Are science and religion equally valid?

I have a friend from high school that I have been conversing with for a short while ever since we friended each-other and he has been reading this blog as I post links to them on facebook. He said, in a recent blog post of his, a number of things that I disagree with. I would, therefore, like to reply to it here. I hope he does not mind my quoting his blog entirely. The original post can be found here. [edit: no it can’t, because he has removed it. I guess I made some good points?]

He starts off this way:

I have an old friend from high school that identifies himself as an “atheist, polymorous, geek” (if you’re like I was and unfamiliar with the term “polymorous,” best I can figure out, it means polygamy distinguished semantically from the baggage of Joseph Smith and the fundamentalist Mormons). Shaun keeps a daily blog in which he posts his thoughts in support of atheism and polymorism. At least once a week I open my web browser to find an intelligent, well written article about why atheism is the only possible rational conclusion to be drawn by carefully examining the facts about God.

Now, first off, polyamory has very little to do with polygamy. My partners are free to find other boyfriends or girlfriends as I am. Right now, I have no interest in starting a relationship with anyone else, as I am busy enough. Polyamory really is simple non-monogamy. I just don’t think that monogamy should be assumed. I’m glad he thinks my thoughts are intelligent, at least.

Seriously. He writes, “There is no God” every week, “just look at the facts.” Sometimes he writes this twice a week in essay form. As I read these short essays, I can’t help imagining what people’s reactions would look like if I were to write about the existence of God as much as Shaun writes about supreme being’s nonexistence. Certainly, the white upper-middle class politically left leaning liberal intellectual community in which both Shaun and I were educated would label me as a fundamentalist, religious freak. After all, who else would expend so much time and energy thinking and writing about God?

Clearly, this is hyperbole. I don’t say that there is no god. Why? Because that is not the atheist position as I use it. I say that I am not convinced that a god exists. I think the question is important, so I write about it. I am not really concerned if people look at me as some sort of fanatic. I am interested in what is true. If anyone else were to write bout it as much as I do, I would want to talk with them. Those who are not interested can read something else.

I’m no expert on God or Rationalism. I’m not a theologian. I’m not a philosopher. My field is Depth Psychology. I observe and write about the ways humans make meaning and the stories they tell to make sense of the world around them. I’m not interested, therefore, in discussing whether or not God exists. Using so-called rational science, the existence of an omnipotent being that resembles a carbon based earth creature is just as hard to disprove, as it is to prove. Instead, I’m interested in the concept of God: an undisputable fact.

OK. I’m waiting now for the punch line.

The very attempt to disprove God’s existence is simultaneously an acknowledgment of the concept’s structural existence and an attempt to replace the concept with another. In other words, God is an idea on which both believers and atheists expend mental energy. I agree, when the atheist labels the believer’s ideology a phantastic story that makes meaning out of chaos. However, I also label the atheist’s ideology a rationalistic story that makes meaning out of chaos.

Again, I’m not trying to disprove god. I’m talking about why I am not convinced that tthis being exists. I’m responding to the claim, the apologetics of it, and the proposed reasons to believe and showing why they do not add up.

I’m interested by the idea that we share the “acknowledgment of the concept’s structural existence”, as he says. This seems similar to a thought I have often. I do feel like I’m trying to wrap my mind around a concept of god (that concept depends on what type of theism I’m responding to), but find what concept I am able to glean unbelievable. And I’ll agree, provisionally, that I’m trying to make meaning out of chaos. How similar my method of meaning-making is from that of others I do not know.

Both the phantastic and the rationalistic are valid and real ways to approach the world. In both cases, however, imagining your own approach as “truth” is fundamentalist and dogmatic. There is space for approaching the world from both perspectives. Both perspectives (and the many other possible approaches) are fabrications or fictions that say more about the unique experience of the human species than they do about the universe’s material (or spiritual) reality.

This is where we clearly part ways. I do not accept the idea that all methods of approaching the world are equally valid. And while they are all fabrications, or at least artifacts, that does not mean that they are equally valid any more than the fact that a true and false story come from people make them both valid. Some methods are created such that they can be tested against shared experiences and be tested with the best methods we have. Others do not use these tools. Thus, some methods are clearly better at different things. In terms of discovering what is most-likely true, one stands above the others.

We live in a typhoon of positivist sound bites as dogmatic as the organized religions they criticize. Moralistic commandments with financial agendas are disguised as health tips; they are platitudes accepted as gospel. Our obsession with cleanliness and sanitizing, for example, can be seen as a remnant of a puritan believer’s attempt to wash away nature, to weed out the impure, to restore humankind to its Garden-of-Eden Godliness.

