Arrogant Atheists?

Every now and again, I find myself talking to a religious person who declares that "you have to be pretty damn arrogant to be an atheist!"

To be clear on what they are saying, I always try to follow this up by asking whether it's that they have met arrogant atheists, or whether there's something about atheism that they believe leads people to be arrogant, etc.  With very rare occasions, they come back with "it's arrogant to think that there isn't a god!"

Arrogant? Really?

Certainly, it's arrogant to say "I know that there is no god!"  Humans aren't capable of knowing anything with absolute certainty, there's always the possibility of us being wrong.  However, it's no more arrogant to say "I know that there is no god!" than to say "I know that there is a god!"  And depending on the line of thought that resulted in this conclusion, there are more and less arrogant paths leading to either of those conclusions.

What's more, the admittedly arrogant statement "I know there is no god"  is significantly less arrogant than "I know there's a god, AND I know that he wants X, Y, Z,and requires humans to do A,B, C."  The more that is added on to what one claims to know with certainty, the more that the claimant is asserting that their own beliefs are supreme over anything that anyone else might state.

So, at worst, a "strong" atheist (one who claims to know that there is no god) is not inherently any more arrogant in their beliefs than most believers in a god or gods, and in many cases may be less so.

What's more, most atheists are "soft" atheists, like myself.  I do not claim to know that there is no god, but I look at the world around me, and I see no compelling reason to believe that there is a god.  Some people, people who are not me, will assert that I am an agnostic.  That is only kind-of true, though. I don't claim to know whether or not a supernatural entity that might be called a god exists, true, but I do think that the existence of such a being is extremely unlikely.  I am open to evidence that I am wrong, certainly, but after spending many years searching for such evidence, I have finally stopped pursuing threads that all lead to dead ends.  The question of the existence or non-existence of gods occupies my thoughts only in so far as those who believe in the existence of such entities try to force me or others to accept their own (consistently unsubstantiated) claims*. 

Is it still arrogant for me to say that "I don't think there's a god"?  I don't believe that it is, but perhaps I am wrong.  The reality is that every one of us thinks that we are right and correct in our beliefs, otherwise we wouldn't hold those beliefs.  But the notion that my conclusion that it is unlikely that there is a god is somehow more arrogant than someone else's conclusion that there is?  Well, that's an astoundingly stupid (and, let's face it, arrogant) notion that exists not because it has any merit, but because it allows people to focus on the alleged faults of others rather than turning inward and examining their own beliefs.






*A very common question from religious believers is "why don't you atheists leave religious people alone in their beliefs" to which my own response is "the majority of us would be happy to do so, if religious believers weren't busy trying to use the force of law (int he form of things like Proposition 8, DOMA, "blue laws" etc.) to force us to conform to their beliefs." 

In other words, we'll stop bothering the religious if they'll stop bothering us.  And yes, I am aware that many religious people do have a "live and let live" attitude, which is excellent, but: A) enough don't that these laws stay on the books or get voted into law, and B) the refusal of many of the moderate folks to speak up against the zealous and militant means that you allow the militants and zealouts to claim your name and speak for you, so I don't want to hear you complain when you get lumped in with them - if you don't stop them from claiming the name of your religion, then it's your own fault if you are considered to be like them.  It may not be fair, but it is the way that society works.  And, hey, I get lumped with with assholes like Christopher Hitchens, so it goes both ways.

Betting on Pascal's Wager

Every few months or so, I will find myself in conversation with someone who is religious, and will eventually bring up some variation of Pascal's Wager.  Sometimes it's very clearly articulated in it's classic form (follow the link above for an example), but most of the time it's done in a less formal way (likely not even intentionally referring to Pascal's idea, but nonetheless echoing it) by saying something along the lines: "but, aren't you afraid of Hell if you don't believe?" or, more common "but doesn't believing that death is the end just make you sad?"

I have described my view regarding death before, and see no reason to go into depth about it now.  Suffice to say, I have the same healthy respect for death that most adults do, but I don't think that I fear it overly-much.  So, no, the thought of death being the end doesn't make me sad, it makes me want to make my life better and make the world around me better.  And as I don't believe that there is any sort of torturous afterlife for the infidels, I don't fear that, either.

However, how I feel about death is, really, rather irrelevant.  I am, as far as I can determine, incapable of consciously making myself believe something that I know to be untrue.  So Pascal's wager simply doesn't work because I can't "wager that there is a god and heaven" because I can't force myself to believe in something without cause or evidence.

But there's another aspect of this that has always sort of bothered me.  It seems to me to be astoundingly sacrilegious and offensive to adopt the mantle of a faith for personal gain, as opposed to because of sincere belief.  The difference between joining a church in hope of eternal rewards and joining a church in hopes of some sort of material gain (say, for example, business contacts) is a difference of degree, not of type.  And it seems insulting to those who do sincerely believe that someone would join in hopes of avoiding punishment or gaining a reward, as opposed to joining because they honestly believe the tenets of the religion. 

