Today is the National Day of Prayer, a solemn time to humble ourselves before God and plead for his mercy, grace and correction on our country. Either that or it’s a chance for atheists to regard themselves as superior with the National Day of Reason, “a secular celebration for humanists, atheists, and other secularists and freethinkers in response to the National Day of Prayer.”

Actually it’s both. Except I think they’ve misnamed their version of the day.

Sure, they’ve got “reason” stamped on everything they do. It’s in the titles of their organizations, and if not there, it’s in their mission and purpose statements.

But I’ve been watching their “reasoning” for a long time, beginning long before they had their first “Reason Rally” on the Mall in Washington, D.C. I wasn’t impressed then, so I brought several authors together to respond to their “reason” in the book True Reason: Confronting the Irrationality of the New Atheism. The title tells you what we thought of it at the time.

Reasoning, Good and Bad

And I’m not impressed today, either. Good reasoning is reasoning well, right? It relies on good evidence and good first principles, and it it follows a valid path of inference to reach a sound conclusion. It’s a loosely stated description of good reasoning, but I don’t know anyone who’d disagree it with yet. Over and over again, though, in years of online and in-person dialogue with atheists, I’ve seen them violate in two basic ways.

First, they are repeatedly guilty of basic logical fallacies. We’ve got whole chapters in True Reason uncovering their fallacies; and it isn’t just a few atheists on the Internet doing it. It’s their most prominent leaders. There are exceptions — atheists who reason well — in the high reaches of academic philosophy, but in my experience, the rest of the atheist world has real trouble recognizing a fallacy when they see one.

So I’ll do them and you a favor. I’ll show you two, both of them favorites in the atheist community.

Self-Contradiction

I’d go so far as to say it’s obviously false; but these “Day of Reason” folks don’t often see it that way.

The first one has been kicked around academia for decades, and pretty much everyone now agrees it’s a fatal error — everyone except the atheists who keep on thinking it’s great wisdom. If you say, “You can’t really know anything is true unless you know it scientifically,” you’ve shot yourself in the foot, for that isn’t a scientific statement. If it isn’t scientific, how can you know it’s true?

It commits the logical fallacy of being self-contradictory: It can’t be true unless it’s false. Which of course just means it’s false. I’d go so far as to say it’s obviously false; but these “Day of Reason” folks don’t often see it that way.

Begging the Question

The second fallacy is just as bad. It’s known as “begging the question,” which means sneaking your conclusion into your starting premises. For example, “Eating broccoli will make you healthier because broccoli is good for you.” The person who doesn’t believe eating broccoli will make her healthier will not be impressed by assurances that it’s good for her; that’s the very thing she needs proved.

Atheists do much the same thing when they say we can’t know anything more than we can observe scientifically, therefore we shouldn’t believe in God. I’m convinced that science points strongly toward God, yet science doesn’t directly observe God. Science can observe what’s in nature, but God by definition transcends nature. He’s not there to be put in a test tube or flung around in a cyclotron.

So should we disbelieve in God for that reason? No, for the atheist rule commits the fallacy of begging the question. We could re-state it this way: “You shouldn’t believe in anything that isn’t part of nature, so for that reason you shouldn’t believe in God.” Do you see how that’s no better than, “Eating broccoli will make you healthier because broccoli is good for you”?

Jefferson Spinning In His Grave Over This??

Atheist thought is riddled with fallacies like that in the reasoning process. And the outcomes of atheist reasoning can be just as bad.

Take a couple recent articles at The American Humanist Association. Bear in mind that the AHA is probably the most reasonable of all the large atheist associations.

One, written by Rick Snedeker on March 5, asks “Why Is Overt Christian Proselytizing Allowed on the Floor of Congress?” Billy Graham was allowed to lie in honor at the Capitol. One member of Congress made tribute to him there by saying, “I pray that we’re being servants for God’s good that we allow him to light our path. We humble ourselves enough to build our house on his firm biblical foundation. In this day, whatever we do, we do to the glory of God.”

Snedeker finds this horrifying: “So, she’s saying the government should do God’s bidding? Thomas Jefferson, for one, would spin in his grave.” Funny thing, though: He didn’t “spin” when members of Congress spoke up about God while he was alive.

Or Over This?

But anyway, that’s really, really bad, right? Now look what else is bad. On May 1, Melody Stringer wrote on that same website about recent “FOSTA/SESTA” legislation, which severely restricts online marketing of sex services. It was intended to cut down on sex trafficking, but its reach extends to “sex workers,” some of whom choose that line of work for purely economic reasons: “because it pays better and allows more flexible working conditions than other jobs they might be qualified or considered for.” Others’ motivation is more artistic: they “choose this work as a means of expression.”

This law is really, really bad, (says Stringer) because it makes this economically and creatively noble sex work more dangerous — the “workers” can’t screen their “clients” as carefully. It’s bad, too, because it’s similar to other laws that “seek to end sex work altogether by punishing the clients in an effort to wipe out the demand for sex work.”

Apparently wiping out the demand for sex work is really, really bad. Who knows how fast Jefferson is spinning in his grave over that one? In fact, I think we all do: Even if grave-spinning were possible, Jefferson would lie quiet and content with laws that limit porn and prostitution. As he also would with allowing members of Congress to call on the name of God from inside the Capitol.

The True Day of Reason

This is unfortunately the kind of thing the “Day of Reason” is about. I’ve offered you a few examples; there are many, many more.

So I’ll honor it as the Day of Prayer instead. It’s more reasonable.