Positivism is no longer a perspective held by the majority of people, especially in science. It was a view derived from early works of Wittgenstein (and not sanctioned by him, as he later came back to academia and attacked positivism). The view is not that all metaphysical (or phantastic, as he calls them) claims are nonsense simply for being metaphysical in nature, but because they do not stand up to scrutiny. The ones that do stand up to scrutiny are then simply considered part of science’s conclusions. The skeptical community to which I belong does not have any dogmatic beliefs about such things, they have tried to test them and found that much of them do not stand up to testing.

We accept the scientific data on faith. Does the atheist examine the research on microbiology and “germs” before washing his hands? Doesn’t he see the inherent contradiction? He’s willing to take the leap of faith necessary to believe in evil creatures so small they are invisible to the naked eye but not a creator so large he cannot be comprehended by the human mind?

No. I accept the conclusions of science for two reasons. One, in some cases I’ve looked at the data myself. But the vast majority is because I understand the peer-review process. The scientific community is full of people who are clamoring for grants, respectability, and maybe even a Nobel prize. In order to get these things, you have to have your theory stand up to the rigor of hundreds or even thousands of others you are in competition with who are trying to use teh best methodology that they know of.

To accept what survives this onslaught is not faith. It is a rational acceptance based on the fact that if the theories proposed by the scientific method via the scientific community were not the best we have come up with, someone else would have proven otherwise. Theories such as the germ theory of disease, relativity, natural selection etc were all tested, retested, confirmed, re-confirmed, and so they are accepted. They are not believed in a technical sense, but accepted. And if a better idea were to replace any of these, what other method besides science could be used? No other method has proven itself to be as reliable, and so that’s why it is used by the experts in various fields…well, most of them, anyway. I’m sure young Earth creationists, for example, try different methods (yet then call it ‘science’, ironically)

We can see small organisms with tools like microscopes. The hypothesis of god has been used to explain many things in history, and as science processes in its understanding, the things some god was supposed to do are being pushed back by better understanding. In ancient times we thought gods made lightning, now we have a natural explanation. Now people think that a god is needed to design life, but science keeps showing that this is not the case necessarily. If a god exists, it is either working through nature (which does not seem parsimonious), or it is so vague a power and so insignificant that why would we continue to worship it or call it god?

So, god is so large it cannot be comprehended by the human mind? Perhaps. But then how do so many people seem to know so much about it? I don’t see a need for such a being to exist to explain anything in nature. It may exist, but I am not convinced. That’s what atheism is.

The microscope-wielding ministers of science at temples like Harvard and MIT may seem to have more clout than the doctors of deities at institutions like the Vatican and the Jewish Theological Seminary. But I think that assumption imagines the mainstream as the whole stream. Instead, I would argue that our rational-discursive oppositional world is dependent on the Science/Religion dichotomy. The conflicting perspectives exist symbiotically, the debate against one point of view feeding the other.

It is not a dichotomy. There is the methods of science and the various ideas of religions, conspiracy theories, new age weirdness, pseudoscience, etc. One method is better than the others. It will continue to give us better explanations while the others cannot compete in terms of methodology. Religion is not a single methodology. It is not a monumental and coherent competitor, but an alliance of people who share similar ideologies who stand opposed to, ignorant of, or philosophically naive in relation to the best methodology humans have yet come up with that tends to demonstrate the weakness of closely held ideologies, such as the dogmas of religions.

There may be something closer to a dichotomy in terms of the ways that we think. To think critically one must train the mind to be skeptical, rigorous, and be willing to tear down your own assumptions and beliefs. To try to rationalize beliefs held is to seek out data that supports the conclusion you want. Good scientists don’t do this, as this is not part of the scientific method. This method is neutral, skeptical, and perpetually bettering itself.

A religious ideology is rigid, and only changes when it needs to. It’s why religion had to give up the earth-centric view of cosmology, the flat Earth (there still is a Flat Earth Society), the 6000 year-old earth (some still don’t accept the much older earth). It seeks data that supports it, apologizes rather than is skeptical, and it feeds off of our desires to be more than mere biological machines. It was only when science came around, providing better methods and thus conclusions, that religions started to change.

These are not equally valid pursuits. This post-modernism is damaging philosophically, epistemologically, and methodologically. So, with respect I disagree with my fellow blogger. But I do look forward to more discussion with him and others.

Taking credit for your own transformation

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the claim, from religious people of various traditions, that people have been changed by their god. They have had some experience that transformed them, improved them, or opened something up for them. And in discussions about the existence of god, these personal experiences tend to be the most powerful and, at the same time, the least applicable in those discussions.

