See parts one and two

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Atheist v. Theist, part ∞

What distinguishes the worldviews of the believer from the non-believer? In many cases, nothing is the most likely answer. But there is a fundamental difference between methodologies, ways of figuring out the world, which leads to better conclusions. The methodology gives one a perspective that will either conform to our experience with the world or it will create cognitive dissonance with the world. The conclusions drawn from a worldview will, therefore, ultimately be the result of that methodology as it has been applied to the experiences and language game of any particular person.

The scientific method is a tool that leans on empiricism. It cannot rely on anything except that which can be observed, directly or indirectly, as having some relationship with the universe in which we live. That is, the objects of science’s gaze must exist within the natural universe, and not be anything, for example, supernatural. When a person utilizes this methodology of science to determine a way of interpreting the world, they are doing so in an attempt to check their conclusions thus far drawn with the world around them. If the scientist finds that what they have observed conflicts with some descriptive model of the world, then revision is necessary to either the experimental observation or to that larger description if the observation stands upon repetition.

This methodology uses the world itself as the foundation, the text from which we gain understanding. The letters of this text are the constituent parts of the world that interact in their subtle and often mysterious ways. The sentences are the various facts and simple objects that orbit our mind. Going further, the great chapters, books, and libraries range from the ideas, people, and cultures with which we interact and in which we swim. This, of course, is metaphorical language. And we all use metaphor as a tool for describing the world when we are unable—or unwilling—to be exact.

Metaphors are not exact enough to be the descriptions of the world we would need to be a exact scientific descriptions. And none of us, I believe, is a scientist through-and-through. None of us utilize the methodology of empiricism sufficiently or solely, as our minds cannot ascertain the world’s reality exact enough to create a sufficient map—a sufficient theory. Thus, we use inexact language to create a broad brush-stroke of a description. These insufficient models of the world can be beautiful, sublime, puzzling, or down-right terrifying. With the range of our languages and imaginations, we can create imagery that can contain important meaning, inspiration, or even fear.

But these descriptions will never satisfy the most rigorous of methodologies. Thus, the tension is realized. We cannot be exact enough, epistemologically, to live up to our most precise of methodologies; science. Does this mean that we simply stop using those methodologies? Does the fact that our minds cannot apprehend the world with sufficient precision imply that we give up on trying to become scientists—or the versuchen of Nietzsche’s ubermenschen?

This is one facet of the tension between science and religion. The mind thinks in inexact metaphors. The many doctrines and ideologies of religious traditions have saved the most beautiful, sublime, puzzling, and terrifying of metaphors from our past, and hold them in esteem. This is why they are so pernicious, because they contain images that we find beautiful and meaningful, not because they are necessarily true.

So, therefore, we should adhere our worldview to the true conclusions of science, right? Not exactly. Science very well may be the best tool humans have at their disposal to distinguish between better and worse descriptions of reality—theories. But telling the difference between two theories to see which conforms better to our empirical data is no better than our best description, which is admittedly dependent upon our inexact perceptual tools (the brain and our extended perceptual tools of technology). Our best theories do not necessarily exactly conform to the world, and thus science is a tool for getting closer to the truth through theory choice. This is why science is perpetually changing, which is a ubiquitous criticism of many of the faithful who misunderstand that this is, perhaps, what makes science so awesome.

Religion offers us no better an option. The descriptions of the world that comes from religion come from a different methodology. Religion has traditionally been the product of descriptions of gods and other proposed divine or natural forces envisioned not from the same process as science. They survived in lieu of or in ignorance of science, not as an equal alternative. Religion depends on the tools of metaphor, imagination, and story-telling that dominated human minds and cultures prior to or adjacently hidden from scientific process.

But religion persists because it clings to the human experience in some way. Humanity’s religious texts would not have survived if they had not contained something of value to human minds. They have undergone a sort of natural selection of their own, and have evolved into a form that adheres to human minds and cultures because human minds and cultures evolved with them. There is a sort of symbiosis involved. Religion speaks in the language of metaphor, and the human mind thinks and talks in metaphor. The relationship is, therefore, fundamentally linked.