As a result, whenever someone brings up Pascal's Wager in some form or another, I find myself wondering whether the person doing so is actually one of the faithful themselves, or if they are someone without severe doubts who professes a stronger belief than they actually possess out of a hope for reward or an avoidance of punishment, and is somehow seeking group absolution in trying to get others to join them.

The 4th and Mythology of the Past

Monday was Independence Day in the U.S., the day when we blow crap up to celebrate the fact that 235 years ago, a group of men sent what amounted to a "Dear John" letter to England and declared that the United States was a sovereign nation of its own.

What fascinates me is the way in which this event, and the period in time surrounding it, has become mythologized within the U.S. that a mythology has built up around it is not surprising, this happens in most, if not all, countries. What fascinates me is the way in which the mythologies often radically depart from reality, and the degree to which people cling to their views when even the most cursory research would prove them wrong. And I'm not even talking about the "Paul Revere rode to warn the British*" nonsense.

There are a few different types of mythologization. One of the most common is the heroification of the Founders. By this, I mean the assertion that they did more than they really did, such as can be found in the "Price They Paid" account. There is also a particular strain of heroification in American Christianity that holds that the Founders were supernaturally inspired and "the wisest men ever to have lived." In these cases, the Founders are blown up beyond who they really were, usually for social or political purposes that serve the person creating the myth.

And people buy into it because they want the myth to be true, they want these guys to be larger than life. Which is weird, because these are people who rejected the existing order, created a new system of government based on trying to fix some of the problems that led to the fall of the Roman Republic, fought a war over this, and then relinquished power when their terms in elected office were up, despite what one might expect. If that, the reality, isn't cool enough for you, then I really have to wonder what would be. They don't need to be supernaturally inspired or have models of virtue in order to be pretty damn outstanding. Yes, these were humans, and they had their faults - slave ownership, an ability to fall into petty partisanship, and the prejudices of their day. But the reality, good and bad, warts and all, is amazing enough. These were remarkable men living in remarkable times, and it doesn't need to be made into something it wasn't.

But the myth gets warped in all sorts of ways to suit various purposes, all of them requiring that facts about the events be ignored and, often, that new facts be invented. One of the arenas where I have taken a particular interest is that of how the religion of the Founders is viewed. It is increasingly common for people to assume that they were all Christians of some sort, with many Fundamentalist Christian sects claiming that they were all specifically Born-Again Protestant Evangelical Christians of a sort that many a mega-church pastor would recognize as one of his own. This is, of course, not true. It's difficult to get a handle on how many Founders there were, because the term can be defined in many ways (just the signers of the Declaration of Independence? All of the representatives at the Constitutional Convention? The prominent writers who pushed the agenda of the rebel colonists?), but any reasonable count would include people of a wide range of religious positions, which includes numerous Christians, it must be said. However, the particular brand of Born-Again Protestant Evangelical Christianity that is prominent in modern politics today is a relatively recent creation, growing out of 19th and 20th century religious movements, and none of the Christians who were present for any of the events that might qualify them as among the Founders would recognize it as the Christianity with which they were familiar. Moreover, even amongst the Christian Founders, the role of Christianity in their lives was highly variable - George Washington, for example, is known to have stopped bothering with church and didn't attend.

And, of course, many of the Founders were clearly not Christian. Thomas Jefferson re-wrote the New Testament to remove supernatural elements. Thomas Paine was openly atheist, and often wrote disparagingly of religion in general and Christianity in particular. Deism and even atheism were not uncommon amongst educated men of the time, and that category includes the Founders.

Which brings us to another myth. While many Christians falsely claim that the Founders were all Christians, or even more falsely claim that the Constitution sets the U.S. up as a "Christian Nation"**, it is common amongst my fellow atheists to hear that the Founders were all deists - sort of a "weak proto-atheism"*** that was popular in the 18th century. This is also not true. As described above, there were many religious views amongst the Founders, and the claim that they were all deists is just as false and absurd as the claim that they were all Born-Again Protestant Evangelical Christians.

It fascinates me that we tend to project our present politics onto the past without regard to what was actually going on in the past. This is, to a degree, understandable, but it is mistaken. While there is much int he past that can provide information and guidance for the present, the past is, nonetheless, a different place with different social orders and different rules, and it leads to nothing more than dubious mythologies when we try to read the past by the issues of the present.