I cannot legitimately challenge whether a person had an experience. If someone says they experience something, even if it seems impossible to me, I have to accept that they had the experience. But there is an important point to be made here; the fact that they had an experience does not necessarily imply that their interpretation of it is true. It is possible that your experience of god was not of god, but of something natural and was associated with a religious idea.

Why is it that those brought up in Christian environments almost always get transformed by the holy spirit or by Jesus? Why is it that people of Islamic backgrounds almost always feel the greatness of Allah? It seems suspect that the religious ideas that people are raised around are the ones they see in times of need. It seems to imply that it is our mind making the association between the experience an it interpretation, based upon the images we are aware of.

What is going on here is that people who find themselves in times of struggle will turn to the tradition they know. And because of the powerful emotions involved, the experiences they have are meaningful. And when people transform themselves, learn about themselves, and mature as a result, they attribute it to their god or to their religion. And when they look back on it, these experiences stand out as evidence that their beliefs are true.

I view this as problematic. No, I view it as ridiculous. There is no need to attribute these experiences to a god. We have the ability to change ourselves, upon reflecting and not liking what is seen, in ways that will be long-lasting. Attributing this to a god is, in my opinion, to underestimate our worth. This is precisely what many religious traditions do.

By making us feel sinful, and then offering us a way to be forgiven for it (for example), religion is doing nothing different than clever marketing. And just like when we watch television or see ads next to the blogs or news we read, we have to keep in mind the subtle psychological manipulation tactics similar to those of religious messages in order to not be unreasonably swayed by them.

I know it’s possible to change without help of any gods. How do I know? Because I’ve done so (and am continuing to do so). And when I see people defending their beliefs and ultimately barricading themselves behind the evidence of their experiences, I can’t help but wonder if they have ever really considered the role that they played in their own lives. Why are they not willing to take credit for their change?

Well, because they don’t believe that they are capable of it on their own. God, they believe, is necessary for something like overcoming alcoholism, gambling addiction, etc. But why? Only someone who has been convinced, or has a preexisting belief, that they are too damaged or imperfect to succeed in any such thing. Just think of the first few steps in a 12-step program.

Step 1 – We admitted we were powerless over our addiction – that our lives had become unmanageable

Step 2 – Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity

Step 3 – Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God

Take credit for your successes, failures, etc and take responsibility for them. By giving some god the credit (and, interestingly, failing to give some god the credit for failure), we are resting the responsibility somewhere else than where it belongs; on our shoulders.

If you want to change, then take responsibility for it. And if you have already, then consider all you–and those around you–have actually done rather than simply give the credit to some invisible and intangible god.

My trip through the south, while being openly atheist

For the last week and a half or so, I’ve been road-trippin’ through the south. Starting from Philadelphia, we (my girlfriend and I) drove to Atlanta, Pensacola, New Orleans, Austin, Dallas, Little Rock, Memphis, Nashville, Johnson City, Leesburg (where we got a tour through the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which was awesome), and then back to Philadelphia.

So, what does this have to do with this blog? Well, there are two things. First, I spent that time with one of my girlfriends while leaving the other back home for 10 days. This required some discussion beforehand in order to make sure that this cold be done without making anyone feel unloved or left out. Luckily, everyone was fine with it, I missed my lady here in Philadelphia, but I talked with her often and I got a chance to see her again last night and today. (yay!)

But the other part of interest was traveling through parts of the country while wearing a myriad of shirts that advertised my lack of belief in any gods. I have a number of shirts that identify this about me, and I wore them almost everywhere we went. So, what kind of responses did I get? Surprisingly little.

Yes, I got looks, double-takes, and even a few people becoming less hospitable after reading them. But surprisingly few actual comments or questions from people arose. While in Austin, Texas ( a beautiful city, btw), I did have one apparently homeless man walk by and call my girlfriend (who is not an atheist) an “evil bitch” in response to reading my shirt that said “Hi, I’m your friendly neighborhood atheist!” Talk about irony!

I guess the fact that we spent most of our time in or around cities meant that we ran into either more tolerant people or people who were more used to seeing things like that. Either that or they were just being polite in not asking questions or commenting. I did have at least two people comment that hey liked my shirts. I thanked them with a smile. I had one bartender warn me that wearing such things may not be a good idea. Maybe I just got lucky.

I don’t know what I was expecting. I guess I just wanted to observe whether people would react differently in the “Bible belt” than they do in Philadelphia, where I wear said shirts fairly often. My experience, short as it was, didn’t offer much of a difference. I guess we should have hung out at more rural roadside biker bars or something….

While I was in Austin, where we spent a couple of days, I did get to meet some of the people from the Atheist Community of Austin. I have been listening to their podcast and recorded cable-access TV show for a few years, and since we would be there I figured I would meet some of them. They were very friendly and we got a chance to see them tabling at the Austin Pride festival, which was pretty fun in itself.