So from whence comes atheism?

Atheism is nothing more than looking at the world, through use of some methodology, and finding that one does not—and really cannot—believe that a so-called ‘god’ exists in the world. One question is whether god does not exist literally or does not exist metaphorically. The former would imply that there is no being in the universe that can be associated with the term—there is no referent for the term in reality—and the latter would imply that the idea itself has no meaning or use in our description of the world, even in inexact metaphorical language.

The former, the literal lack of god in the world, is a question for the scientifically minded person. It is a question of what actually exists according to our best data to date. Someone who concludes that there is no god while using this method will most likely say something like ‘I see no evidence of such a being, and thus lack belief until sufficient evidence is presented.’ They are agnostic, in that they don’t ultimately know, but they lack belief, thus are atheists. This person cannot go very far with this without bumping into description, theory, and interpretation. It is at this point when metaphor takes over.

The latter, the person using his metaphorical toolbox, has a more subtle route to atheism. What does the term ‘god’ mean? What, from the data in the world gathered, can we put together into a cohesive concept that we can call ‘god’? Once the data is gathered, some way of making sense of it must develop in order to continue to inform a worldview. To make the connections between ideas that come from new information, we have to use association of concepts and comparisons of ideas to create the interconnected web of ideas in order to literally build a neural network responsible for thought patterns. In the mind, this is viewed as a connected coherent worldview or at least a concept that relates to other concepts—whether in dissonance or not.

If a person has a worldview that cannot find a place to put the term or concept of god that coheres with the rest, then that idea becomes nonsensical to them and they have no choice but to declare it as such—nonsense. From here one can construct many arguments of god being nonsensical, as god being no-thing, because the term doesn’t fit into the set of things that exist, or however they formulate the argument. In the worldview of this type of atheist, the term god does not refer to anything identifiable in their worldview. So what about the theist?

The theist can try to argue that they see evidence for god in the world—in the design, as a cause for, etc of the actual world. But they don’t see god itself, just its interpreted effects. Thus, on the level of data itself, a theist cannot place their idol and expect it to rest there. From a scientific point of view, the claim that god exists is only meaningful if it can be pointed at directly and unambiguously. This has never been done, and until it is done to the sufficiency of the empirical method, the claim is not even meaningful. The conclusion of god as designer or cause is an interpretation, an inexact description, of the data. God is never observed directly, but rather proposed as an explanation for or fundamental ground for the world which is observed. It is always, therefore in the realm of metaphor that god is talked about.

But cannot the same be said of the atheist? Cannot it be said that the atheist has an interpretation that god does not exist behind the world, and thus their lack of god is a metaphor? This is absurd; the lack of observing some object or being is not a metaphor—it is literally nothing. The atheist at this level simply states that a ‘god’ is not observed, and this belief in its existence is not justified. If someone proposes a description of the world that includes a god, the atheist can say that the theist is comparing how the data interacts with a concept they call ‘god,’ and thus god is a metaphor for either the world itself or the cause of or foundation of the world. If god is a metaphor, then one aspect of atheism is simply not accepting said metaphor, and thus being without an ultimate metaphorical description of all things by use of a being called ‘god.’

The distinction between most atheists and most theists is one of a use of metaphor. But since all humans use metaphors in descriptions due to the lack of exact descriptions for the world, it cannot be said simply that atheists lack metaphor altogether, but simply a class of metaphors. In a sense, the idea that the map is not the terrain is relevant, as it is as if the theist, in creating a map of reality, sees a pattern of intent, intelligence, etc that helps construct the map. If they call this fabric that they print their map on ‘god’, then it seems justified in claiming that the fabric of the world must be god too, and thus god exists. The mistake is carrying the role of metaphor that we use in describing the world unto the world itself, where metaphor has no place. Metaphor is a tool of the mind, and to project the language of the mind onto the world itself is to project the device of perception onto the perceived object. Even now I cannot help but use metaphor to describe my point, but what my point refers to is not a metaphor itself.