*No he didn't, you illiterate twit. Actually what surprises me about this is that the original statement seemed like a basic slip of the tongue - the sort of mistake that all of us can make even when we know better, she likely wanted to ay that he was coming to warn the colonists about the British and stumbled over her words a bit. No big deal, we've all done that sort of thing. What surprises me is the fact that Palin stuck to the erroneous claim after she made it, and really she has to know that she was wrong, simply so that she wouldn't have to admit that she made a mistake. What surprises me even more is that many of her supporters seemed to take this as a sign of her conviction rather than a sign of her unfitness for any responsibility beyond running the Slurpee machine at the 7-11. Really, being firm in your conviction of a completely false premise - and one that you probably know is completely false - is not a strength, it's a severe liability.

Then again, from what I have seen, most of her supporters are also young-Earth creationists and believe that WMDs were found in Iraq, so whatcha' gonna' do...


**Fun fact: Religion is mentioned only twice in the Constitution: 1) when religious tests to hold public office are prohibited (in other words, a member of any religion or no religion can legally hold public office, and it's nobody's business but their own what their religious beliefs are); 2) in the Bill of Rights when prohibitions against the government establishing or interfering in religion are stated. In other words, the Constitution is pretty clearly not a Christian document. Anyone who claims otherwise is either lying or wholly ignorant.


***The basic idea of deism is that, as there is no evidence for miracles or any sort of supernatural interference in people's day-to-day lives, this is consistent with the creator of the universe, usually conceptualized as a god of some sort, having put the universe into motion, and then stepped back and not interfering any further. Once cosmology and biology began to discover natural processes which explained the orign of complex systems better than a creator deity, deism began to decline. This is the reason why flat-out atheists were unusual in the 19th century, though some did exist, while deists are relatively rare in the 21st century.

Rejected Atheist Student? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

I recently learned that a student applying to be a graduate student at UC Santa Barbara's Religious Studies department was rejected. He claims that his rejection is a case of religious discrimination, and that he was rejected essentially for being an atheist.

I'm not buying it.

The problem is that he says that the reason that he was rejected is that he is perceived as applying to the department because he, as the school official that informed him of his rejection put it, he's an "atheist activist with an axe to grind." He took this to mean that he was rejected because he is an atheist and an outspoken one at that. Having been a graduate student at the institution to which he applied, and having had a fair amount of interaction with the graduate students and faculty at the department to which he applied (which was directly above my own office - down the hall and up a flight of stairs), I think that it was the "axe to grind" rather than the "atheist" part that is causing him grief.

Keep in mind, we are only getting the rejected student's description of events, and what he describes, while he clearly thinks it's discrimination, is actually vague enough that, even if he is reporting it with complete accuracy, it could mean something very different than what he thinks it does.

First off, he wasn't told that he was being rejected because he was an atheist, or because he was an atheist activist, but because he was both of these things and, specifically, "has an axe to grind." Look at this guy's blog. Look at the self-published book that he's selling via the sidebar. He is clearly intelligent, clearly articulate, and clearly has an axe to grind.

I don't necessarily disagree with alot of what he has to say. In fact, I think he and I are on the same page on many, likely most, issues regarding religion. But being a scholar of religion (religion in the generic sense, not specifically Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc.) requires more than simply having one's facts straight. It requires that you be able to comprehend that the people whom you are studying are doing things that make sense to them, regardless of how they look to an outside observer, and it requires being able to show enough respect to the believers (even if you do not respect their beliefs) to be able to try to make some sort of social or psychological sense of what they're doing even if you don't believe a word of it. The blog and the self-published book rather strongly suggest that Mr. McAfee is not currently capable of this. And given that this is amongst the material that he included with his application, he seems to show little enough self-awareness that it should come as no surprise that he was rejected.

Of course, I could be reading this all wrong. Maybe his application was stronger than it sounds. The problem is that, based on his own description of the matter, while he may sound like a victim to someone not familiar with the process of admitting students into a graduate studies program, to someone who is familiar with that process, it sounds like he's just whining.

Let me re-frame the matter by describing how such things play out in my own field. If someone entered a graduate program in archaeology, and expressed an interest in studying how archaeologists have failed to include the interests and ideas of the descendants of the people we study, that would be a perfectly legitimate approach. It's a valid area for research, and one that should be considered more carefully by archaeologists.

If this same person included material written by them describing archaeologists as nothing but grave-robbers and thieves...well, then that implies that rather than wanting to make legitimate criticisms from within, they are wanting in to the program for some other, less academically rigorous, purpose.

So, there is no reason why an atheist, and even an atheist activist, could not be a perfectly responsible religious studies scholar. In fact, I happen to know that many are. But when someone produces documentation to support their application that appears to be more directed towards making a statement about the subject than seriously studying it, well, it's understandable that this prospective student would be turned away.

Was he rejected for being an atheist activist? Perhaps. But based on the material that he presents, it seems more likely that he was turned away because he had made it clear that he couldn't separate his emotional reaction from his research.