But before we reached Austin, we traveled through Pensacola, home of the Pensacola Christian College. This college, which I had never heard of before a couple of months ago, is a school that grew as some people split off from Bob Jones University because it was too liberal. Yes, you read that right. PCC is about at conservative Christian as they come. They are run by the A Beka book company, which means that the school has tons of money and seems to be used by the publisher as some sort of tax shelter.

Now, I know about this school because my girlfriend, with whom I traveled, went to this school before they kicked her out for, as she says, challenging them too much. This is the kind of place where not only can men and women not talk outside of specific places and times, but very conservative dress codes, segregation of races (in terms of dating at least), and constant fear of trouble for questioning pretty much anything abound (listening to jazz, for example). I don’t know how she survived more than three years before she was kicked out.

I have encouraged her to write about her experiences there. I think she could have a book deal coming, if she does. The things she has told me so far are, well, scary. And I’ve seen Jesus Camp.

We didn’t visit the campus. For one, classes were not in session. Another reason is that they would not let either one of us on campus because I am an advertised heathen and she was wearing shorts. Maybe next time we’ll try going in incognito. Maybe not.

It was an interesting trip. We saw lots of great cities, met some really nice people, and now we return to real life.

Why both atheists and the ‘spiritual’ shouldn’t despise religion

Today we should consider it the decisive sign of great culture if someone possesses the strength and flexibility to pursue knowledge purely and rigorously and, at other times, to give poetry, religion, and metaphysics a handicap, as it were, and appreciate their power and beauty.

-Nietzsche, Human All too Human, aphorism 278

So, religion is real. No, really, it is, I swear. There really are religious people out there, and they believe religious things. I know, it seems odd that such a things as religions would exist, but think about it for a moment; our minds are structured such that we tend to have blind spots, we find patterns in chaos, we see meaning where there is none. We are creators, inventors, and composers of incantations both sublime and ordinary.

I don’t mean to be snarky. OK, yes I do. But I don’t mean to be obnoxious. That’s just a natural talent I have. I only mean to be honest. Religion, as I understand it, is a natural outgrowth of our various mental strengths, weaknesses, and our extraordinary normality. Thus, within it is contained all aspects of which we are capable, whether good, bad, or neutral.

There are many atheists I know who dismiss religion. There are many ‘spiritual people’ who despise (organized) religion (the parenthetical qualifier ‘organized’ is necessary), and their are religious people who don’t agree with most of their religion. Yeah, that last one makes no sense to me either.

I applaud the skeptical mind that genuinely seeks the truth through the discipline of the scientific method. I appreciate the effort to put aside our conceits in order to look at ourselves in a mirror, and not a mirror darkly, in order to attempt to pursue the truth. I also appreciate those that attempt to pursue their own growth with deep conviction of things I may find absurd. At least they are trying. As for those religious people who don’t even agree with their own proclaimed tradition…. I’ll let that issue untouched, for now.

But there are beauties, subtleties, and profundities within religious traditions. There are expressions of ourselves, inscribed in the languages of theology, philosophy, and metaphysics that, despite not ‘true’, contain import that are worth exploring.

They are worth exploring because they teach us about ourselves, both as individuals and as social groups. They give us glimpses of what it means to be human in different ways. So we need to allow ourselves to throw off the yoke of skepticism every once in a while and delve into the parts of ourselves that speak absurdities in order to understand the subtleties of their allure.

Religions survive for a reason. That reason is not because they teach us the Truth, but perhaps they can teach us something. Maybe it is a perspective of the truth from a side angle, rather than the straight on face-to-face angle that we aspire to with more meticulous disciplines. Perhaps there are angles of the truth, shades of gray, that can better be seen from the point of view of absurdities.

So, let’s proceed with science and other honest and disciplined attempts to understand our world better. But we should allow ourselves to understand those things that pull the heart, the ‘spirit’, in order to not leave behind the creators and artists within us, even if what we create in such states are not true.

For perhaps it is the untrue that can lead to new perspectives on the true. And if not, at least we can better understand those that still live within those worldviews we may have transcended. And that, at very least, will keep the ports of dialogue open, which will engender increased understanding of our brothers and sisters on this crazy ride of life.

Conversations with Christians about science

This is not what the actual conversation looked like

I spent much of last night having a conversation with someone, a Christian, about religion, evolution, the age of the earth, and atheism. These are conversations I’ve had many times, with many different people, with many different outcomes.