The scientific method is not completely deprived of metaphor. Even the best and most consistent theory is inexact, assuming a perfect theory is unattainable (whether this is the case is a question for the philosophers of science). But compare the foundations of science with that of religion. Note the degrees of usage of metaphor in each. And, further, note the difference in use of metaphor in the fundamental assumptions of an atheist and a theist. What metaphors underlie the assumptions of an atheist and what metaphors underlie the assumptions of a theist?

Atheists are people that don’t believe in god. Theists are people that believe in god. God is a metaphor to describe the world and how it operates, since it is never observed directly but always inferred from the world. Atheists are people that do not believe that such a specific metaphor is meaningful in describing the world, and a theist is a person that feels that that metaphor has meaning or, in some Platonic sense, that the metaphor is a shadow of some actual being.

But what meaning does god have? What is god? Perhaps god is whatever is meaningful to the theist. Whether a meaningful metaphor can be said to actually exist is not quite the right question in this regard. In this case the importance of god is in the usefulness and affect of the concept on the real world; almost as if the concept of god makes god real. Perhaps one thing which is meaningful to many atheists is not placing too much emphasis on metaphors, but rather to that which their metaphors point. And if the metaphor either points to nothing or to something that can be later named, then ‘god’ ceases to be a useful term.

Once one has used some metaphor of god to indicate what is truly meaningful, the atheist no longer has use for the metaphor of god to have meaning. The atheist then realizes that they never had need for the metaphor.

See part 1

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Metaphor

There is something that is common to all descriptions, something that is a potential stumbling block for many truth-seekers. The commonality is rooted in language, the implications of which have been a subject of philosophy, linguistics, and other fields. Neither an extensive nor exhaustive account of language’s role here is necessary. Rather, a specific relationship between the world and language is relevant; the relative exactitude of some description’s language to the referent itself; how precisely does the description convey what the universe is like?

Specifically, the key factor is that of comparison, analogy, language games, and metaphors. In this essay, I will use metaphor for a short-hand for all of these uses of language, as well as other related ideas that convey an inexact but useful description of our experiences with the world. A metaphor is a comparison of two things by use of description of one object which is intended to describe, analogously, something else. This concept encapsulates the central relationship I want to illuminate here between this tension between description and our quest for understanding. While ‘analogy’ or ‘language game’ might be more apt terms in some cases, I believe the use of one consistent term would serve the purpose not having to distinguish between these differing concepts and stray from my central thesis.

God is a metaphor

That having been said, it may peak the curiosity of my reader the nature of this thesis. Surely, it must have something to do with metaphors, and surely, something of a theological nature is at hand. More specifically, it must have something to do with this thing called ‘god,’ a concept that has presented many a thinker with a range of ideas, feelings, and conclusions. An apt question would be what we mean by such a ubiquitous term; in a world in which religion stakes a large claim of influence and divine presences are considered common, surely we must know what this ‘god’ concept refers to, right?

Quite frankly no, we don’t know what the term ‘god’ is supposed to mean. Theologians talk of the supernatural as being beyond nature or simply as unknowable. Negative theology can define what god is not, but in terms of what the supernatural might be, we cannot say. Anything we could say would be based upon experience with the natural, and thus could not hope to describe the supernatural. As a result, our descriptions of gods and other supernatural beings are nothing but metaphors to invoke a concept. But this concept is natural in origin, and thus cannot be a true description of something that is not natural.

Further, if ‘god’ were supposed to describe something natural, then the question is what it is supposed to represent is open. One could talk about the actions of god, the creative acts of god, etc. But all in all, this use of the term is, at best, a metaphor for natural processes or poorly misunderstood events ascribed to the unknown, where the metaphor of god is placed to fill a gap. The metaphor of god is placed as a quick fix to cover over the whole of mystery. That which we do not know is placed in the lap of a metaphor we call god by theists, rather than remaining a beautiful mystery. This epistemological, emotional, and cognitive band-aid is empty linguistic filler for the unknown spaces in our understanding. Further, saying that god is the beautiful mystery is committing the same fallacy of placing a metaphor over what is essentially a gap in our understanding. If we do not understand something, then filling it with “god” is meaningless.