Long Walks Arguing on the Beach

A few years ago, I was walking down the beach in Aptos, CA. I had gone out to take photos, and was generally having a good time minding my own business, when I heard, from behind me, "Pardon me, but what does this mean, 'The God Delusion'?"


I had forgotten which shirt I was wearing. It was one that I had picked up at a Richard Dawkins talk a couple of weeks earlier. So, now, I was of two minds on this. On the one hand, I know perfectly well that going around wearing a shirt that says "The God Delusion" is likely to get some people worked up, and that if I wear such a thing, I'd better be prepared to deal with the displeased. On the other hand, if I were wearing a pro-religion shirt (pro-Christianity, or in the area in which I live, pro-whateverasianorpsuedonativeamericanreligion), then I'd likely be able to go about unmolested. And, really, I fail to see how my shirt (which essentially indicates that I believe that all religions are probably wrong) is different from a pro-Christian shirt (which, by the nature of Christianity, essentially indicates that the wearer believes that all other religions are definitely wrong) in it's "insult anyone who doesn't agree with me" factor, and therefore I don't see any good reason why I should get any more guff than they guy with the "Sins washed by the blood of the lamb" or "Christ or Antichrist, there is no other choice" shirt (yes, I have seen this shirt, as well as a bumper sticker).

Still, there's the way that things should be, and the way that they are. So, I stood up a bit straighter, and turned to face the person addressing me, ready to have to argue.

"Well, it's a book written by a guy named Richard Dawkins. He argues that, as there is no real evidence for a god, and that the evidence that people tend to cite for a god doesn't really stand up to scrutiny, it is not reasonable to conclude that there is one."

"Oh," the fellow considered this for a moment, "I would argue that it is a bad idea to state that there is nothing simply because there is no evidence for something*."

So, I responded that simply not being able to disprove something doesn't make its existence as likely as its non-existence. And he responded quite intelligently to that, and we both began walking. In all, I spent the next hour walking down the beach with this complete stranger, debating religion in a pleasant way, and in the end, we shook hands and went our separate ways.

Did either of us change the other's mind as regards theism? Probably not. But this is, I think, an important thing to remember, for all of us. The fellow and I absolutely disagree on the existence of god, but he was not some bile-spewing idiot with a desire to smash all infidels. And he saw that I was not someone who was going to attack him for being foolish. I know that, when my fellow atheists make disparaging comments about people who believe in deities, I have been able to bring my conversation with this fellow up as an example of a theist who was smart, reasonable, and a decent guy. I hope that, when he is around fellow believers who make similar comments about atheists, he is able to bring me up as an example of an atheist who did not meet the negative stereotypes.

I am under no illusions. I doubt that supernatural beliefs will ever go away. I also doubt that there will ever be any religion that manages to convert the world. So, while there are times and places for argument and even fighting, it does us well to recognize that even our most vicious opponents are human. Persuading everyone on the planet of a belief or lack thereof will never happen, and there will always be those who wish to push their beliefs on others, but we can reduce conflict simply by humanizing the other, and learning to defend and argue for your position while not being a dick is a huge step on that path.









*Ahh, the ol' agnostic defense. The problem, of course, being that it assumes that the person with whom you are arguing is convinced that there is no god, rather than simply concluding that there is no reason to believe in one (a subtle but important difference). Also, it essentially assumes that if neither of two potential positions can be 100% proven, they must both be equally likely - a position shown to be absurd by Russell's Teapot analogy (updated as The Flying Spaghetti Monster.

I also like my own "Gillian Anderson Argument" - I can not prove that, when I head home tonight, Gillian Anderson will not be there to serve me dinner. Neither can I prove that she will be there. However, this does not mean that there is a 50% chance of her being there. In fact, as there is no evidence supporting the claim that she will be there, and there are many logistical problems with the idea of her being there, I must rate that probability of such a thing occurring as being very low. Likewise, there are many things about our universe that one would expect to be rather different if there were a god, and so simply not being able to prove that there is not one does not raise the possibility that there is one to 50%.

A Good Man With a Bad Job

Over at his blog, Hemant Mehta put up a post about this podcast, which tells the story of an atheist family who bring in a Baptist minister to perform a funeral for their atheist grandmother. Perhaps not unpredictably, the service featured a fire-and-brimstone "you're all going to Hell if you don't accept Jesus" sermon. the hosts of the show called up the minister to talk with him about it, and I recommend listening to the entire show.

In the comments for the post, most readers wrote that they thought it was absurd of the family to bring in a Baptist minister to perform a funeral for an atheist. I agree. However, a few of the commentors stated that the minister was a horrible person for A) holding his beliefs, and B) for giving a sermon intended to convert the family rather than comfort them.