In the atheist community, we talk a lot about science, education, and the feeling of anti-science forces in our culture making it difficult to have well-informed people on the basics of science and to thus be competitive in the world market of science and technology. I am aware that there are others on the other side of the question, and so when I heard that many people felt as if evolution was being “shoved down our throats,” I realized there was a problem that needed to be addressed.

I feel that evolution happened. The evidence is overwhelming, the theory of natural selection supported by many observations, etc. My interlocutor agreed with most of this. What he disagreed about was that it was “proven” (proof is impossible within scientific means, I tried to explain) that the earth and universe were billions of years old; that we actually evolved from single cell organisms (or anything like that). It sounded like he had been reading creationism literature, but he had insisted that he had not.

The conclusion, from this and many other factors brought up through conversation, which I am moving towards is that the idea of “teach the controversy” is landing with much of the population. The fact is that there is no controversy, at least not in the sense that it was meant in our discussion. There are not people who are challenging the age of the earth or human evolution that are doing so on solid scientific grounds. Despite this, many people, including people who seek to understand these things honestly, believe that the scientific world is repressing challenges to prevailing conclusions; that scientists seek to stifle challenges to what is taught in biology classes; thus the “shoving down our throats” comment.

I do not doubt that this does happen, in some places and with some people, but the scientists that I know are open-minded people who seek the truth. And with grant money available for those that can demonstrate problems with prevailing theories, it seems odd that scientists at the top are so powerful as to stifle every attempt to challenge their sacred conclusions. This strikes me as a brand of conspiracy-theory that I find implausible.

The side that I hear more often, in my experience with scientists and atheists, is that all they hear from so-called challengers is the same old tired arguments that have been refuted hundreds of times. And thus they get frustrated, annoyed, and start ignoring them. Is this the source of the feeling of being stifled? If yo are the 100th person to approach a scientist with the same objection or challenge to evolution and are simply ignored, laughed at, or mocked, doesn’t that feel like a stifled challenge? Of course it does, but scientists are human too, right? We lose patience with repeating the same thing to the same objection which, according to them, should be commonly known.

So which is it; Are some scientists simply ignoring legitimate challenges or are challengers ignorant of the fact that their objections have already been answered multiple times and thus are annoying due to repetition and not because it seeks to challenge the accepted conclusion? Mixed bag? Possibly, but I will tend to side with the latter.

The essential question is whether the challenges actually stand up to scrutiny or not. And as my interlocutor admitted, he does not have time in his busy life to research or educate himself on every aspect of this question, but he only has skeptical reservations. That’s fair, I guess. I just wonder where the skeptical reservations originate from. Because it seems like the points of challenge are researched, as if they were lifted from some source, whether it calls itself a creationist source or not (and we know that they sometimes come in disguise as Intelligent Design or simply as “teaching the controversy”), and so I am skeptical that the source of them these objections are legitimate scientific questions being ignored by scientists.

The bottom line is that there are many well-meaning people out there that have reservations about science and its ability to “prove” theories (even though I tried to explain that science’s job is to present an explanation that fits the data best, and never to prove anything). They are skeptical of what science says because humans are fallible and we can get things wrong. “Fine,” I say, “and as soon as you find a better explanation that will become the new theory.” Until that happens the best explanation is still the best explanation.

These conversations are important because it is one of the many means to keeping the conversations from stagnating among those that share the same opinions. If I only talked with scientists and atheists about evolution and the age of the earth, I would never understand why the controversy exists because I would perpectually be creating straw-men to argue with. And if those would-be straw men never talked to me, they would continue to view scientists as biased people who will not accept a challenge to the prevailing worldview they hold.

Thus, we both benefited from the conversation, even if no minds were changed. And we are able to remain friendly and get along in the future. Win!

The atheist community

What types of atheist communities are there?

There are atheist meetups, local organizations, national organizations, conventions, podcasts, drinking skeptically (I think, I haven’t seen it for myself…), and a range of books and online sources. There is a community, and it is growing.

Humans are, after all, social beings. We tend to crave some sort of community, acceptance, and people to seek understanding and support from. And for many, probably most in many parts of the world, religion–whether it is church, temple, or whatever place one goes to worship–fills that need in our lives.

And there are religious congregations all over the map. There are snake-handling, tongue-speaking, and body-shaking congregations as well as gatherings of those who may not even share the same theistic beliefs who come together once a week to hear sermons on the various aspects of life, love, and death from the perspective of a more secular worldview.

But whether you are a Pentecostalist or a Unitarian Universalist (or anywhere in between or outside these ranges), you understand the importance of community.

