This meme has been shared by a few different Christian friends on my Facebook news feed – and it seems the message is that theism is the most reasonable approach while atheism, or a reliance on empirical evidence, is perhaps irrational. Here are a few of my thoughts:
1) Believing that something is ‘outside the womb’ doesn’t lead to Christianity…
The “do you believe in mom?” question is an attempt to parallel the experience of these unborn babies to our own human experience on earth and the question “do you believe in god?”. The problem is that since we are “in the womb”, we don’t have any reason to assert knowledge on what is outside unless there is empirical evidence. While the author of the meme knows there is a mother outside of the womb, it would be irrational for the babies to believe so unless they were presented with empirical evidence. Of course, this is sort of the point of the meme: that it seems irrational to believe that a mom exists, but one exists anyways! However, this lesson certainly shouldn’t lead to anything more than deism (certainly not Christianity).
Why believe in Yahweh instead of Apollo, Athena, Baal, Ganesha, Hades, Horus, Ishtar, Krishna, Mithras, Odin, Osiris, Poseidon, Rama, Thor, Vishnu, Zeus, or whatever other god? By downplaying the importance of evidence and rational thought, this meme leads to the view that we should believe any random untestable view to explain our existence… because somebody’s wild guess, which is nothing more than a shot in the dark, just might be right!
2) Even if you hear ‘mother’s voice’, there is no way to confirm the source…
While it is true that at some point while in the womb, the babies begin to hear and learn their mother’s voice – but again, they don’t know anything about the source. Christians will claim that they hear the voice of god speaking to them, but it seems unlikely that it is anything more than ones own conscience considering the many varying messages people hear that they all claim are from one god or another. Of course, there is always the fallback response that the devil is talking to others to create the inconsistent messages, but then how can we know which messages are from god (and which god?) and which ones are from the devil? And why does Yahweh confuse the issue further by playing silly mind games in the Bible such as telling Abraham to kill his own son, which basically teaches people of faith to follow whatever voice they hear, even if it says to do crazy things that are immoral and don’t make sense.
3) A good mommy would love her babies whether or not they chose to believe that she existed while they were in the womb.
We know that in the womb example, there is a mom after all. But it’s important to point out that any good mom would love the babies regardless of whether or not the baby knew there was a mom or cherished the relationship. In my studies, this is certainly not the case with Christianity. If you don’t believe in god and don’t have a good relationship with Jesus, then you are going to hell. The Christian portray of god is one that doesn’t care if you were stuck in a womb without any way to know for sure whether or not He exists, you either believe or you don’t believe. And if you don’t believe, it doesn’t matter how nice of a person you are, you will be sentenced to hell. End of story.
Here are a few Bible verses that support this view:
John 14:6: “Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”
Acts 4:12: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”
Galatians 2:16: “A person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.”
Galatians 3:11: “Clearly no one who relies on the law is justified before God, because ‘the righteous will live by faith.’”
Ephesians 2:8,9: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast.”
Titus 3:5: “He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.”
4) How far do you take the womb analogy?
Religions have taken the view that “there must be something out there” to the point where they have given this entity numerous names, attributed all sorts of characteristics to it including the belief that it hears our every thought and judges our every action, created holy books that claim to be given by the authority of this mysterious entity and provide moral rules that we must follow for a great reward (or else we will face a severe punishment), built massive constructs in its many names, and spend a significant amount of time trying to communicate to it to ask for help as well as praise it for everything good and apologize for all of our failures to adhere by its rules.
But why stop there? This same reasoning can of course be used to believe in other things such as Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy, alien abductions, bigfoot, demons, and so forth. And of course, if we want to keep moving forward with this silly analogy, we could always take it a step further. Even if it turns out that there is a god and we all end up in heaven, we could always wonder if there is another “layer” to that reality. “Hey Brother, do you think there’s a SuperGod that created god?” Why not?
5) The best response is to live in reality…
We can speculate forever on what exists ‘beyond’ our senses. Maybe there is a big supernatural battle going on that we cannot sense. Maybe we live in a matrix. Maybe your brain is the only one that exists and everything else is a self-projected fantasy world? It can be a lot of fun to speculate and guess – and such speculation can also lead to a better understanding of reality as we continue to test our various hypotheses and theories. Curiosity is a good thing. However, we must be grounded by reality. We need to understand the difference between “knowledge” and “speculation” and treat each accordingly. We should not claim to know with certainty things that cannot be known, especially if such views lead to intolerance of others and close-mindedness in our continued search for answers.