Bullshit. The minister is not a horrible person. He may have weird inconsistent beliefs (God loves you deeply, but will punish you for eternity for not believing in his son...heh?), but he's hardly alone in that. He may have chosen a bad time to try to convert the family, setting them even farther against his beliefs rather than bringing them towards those beliefs. But he is not a horrible person. Quite the contrary, he seems to be a very good person who is doing the best he can based on the beliefs he holds and some rather limited ability to persuade people.

Yes, there are horrible people who are Christians, I have known many of them. You can find them at any church - they're the people who are describing with glee the torments that they believe await everyone but them. They're the ones who get excited when talking about the torments of the Tribulation that wait for those who are "left behind" after the Rapture. Hell, go to Youtube and look up videos of the Phelps family at one of their "protests" - these people clearly get off on the notion that everyone but them is going to burn for eternity. These types of sadistic bastards are horrible people.

The minister, on the other hand, is frightened and worried for the well-being of others. He flubbed his attempt to bring these people over, using the funeral as a soapbox for these beliefs only resulted in pushing them even farther away, but that doesn't change the fact that, as far as can be told, he was acting out of concern and not out of sadism.

You can call his beliefs horrible, you can call his approach incompetent, but I don't think you can fairly say that the minister is anything but a good person.

Oh, Grow Up, You Bickering Idiots!

Over the weekend, I posted an entry about some of my fellow atheists taking stances that I thought were A) stupid, and B) counter-productive. Well, here comes a story (also here) of both the non-religious and the religious being extraordinarily inept in their handling of a dispute.

So, this guy is called to appear in the local courthouse. The courthouse has church pews, complete with crosses, as their seats. Not the most appropriate thing, admittedly, but the reason why they are there is because the city had bought an old church building to turn it into a community center, and rather than have to buy new benches for the courthouse, they decided to recycle the pews from the church and use them. So, ya' know, that makes sense, and while I might be a mite bit grumbly, it doesn't seem like too big a deal to me*.

Not so the defendant (a self-described agnostic), who is now suing. Which is really pretty counter-productive, especially considering that the benches are in place because of a move that was intended to save the county money and not to proselytize. Inappropriate...yeah, basically, but intentional conversion tool? Probably not.

So, I'm more-or-less on the side of the local government up to this point. Should they do something to remove the crosses? Yeah, but it's not an emergency and they can do it as budget allows.

And then the mayor gets involved. Rather than pass the defendant-turned-plaintiff off for the over-reacting yutz that he is, the mayor declares this to be part of some sort of non-existent persecution of Christians:

Maybe it’s time the religious right stands up to the liberal left and says enough is enough. Where do you stop? Where’s the common sense? I’m not taking them out.

So, one idiot decides to sue over something that probably isn't too big a deal. And the response of the city government? To declare legal jihad against the evil Satanic "Liberal Left"! So, apparently the mayor believes that the correct response to someone else's childish behavior is to be even more childish.

Ahhh, false dichotomies, straw men, and delusion from all sides, with a dash of identity politics added for flavor. The logical fallacy parade continues!

Did I mention lately that we're doomed? Yep, we are, indeed.




*However, I suspect that many of the folks who blow this particular incident off as not a big deal aren't quite on the same boat as I am here. Basically, if the symbol had been Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Wiccan, Zoroastrian, Jain, Richard Dawkin's "atheist A", etc. etc. I would be having more or less the same reaction - the symbol is not appropriate in a court room, but there are bigger things to worry about. My experience has been that many people think that it's not a big deal when their religion's symbols are displayed, but if it were another religion's symbols, well, then it would be unacceptable!

So, here's the test, ask yourself honestly if you would brush this off if it were a symbol from another group, including groups who think that you are wrong and sinful. If you'd still think it wasn't such a problem, then we are on the same page. If you would think that it was a problem, then you really need to get the beam out of your own eye before you go looking into other people's motes, and you shouldn't assume that I am going to agree with you on any other issues...

Relax Guys, it's Not Going to Kill You...

There's a post over at Hemant Mehta's blog about a franchise deli where the owner has decided to play Christian music pretty much continuously. A customer complained, and was given a response that indicates that the owner didn't care about the complaint. Mr. Mehta holds that it is not appropriate for the owner to continue to play religious music in a business that caters to the public, and takes the side of the guy who made the complaint.

I normally like Hement Mehta's blog, and usually agree with him, but this is one of two complaints he has made recently where I really think that he's way off base. The other complaint concerns Tim Tebow's religious-themed facepaint, which Mehta also feels is inappropriate.

In the case of the deli, it's a private business. Unless the owner is violating the terms of his franchise contract by playing Christian music (and he apparently is not), there is no real problem with him doing so. By the same token, if I owned a business and I wanted to prominently display atheist books throughout the place, I would be free to do so. The deli owner may lose the business of non-Christians, just as I would likely lose the business of theists, but that's the decision that the business owner is free to make. I get annoyed when I hear religious people complain that a business is "too secular" for them, and this seems no different to me.