Now, I’ve never liked church. When I was a kid, my parents tried to attend a Lutheran church once a week in order to…well, I really don’t know why, but they did. I never liked it. I didn’t believe the mythology, I didn’t like the songs, but the people were pretty nice, overall. And for a little while I got a glimpse of what it was like to be part of a community around where we lived. My mom was re-married in that same church, and I even attended Sunday school for a little while, but that was short-lived. Those who ask too many questions don’t end up fitting in for too long.

And that was the problem. I had problems with fitting in with communities. I asked too many of the “wrong” questions. I wondered why. And despite the genuine desire for understanding in some religious communities, to question the very basis of faith is often an ostracizing force, even if subtly so.

Where could I find people that were like me? Why couldn’t I find them? Well, eventually I did. Atheists are people like me. Atheists tend to be people who ask questions, the impertinent ones that people don’t tend to like.

Wait, did I get that backwards? Perhaps; maybe it is the people that ask the impertinent questions that become atheists? Maybe that’s the case, although I certainly know people that ask the questions but are not atheists…yet.

Come to an atheist meetup, a local nontheist group, or find a website with a discussion board that talks about religion and you’ll find places where atheists talk. And when we find communities of people like ourselves, we are able to stop biting our tongue, stop deferring to religious ubiquity, and we can allow ourselves to be ourselves.

And while we can find our own communities, we find that we tend to only have one thing in common, mostly; our lack of belief in any gods. Beyond this, finding similarities is accidental. Our opinions are all over the map. You will find socialists, bankers, engineers, writers, homosexuals, people married with children, people who hate kids, people that don’t drink alcohol, people that can’t wait for their next beer, and those that wish that the atheist meetup location had some good beer and can’t wait to get to the Belgian beer bar down the street after the meeting (that would be me).

We are a collection of individuals, having found our place in the world as non-believers in superstition early in life, after retirement, openly, or kept hidden from co-workers and family. But we find each other. We must because it is part of being human to do so. Even the shy, the quiet, and the introvert will end up finding their place, even if it is just to sit quietly and listen.

Because organizing atheists may be like herding cats, but we still seek each-other because we are human, just like the rest of you.

And if you are looking for a community near you, and can’t find one, start one. There many be others out there looking as well.

Ignorance of the religious…of their own religion

How well do you know your religion? What do you know about its history? I’ll bet not a lot.

Now, I’ve been an atheist all of my life. I’ve never accepted any theology or superstitious baloney, accept for the very early childhood ideas of Santa and possibly the Easter Bunny. I suppose I accepted god as real, but I had no idea what people meant by this thing they referred to. For all I knew it was the mayor of the city.

But at some relatively early age I became quite interested in the history of religion–Christianity in particular–and started to read about various beliefs. I found it fascinating what people believed, how those beliefs came to be, and how they had changed. And I was perpetually surprised, for a while anyway, that most people who accepted these beliefs had no idea about the history of their own religious traditions.

Which day is the Sabbath? Is is Sunday or Saturday? I”ll tell you that, in Spanish, sabado means Saturday and let you make an educated guess. What are the Ten Commandments? Are there really Ten? Which Bible are you using? And, in putting these questions together and if you are a Jew or a Christian, when was the last time you worked on a Saturday?

Ah, but why do I care? These are all made up ideas for me, right? Well, I’ll tell you why. I am bothered by hypocrisy. I’m bothered by people who insist that these stories are real, that belief in them is important to be a good person, to be moral, to avoid eternal Hellfire, or to even be considered a citizen.

I am bothered by people whose lives are shaped by a tradition that they don’t know much about. They believe it, but don’t know much about it. And, as I’ve discovered, atheists know more about religion than most of the religious do. That, in itself, should say something.

What happened in the year 325? Who was Arius? What about Athanasius? When was the Bible compiled and why did they choose the books they did? Why was the Gospel of John almost not included? How many non-canonical gospels are there? Have you ever read one? Why are they non-canonical?

I am picking on the history of Christianity here for two reasons. The first is that I know that history best. The other reason is that I am well aware that most of my readers will have come from a Christian background. But the point is true for all religions I’ve run into; people don’t know the history of their religions and yet they believe them. And for those that might imply that I’m not willing to criticize Islam out of fear or something; Islam is a superstitious and absurd set of beliefs and the Koran is often a violent and misguided book. I’ve read it. BTW, The Bible is violent and disgusting in many parts as well. I’ve read all of it. Twice. Have you ever read any of it?

So I’ll leave you with this; is it reasonable to accept a religious tradition, articles of faith, without at least knowing where they came from? Should every religious person–should every person–investigate the history of whatever they believe? And if they have not, how can it be said that they know what they believe?

The Atavism of Simple Religion

Note: Please view this article on my examiner page. I get paid that way.