As an atheist, I understand that I don’t understand; I know that I know nothing, as Socrates is reported to have said. As an intellectually honest person, I must admit that that which I do not know, I must not place a meaningless term like ‘god,’ but rather admit that our understanding is finite. And when we do understand, it’s usually metaphorical in nature.

What is interesting is that many theists seem to understand this too. It has been a tradition of much of Western theology to recognize the profound gulf between our understanding of the world and god’s understanding, or between our being and god’s being. Here, for example, is St. Augustine;

What then, brethren, shall we say of God? For if thou hast been able to understand what thou wouldest say, it is not God. If thou hast been able to comprehend it, thou hast comprehended something else instead of God. If thou hast been able to comprehend him as thou thinkest, by so thinking thou hast deceived thyself. This then is not God, if thou hast comprehended it; but if this be God, thou has not comprehended it.

Here, it seems as if the theological tradition that comes to us through Augustine demonstrates understanding that we don’t know, but yet persists in the belief nonetheless. This is the infamous faith, in which one believes despite this ignorance, this gap, this uncertainty. It is as if, somehow, this feeling of awe, mystery, and humility somehow translates into a kind of existential significance. It is as if the great lack comprehension which we try to simulate in thought cannot be conceived of, so the brain fills it with a pattern of firing neurons that creates, accidentally perhaps, a sensation of a kind of being or meaning that provides something of great value to them.

Surely, this feeling or concept that many attain through this ignorance is very common among humans. It seems that it has deep roots in human psychology, and is often very persistent. But it’s neither universal nor necessary, as many people have never experienced it, at least not as a “god.” Sure, the non-religious experience awe, mystery, and adoration of the world. But there is something that distinguishes between an atheist and theist and their experience of this set of emotions and thoughts.

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Tomorrow: part three (Atheist v. Theist, part ∞)

A little while back, I wrote an article about my experience in visiting a Presbyterian church.  I contacted the gentleman who gave that sermon that day, exchanged a few pleasantries, but never heard from him again after he read the article.  But I am not dissuaded!  I press on, and I visit other churches in the hope of maintaining some communication between people like myself and those with whom I share little in terms of metaphysical opinion.

But, as I discovered yesterday (Sunday, October 25th, 2009), I do have a fair amount in common in other areas besides my theological persuasion.  Yes, I might say that I found that I can agree quite closely with a worldview expressed at certain churches on certain days.  And with that, allow me to report what I found at a local Vinyard church yesterday…

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A gathering of young, attractive, and slightly swaying people gathers under the chord-changes that seek to immitate the presence of a holy spirit.  Some sing along in praising the resurrection that supposedly brings them joy and peace.  One, standing before them, prays for all those who, assuredly still attached to the unseen powers of the real world, arrive late.  As they sit, a prayer of fear is offered.  It is that which should be learned; fear.  But wait, there’s more! See, God will come to the down-trodden and those in need.  No doubt pain, loss, and fear are felt here. No doubt they come to this place with this need.

One day, every knee will bow

one day, every tongue will confess

they sing.  An insecurity sits in this song which hovers over the crowd like a mist, almost visible it is so strong.  A vindication of their faith lives in these words.  Their belief is justified by that promise this time of all bowing and confessing  which cannot verified, but its hope is palpable here.  Their swaying continues with the new song.  Hope, genuine affection, a few hands raised as if to catch something unseen but certainly felt.  The evidence of things unseen? Perhaps.

Then they sit.  I have been sitting and jotting my impressions.  This has earned me some attention.  They seem to wonder what I am writing, and perhaps why I am writing.  Perhaps they wonder why I am not moved by the spirit as they are.  Perhaps I project.  Perhaps they are just not used to seeing this particular action in this particular place and time.

God comes close to us when we grieve

starts the pastor.  He talks of loss.  There are those that are no longer with us.  We must set aside time and space to grieve for those who are gone.  Do not be satisfied with the thought that they are in a better place. Well said.  But well said for different reasons than the ones I might give.

And this would be the theme for me throughout the next hour.  I, the atheist in the pew, will find myself in agreement with much of what is said in this sermon, but will wonder a recurring question throughout;

What does this have to do with any god?