In the case of Tebow's makeup, I fail to see why anyone should care. If other members of the team are prohibited from putting non-Christian messages on their faces during games, well, then that is a problem, but I have found no reason to believe that this is the case (if someone can provide solid information indicating otherwise, by all means let me know). Again, when Christians complain about someone having non-Christian messages displayed on themselves, I want to tell them where to stick it, and this is no different.

Here's the deal - I fully agree with Hemant Mehta that the government should not be forwarding a religious agenda, that people acting in their capacity as government employees should not do so, and that religious people need to come to terms with the fact that the non-religious have all of the same rights as them. But this goes both ways, and I fail to see how complaining about the music selection at a sandwich shop or the face of some college kid is going to have any productive results. If Tebow annoys you, that's fine and you're free to say so. If you don't want to go to a sandwich shop because of the musical selections of the owner, that's fine, too (it's even fine to let them know the reason why you won't be their patron anymore). But that's a very different thing from declaring that their actions are inappropriate or unethical.

Edit to Add: This is a case where there is a legitmate problem - the student with a non-religious viewpoint is censored while the religious students are not. However, the face paint and deli music? Not a problem.

Abraham and Isaac

I have always found the Abraham and Isaac story very disturbing. The story is held up as an example of different things by different people - some hold that it demonstrates that obedience to god is the most important attribute that one can possess, others that it is a sign of god's mercy (since he doesn't make Abraham kill Isaac in the end), and others that it is a sign that god can invert the natural order any way that he wants and that us limited humans ought not to question it.

For a variety of reasons, all of which can be grouped together under the heading of "being a normal and well-adjusted moral individual" I find all of these explanations, all of which seek to justify the proposed human sacrifice as moral, to be complete and utter bullshit. Or, as Julia sweeney puts it:

This Old Testament God makes the grizzliest test to peoples' loyalty, like when he asks Abraham to murder his son Isaac. As a kid we were taught to admire it. I caught my breath reading it. We were taught to admire it! What kind of sadistic test of loyalty is that, to ask someone to kill his or her own child? And isn't the proper answer no?

I have however come across two bits o' media that cover the story in a way that at least shows some sort of attempt to understand it. The first is from Radiolab, and is sympathetic to Abraham. Listen here.

The other is satirical and very unsympathetic not only to Abraham but to the world view that holds that this sort of sadistic test of loyalty (to quote Sweeney) is justifiable:

Death and the Hereafter

One of my field techs had been raised as a Christian, but had left the church. While she no longer believed much of what the church had taught, she still retained a belief in some sort of divine being. She asked me about my beliefs, and I stated that I am an atheist.

"So, aren't you afraid of death. I mean, if you don't think there's an afterlife, isn't that scary?"

Although it is less common now, I get asked this question somewhat frequently.

The answer is kind of complicated. When I first accepted that I didn't believe in a god, I have to admit that I was frightened of death. The idea of nonexistence seemed absolutely horrifying to me. After a time, I realized that, really, if I didn't exist, then I wouldn't be around to know that I didn't exist, and so the idea lost alot of its sting. While the idea of death ceased to be upsetting, I still saw it as a loss, something that was to be viewed with dismay, if not actually feared.

That changed a few years ago. At the time I was dating a woman who would describe herself as a neo-pagan. We were sitting on my couch one night talking about religion when she told me about her beliefs regarding death.

"I believe in a sort of reincarnation," she explained, "not that I will personally be reborn some day, but that what we call a soul is actually made out of many parts, and that when I die, those parts will no longer be bound together, but will disassemble and become parts of other entities waiting to be born."*

This struck a chord with me. Not because of the supernatural content, I don't believe in souls any more than I believe in gods, but because it seemed to me to be a beautiful metaphor for something that absolutely, without question, does happen. What am I, after all? Well, I am a body, a consciousness, and an identity. As far as we can tell, the consciousness is a function of the body, so these two can be considered together.

When I die, my body will decompose. When this happens, the chemical compounds and energy that comprise me will feed other organisms. My remains will once again cycle into the environment, and though transformed will not be destroyed. Yes, my consciousness will be gone, but the things that created it will still be in circulation, just in different arrangements.

And this I find very comforting. In a very literal sense, my death will feed new life.

Unlike my consciousness, my identity doesn't have to vanish with my body. Consider the people who, though no longer alive, are still clear and significant presences in the world: Samuel Clemens (AKA Mark Twain), Helen Keller, Marie Curie, George Washington, Henry Tudor, Stephen Jay Gould, Alexander of Macedonia, and on and on and on. To some degree, everyone who has ever lived has had an influence, and many of them are remembered by at least some people, and some by most people. So, in this sense, if I do things that leave a mark (something that I am trying to do by publishing, as well as a few other projects that I have on hand), then my identity remains even after the rest of me is gone.