‘Straight is the gate, and narrow is the way,…and few there be that find it.’ When a modern religion forgets this saying, it is suffering from an atavistic relapse into primitive barbarism. It is appealing to the psychology of the herd, away from the intuitions of the few.

This is a quote from the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, from his Religion in the Making. To some it might sound like a promotional phrase from a local Christian organization, in that it might be interpreted such that it demonstrates how so many seem to miss God’s word, and only the few will accept it. But, knowing Whitehead a little better than that, I can say that it means something quite different.

Whitehead’s use of the term “few” is interesting and perhaps misleading. He does not mean that few will attain or choose this straight and narrow, but rather that few will comprehend the complexity in order to navigate it. The issue of religion in all of its philosophical, psychological, and sociological factors is much too complex to be comprehended in simplistic dogma handed to us as the “truth.” Thus any religious group that gives answers to the difficult questions of life in a way that hordes of everyday people can understand and try to follow has severely, I believe, oversimplified the matter, and acts as a stumbling block to true wisdom.

For those that would respond by saying that it is through belief that we will understand, I will call bullshit. Understanding does not come through belief, only rationalization comes through belief. That is, our creative and intelligent minds are capable of making sense of things believed even if they are not rational in themselves. We are wonderful pattern-seekers and pattern-creators.

Socrates is credited with saying “I know that I know nothing,” which made him wise in the eyes of many both ancient and contemporary. Many of those you will find preaching the “Word” today, in its various forms, might claim a similar ignorance in saying that we only have the wisdom of man, while there is a wisdom of God available to those who choose to accept it. But how is our “flawed” human wisdom to recognize divine wisdom without a divine point of view on our parts? This would not be a problem for a theoretical God-man, but it is a serious problem for any fully human receiver of that message to be able to recognize that the messenger or the message is legitimate without access to the divine wisdom in question. (Can anyone say circular reasoning?)

Our wisdom is indeed limited, and we each have much to learn in order to understand the vast universe. But this reasoning is not sufficient to conclude that our wisdom is so inferior that we should capitulate to dogmas and doctrines about the universe that offer a simplistic solution to difficult issues. The fact is that most people will never understand the world or themselves sufficiently in order to approach religious notions with serious comprehension. Yet some will. It is for the more rare mind that the social and psychological constructions of religion become clear. Many others, the “herd,” adhere to simplistic ideologies and beliefs in place of truly comprehensive understanding of religion.

Religion in our culture has become so watered down, so common, that even someone uneducated in critical thinking, religious history, and philosophy can claim the supremacy of the “Word.” This is not to say that religion is without merit or significance, as there is much to religious thinking that is wonderfully deep and philosophical. Unfortunately, most are unable to appreciate this. And when they do appreciate it they utilize religion’s philosophical depth in order to argue that the simplistic notions epiphenomenal to this depth to are valid in themselves. In other words, they use the wisdom hidden behind the superficial myths to validate the myth.

As a Zen master once said, once you have used the finger to point out the moon, you no longer have use for the finger. So, if you find something useful and wise in the depths of religious traditions, wonderful. My suggestion is to throw away the simplistic dogmas that are promulgated as a lure for the masses in order to truly understand what is important in religious thought for the pursuit and love of wisdom. After all, the few are so few only because the masses don’t try hard enough, don’t care, or are too defensive or stubborn about their beliefs to challenge them.

We, as human beings, need to start challenging ourselves, as well as stop whining when others do it for us when we refuse to. It is only then that we can hope to grow past our infancy as a species.

Beauty and ‘ungodliness’ in the world

Two examples of reasons why people believe in some sort of god don’t seem to jibe with each other so well. Let me put it this way; have you heard someone say that the world is so beautiful and awe-inspiring, so how could you not see their god’s presence? Later on someone else says that the ways of this world are so ugly and ungodly that they cannot wait to get to heaven?

OK, well, in any case I have. One runs into comments like these when you throw yourself into the asylums we call religious culture. In some ways I’m a masochist, but what really drives me to seek out such views is a genuine desire to understand what is going on inside the minds of believers. The two examples don’t seem to have much in common on the surface, but they are often derived from the same communities.

I, an agnostic-atheist metaphysical naturalist, do see beauty in the world. I do feel the awe that comes in the form of colorful sunsets, the stars at night, and the simple playfulness and curiosity of children. But I do not see a deity behind these things; rather, I see that our emotional states have been formed over millions of years of evolutionary forces and, for various reasons, some things cause emotions that we like to feel. That is, I see natural explanations for the existence and experience of beauty. Some will say, upon reading this, that to explain away the beauty of the world takes the mystery and miracle out of such things, but I disagree. To understand how things work does not make them less beautiful, it makes them more beautiful because there is natural beauty behind things as well.