The inspiration, as it were, for this sermon is Matthew 6: 25-33.  For those of you who don’t remember, it is the section where Jesus instructs us (supposedly) to “look at the birds of the air” and to “consider the lilies of the field.”  In fact, I’ll just quote the section that the sermon was derived from (NRSV):

‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink,^* or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ²⁶Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ²⁷And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?^{* 28}And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. ³⁰But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” ³²For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. ³³But strive first for the kingdom of God^* and his^* righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

This is a section that I am well aware of.  I remember a British sketch comedy bit about it that I found funny (I could not locate it to embed–sorry.  If you know of it email me a link).  I will tell you that I think that this passage is plagued with some problems, and as soon as the pastor began his discussion I wrote them down immediately.

But don’t the birds have to work for their food and shelter? The ones that could not died out and the ones that could are still here, so how is this supposed to be an inspirational analogy? Quite simply, I think Jesus is wrong here, and frankly looks quite ignorant of the life of birds and lilies.

The problem is that the passage states that the birds and lilies are taken care of.  The idea is that in a similar way, god takes care of us.  We should not become anxious over our lives because God will take care of things.  We need, says our fearless pastor, strive for peace and simplicity.

Simple enough, right? See, it isn’t up to us.  “We think that we are in charge,” but in fact God is in charge.  God wants us to buy into a discipline of not worrying so much; to live a life of simplicity.  We are complex, but Jesus preached simplicity.  And in this materialist culture where one can get distracted by gadgetry and so forth, we should live by some basic guidelines to simplify our lives.

In a world of competition, we need to avoid the temptations of power in an attempt to maintain a life of integrity and value.

OK, I’m with him so far, mostly.  So what does this have to do with God? What does this have to do with Christianity? I’m with you, my friend, but just because this idea was drawn from a passage from the New Testament, does that make this message a Christian one? Because as you continue to speak, dear pastor, the more I am reminded of Epicurus.

But there is more.  You see, children buy into things easier.

…

Richard Dawkins is shitting himself…but in a dignified, British way…

I’m being a little unfair, I suppose.  The idea is that we should try and maintain a child-like approach to learning and truth.  We should remain open-minded and receptive.  Perhaps, but not so open-minded that our brains fall out.  In my opinion we need to remain open yet skeptical.  Children are not always so skeptical.  They tend to believe what you tell them because they need to be so open in order to learn and to survive.  Had it been otherwise, those children thousands of years ago who didn’t believe their parents that the tiger didn’t want to be petted would not have survived and that particular trait of needing to verify everything they are told as a child would not have been passed down to the next generation. Simple natural selection.

Child-like, indeed.  It allows the theology to be swallowed easier if we don’t ask too many questions.  Child-like adults all gathered here listen intently, a few subtle motions and grunts of agreement can be pulled out of the quiet congregation.

I was partially with the pastor at this point.  I thought there was some value to the idea to not try and control everything and to try and simplify our lives.  I do not agree that we are not in charge and that God is, only that while we are in charge, there is no point in trying to control everything and to take a step back sometimes.  This will help with anxiety, I agree.  I strongly disagree with the idea that the responsibility is in a god’s hands.  I think this is antithetical to our responsibility, and it seeks to have people not take pride in their accomplishments or to take responsibility for their mistakes.  I do not believe the pastor would agree that this idea promotes irresponsibility, but this is precisely what the logical conclusion of this line of thought leads to, in my opinion.

But then he made a comment that stuck out to me even more.  “Because we lack a divine center, we seek materialism” (or something very similar to that statement).  This is the point where he lost me completely.  See, I’ve never been a man of any god.  I’ve never believed in Jesus, Allah, or any of those silly things, and yet I am in almost complete agreement with his essential message that he will deal with in the next section of his sermon.

He then discusses our insecurity (irony?)  We seek answers, community, etc and sometimes we reach in the wrong direction in life.  Amen, brother!  But what does this have to do with God? Oh, right…without a divine center (that is, without God) we don’t have a goal-post to strive for.  We don’t have s source of wisdom with which to make better decisions in our lives.  Thus the following pieces of advice are really based upon God.