Again, I find this comforting.

So, no, I don't fear death. I'm not seeking it out, but I no longer see a reason that a lack of an afterlife makes death a fearful thing.




*I know that at least four of the people who regularly read this will at this point start scoffing at her beliefs. I would simply remind these people that they believe in an afterlife including a heaven and a hell that seems pretty silly to anyone who doesn't subscribe to it.

Some things you might find interesting...

A couple of links that may be of interest.

A few years back, the BBC broadcast a documentary on the history of people questioning religion. Whether you are a believer or not, it does a good deal to explain the historical and social settings in qhich people questioned the existence of a spiritual component to the universe. The Documentary, titled A Rough History of Disbelief is available on Google video. Click the link to see it. Unfortunately, those who might most benefit from actually comprehending what non-believers think (such as one individual who used to post comments here claiming all sorts of non-existent moral failings on the part of non-believers) are the ones least likely to actually bother watching. So it goes.

On a related note, Greta Christina has a post up that well articulates what I have often seen as the problemw ith claiming to be "spiritual but not religious." It's a good read, check it out.

On the subject of archaeology, the Mythbusters have a two articles up on their site discussing myths and public misconceptions about archaeology. They're both informative and fun to read. Check them out, if you have the opportunity. My favorite quote from them is one in which they actually discuss my own industry:

Actually, there are far more qualified archaeologists than there are academic positions. In the 1970s and 1980s, archaeology students were advised to go to grad school so they'd be ready to replace their profs as said profs retired. This turned out to be one of the biggest archaeology myths ever.

Why? Because many academic departments just phased out those positions instead of restaffing them. Fortunately, legislation enacted in the mid 1970s to protect cultural resources on federal property provided thousands of new jobs for field archaeologists, in both private industry and the government.

Thinking About Morality

What is morality, and where does it come from? Seems like a simple question, doesn’t it? Most of us treat it as if it’s a simple thing, but it really isn’t. If you live in the U.S., you will most often hear morality discussed as a function of religion. In fact, I find that because I do not share the majority position regarding religion, I am often (in fact, typically) accused of being immoral or amoral – the basic idea being that if I do not believe in a supernatural source for morality, I must be “cut off from moral bearings” or, as Banana Man Ray Comfort puts it, a “moral free agent.”

The first problem is that this particular claim is that, like most of the folks that I know who share my views on religion, I’m pretty boring on the whole sin front. For the most part, I don’t have any particular vices that aren’t also shared with the religious people I know, and I lack even many of those (I don’t drink, never been unfaithful to a partner, no drugs, tend to be a goody-two-shoes as applied to other people’s property, etc.). Where I tend to differ from them is that I do not view arbitrary things that don’t harm anyone as sins – I have no problem with gay people, I don’t really care if someone “blasphemes”, and so on.

In other words, I’m a good citizen, decent neighbor, and all without thinking that there is some sort of being hanging doom over my head if I do wrong. And I am not alone. Time and again, research into the relationship between violent crime, divorce, substance abuse, willingness to cheat others, and so on has shown that these things are not negatively correlated with religious belief. If the non-religious were truly adrift in a sea of immorality, the situation would be quite the opposite.

In fact, as a general rule*, high rates of religious belief in a nation or region correlates with higher rates of crime, drug use, divorce, unplanned pregnancy, abortion, poor social and personal health, etc. (see here and here). This is not necessarily to say that religion causes all of the strife – there are many factors that play a role (some of which have non-causal correlations with religion) – but it doesn’t prevent these problems and may bear some responsibility (by making some topics taboo – such as accurate information about sex education and STDs - or placing some legitimate solutions arbitrarily off-limits – such as the Catholic Church’s official refusal to accept that condoms may be of use in combating the spread of HIV – or placing belief ahead of action – such as the tendency amongst many Christian sects to argue that belief in Jesus is more important than behaving morally, or sanctifying anti-social actions as moral – such as suicide bombers in the Middle East or the murder of people who leave Islam in many Middle-Eastern nations). That religion is not the bulwark of morality against a rising tide of social ills is further illsutrated by the fact that the non-religious make up a smaller portion of the prison population than of the general population (see here and here). Independent of the question of whether or not religion causes social ills (a very complex question outside the scope of what I am writing here), it should be obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together that if religious belief was in fact the source of morality, then belief in gods would correlate with higher rates of moral behavior, but this proposition is demonstrably false.