And I also see the ugly—what some would call ungodly—in the world as well. But I don’t understand how it could be ungodly. After all, if god, the supposed creator of all things, is omniscient and omnipotent then all that exists is ultimately the responsibility of god, right? God would have had to know what would come to be and made it so anyway. And no matter what apologists will say about free will, there are still the ‘evil’ things in the world that are not the result of human decisions as well as the fact that god would have made us the way we are, knowing we would fall from grace.

Behind this is often an unwillingness to face the unpleasant in the world and to turn away and hope for a magical place where we will go when we die. That is, rather than actually work to make the world better (beginning with oneself, of course), many would rather pray that they be taken away now and not have to face the world. Don’t believe me? Check this out.

This is not to say that all religious persons react this way, but they will often attribute the beautiful to god’s while abhorring his creation. This especially Christian (but not exclusively so) concept of humanity being inherently sinful, which explains the ugly state of the world transfers the responsibility to humanity. The actual case is that some of the problems are our fault and others are simply blind nature at work (not for or against us). In any case, we need to stop hiding from the world and begin to re-create ourselves into something better. We need to transcend humanity as it exists and become better, starting with the stripping of old superstitious myths from our minds and replacing them with stories of hope for one-another, understanding based in reality,and towards actions that encourage beauty that starts from ourselves.

We must take a responsibility for the beauty and unpleasant in the world. We must start with ourselves, to identify our own insecurities, fears, and biases, in order to recognize how we can make improvements upon what we have the power to influence. Stop attributing beauty to something magic, and stop hiding from the unpleasant in hopes that this same magic will help you.

Martyrdom and Veracity of Belief

I’ve spoken to a number of people over the years about the veracity of religious claims. I’ve heard answers that appeal to personal experience, lack of answers altogether (usually due to the fact that most people don’t know why they believe what they believe, they just “believe in belief” as Daniel Dennett has said), etc. Occasionally, I’ll hear someone claim, indicating the various martyrs of the early Christian movement as recorded in the New Testament, that people died for their Christianity.

The basic argument is this; why would someone die for a lie? Good question, or so it seems at first. But in response I might ask them about martyrs who have died in the name of other religious beliefs. What about Moslem suicide bombers? Why would they die for a false belief? But more to the point, this response from believers overlooks something very simple. I’ll let Nietzsche make the point;

…people do not want to admit that all those things which men have defended with sacrifice of their lives and happiness in earlier centuries were nothing but errors…one thinks that if someone honestly believed in something and fought for his belief and died it would be too unfair if he had actually been inspired by a mere error.

Nietzsche, Human all too Human, aphorism 53

too unfair. There are things I would sacrifice my life for. Are they worth that sacrifice? I don’t know, but I believe that they are. It would be unfair if I were to sacrifice my life for a lie, an error, or even merely unnecessarily. I feel the emotional import of those people who, in prior times, have put their lives on the line for beliefs. I feel how this can move a believer.

Yet, at the same time, I have to wonder if the tragedy is too great to comprehend for some people, in the midst of these emotions. They believe, strongly, that those martyrs could not have died for anything except the truth. And it is not the genuineness of the belief I doubt, it is the truth of that belief which I hold to the light. Similarly, I don’t doubt the claims of personal experience taht they cite as reasons to believe, I doubt that the experience is what it is interpreted to be.

To consider that the personal spiritual experiences, martyrdom of believers, and lives lived in submission to the will of a god are in error would imply that the sacrifices that some make even now are for nothing. They are sacrifices to a lie. Why?

Because it is possible to believe in things that are not true.

When someone asks me why I don’t believe ‘just in case,’ I think about sacrifice. Pascal’s Wager, basically the idea that one should believe just in case because you have nothing to lose and everything to gain, is completely silly. Not only could the belief be the wrong belief, but what one loses in life by accepting ancient and out-dated ideas is the enjoyments that life can offer. The “sin” of life, if it is not actually wrong, could be a great source of enjoyment. What a sacrifice we make for our beliefs!

So I’ll leave you with another wager; why not take the risk and actually investigate the beliefs you have? What do you have to lose? If your beliefs are true, they will stand up to any scrutiny, so why not challenge them openly and honestly? Don’t make yourself a martyr to a belief you have not even challenged.

But to stand in the midst of this rerum concordia discors and of this whole marvelous uncertainty and rich ambiguity of existence without questioning, without trembling with the craving and the rapture of such questioning, without at least hating the person who questions, perhaps even finding him faintly amusing–that is what I feel to be contemptible…. Some folly keeps persuading me that every human being has this feeling, simply because he is human.

Nietzsche, The Gay Science, aphorism 2