There is a terse reply to such a claim; fucking bullshit.

I call bull on this because I know that I, who have never been a Christian and don’t believe in any gods, agree with the rest of the sermon (mostly).  I have come up with and learned the same pieces of wisdom from secular philosophers (such as the previously mentioned Epicurus), and many of them pre-date the Bible or are from non-Christian sources.  These are not Christian pearls, they are usurped wisdom taken from the real world and illegitimately associated with Jesus for Christians, partially in order to feel special and different in comparison with a materialistic amd power-driven world.

Then, there was a list of ten pieces of advice that was derived from a man whose name seemed familiar but that I could not place at the time; Richard Foster.  And the more the pastor went on and on, the more I kept thinking ‘this reminds me so much of my Quaker school and the stuff they talked about’ and thinking that this guy, this Foster, was ripping stuff off from the Quakers.  And then I remembered (later) that Foster was a Quaker theologian.  And I laughed.  I had simply found yet another liberal Christian church who had a message that was just like the one I had grown up with.  But I had never been a Christian.  I had just attended a Quaker school.  And the Quaker school I went to was dominated by Jews as much as Christians.

But I had learned these ideas not in relation to a god necessarily, but as good rules to live by in society.  These are liberal ideas which can also be found in the Bible (although perhaps not for some), although they are not the only messages contained therein.

Again, what does this have to do with god?

Nothing.  Nothing at all.  All of this God-talk is merely a metaphor (an excellent article, so read it) for these ideas to live by.  These things would be true whether or not thereis a god.  God is being given the credit for this wisdom just because a passage in Matthew happens to touch on the issue, and only sort of.  A better source for this discussion may have been Ecclesiastes, in my opinion. But this is what pastors do; they take a passage and associated with some cultural message and give the credit to their concept of god rather than to themselves.

The bottom line here is that in churches like these where God is talked about but only in ignoring the nasty stuff he has done according to that book, what is being preached is just sense.  It should be common sense (and perhaps it is) but as I watched people react to the sermon, I saw them inspired and in love with this concept of god not realizing that they are giving this god the credit rather than taking it themselves.

We are not the ones in charge, he had said.  God deserves the credit. I disagree as strongly as I can disagree with anything.  This is a disgusting and anti-human message.  It de-values us by making us puppets for a megalomaniacal bully (seriously, read the whole book some time).  It seeks to humble us in a way that not only does not cure the insecurity within us, but perpetuates it.  It is a slave morality, as Nietzsche called it.  It is a way to keep people down under the guise of worship.

And what’s worse is that they don’t realize it.  They don’t see that this message of allowing God to ‘take the wheel’ (as that awful song said) can take away anxiety, sure, but it also takes away the joy of accomplishment, the pride of success (it is not a sin to be proud–what kind of sick and twisted view would claim that out loud and call itself moral?), and the responsibility that we have for the world around us and within us because it takes away the credit of our effort.  It’s all gone to the glory of God.  That’s disgusting!

Do I sound angry? Well, I am a little.  I am angry that people go to these churches to receive mediocre advice that can be found in any number of places without having to prop up a belief in a god for which there is no evidence.  Further, these efforts continues to give credit for this mediocre wisdom to this imaginary being and circularly gives ‘evidence‘ for that god by actually sounding like it makes sense.  After all, things that make sense can only come from God, if you assume that God is the source of all wisdom.  Gotta love circular logic.

The bottom line is that I had a chance to hear a sermon that I agreed with a fair amount, but I didn’t see any reason to believe that it had anything to do with a god.  Modern liberal Christianity still seems to me to be nothing more than a group of young and progressive people who like hearing nice things, especially things that challenge the consumerist and materialistic capitialistic world they live in, and then attributing the ideas to Jesus who will take away their pain and let them live forever.  I wonder if they have really contemplated eternity.  That’s a scary concept.  But Jesus is magic, so he’ll take away that scariness too, I guess.

At least they aren’t Pagans;  man, they annoy the crap out of me.