreparable, it will take a lot of soul-searching (no pun intended) to regain their balance.
More recently, with the popular Cosmos series attracting widespread praise and attention, the Creationist community has predictably fulminated against what they consider to be the takedown of their worldview. Science has been chipping away at the Biblical creation narrative for hundreds of years now, and Neil deGrasse Tyson’s comforting voice is reaching a much larger audience.
Sounds to me like their nightmare scenario.
God's Ending 