There is a further problem with the notion that religion is the source of morality: most religious believers don’t actually follow the moral codes that they claim to believe – and, for the record, this reflects well on the believers. For example, in the recent Proposition 8 debate here in California, believers frequently stated that the Bible condemned homosexuality, and therefore gay marriage should not be allowed. They are, of course, correct that the Bible condemns homosexuality**, but they ignored that the Bible also calls for the death penalty for homosexuals – for that matter, most of them even feel that the mandatory prison sentences for homosexuality that were common up through the first half of the 20th century were overly harsh. And we see a similar rejection of harsh punishment for other religious “crimes” amongst most modern believers. In other words, the average believer today demonstrates a stronger sense of compassion and, well, morality than the authors of their holy texts did, and in demonstrating these commendable traits, they are, by the standards of the texts that they claim to follow, committing a sin***. And good for them I say, they are clearly better people, citizens, and neighbors than the original authors of the texts, and I think that this shows some degree of moral progress. But it also shows that even those who claim religion is the source of morality don’t actually behave as if it is.

So, if the majority view is wrong, and morality does not come from religion, where does it come from? How can we be moral? Why aren’t we doomed to nihilism and wickedness?

Well, the answer seems to come from a rather obvious place, really: our evolutionary origins. Put simply, we are social animals, and as such, we have had to evolve both biological and cultural traits that allow us to function in groups.

Let me phrase my argument as a hypothesis to be tested. If our sense of morality comes from our evolutionary origins, then it follows that other animals that are close to us either genetically or in their social organization will demonstrate similar traits to deal with social organization – constrained by their own biological capacities, that there would be evidence of moral behavior across all human societies and not just those with the “correct” religions, and that those traits that are universally “moral” should have adaptive use to mobile hunter-gatherers (our ancestors).

So, let’s start with other animals. When we look at other social animals, we see development of social rules that allow these animals to interact successfully and with minimal conflict – even the fights observed amongst packs of dogs are geared at determining the leader to be followed rather than violence for the sake of violence. As we come closer to humans, we see more and more traits that are recognizable. Chimpanzees, for example, show such human behaviors as warfare and outgroup exclusion (both part of most human moral codes, interestingly), but also show our better traits such as compassion and cooperation. As Jane Goodall, puts it:

They kiss, embrace, hold hands, pat one another on the back, swagger, shake their fists, and throw rocks in the same context that we do these things. There are strong bonds of affection and support between family members. They help each other. And they have violent and brutal aggression, even a kind of primitive war. In all these ways, they’re very like us.

For more information, look into the work of Dr. Goodall, or the work of others researching the origins of morality.

Likewise, we do find certain universals amongst human populations, and I have seen these time and again in my studies and research as an anthropologist: the preservation of the in-group is seen as good; altruism is good; harm to the in-group is bad; harm to the out-group may be neutral, good, or bad, depending on the impact that this has on the in-group; individual compassion is used as a guide to correct treatment of others, but is influenced by the relation of the other to the individual acting; the definition of in-group and out-group is flexible and dependent upon the situation, but is generally correlated to the social and genetic relationship of the individual being acted upon to the individual doing the acting.

So, we do see universals that make sense for mobile, stone-age hunter-gatherers, but not necessarily for modern humans. For example, look up the “Trolley Problem” (listen here) to see how the interjection of technology into the equation causes us to view what is logically an equivalent situation as being morally right or wrong (long story short – technological harm to an individual is seen as being more “okay” than directly-caused harm, even if the resulting harm is identical), or check out how an action that would generally be considered evil can be made acceptable through the phenomenon of groups absolution or the placement of those being acted upon into the out-group. These traits are not adaptive to a modern post-industrial society, in which we have the ability to impact masses of people both positively and negatively, but make perfect sense in the context of stone-age hunter-gatherers.

Now, of course, religion is itself probably a result of our evolutionary histories, and so it is no surprise that it often becomes conflated with morality. But the difference is that when we drop the notion that religion is the source of morality, rather than something that evolved along with it, we can see that morality is a natural thing – that is, it is something that has come about because we need it, rather than being enforced on us by an external force. This has an important implication: we can use the needs of living people as guides to moral behavior, and we can see where there is wisdom to be gained from our evolutionary past, rather than continuing to claim arbitrary and silly traditions from bronze-age societies.

A lot of people find this idea of a changing and fluid morality uncomfortable, and as such they declare that such a notion is bad (some particularly bigoted individuals will then go on to claim that the non-religious are unable or unlikely to be moral – but this says more about the insecurities, and, let’s face it, immorality of the people who claim this than the immorality of non-religious people). However, even these people subscribe to the notion of a fluid and changing morality, whether they admit it or not. As noted above, most believers are not in favor of the execution of blasphemers and homosexuals, though that is what their religious texts call for and their ancestors would have demanded. The reason for this is that our society has changed – for the better – and these old ways are seen as harsh and maladaptive now. Religion has not tamed society and made it more moral, rather, culture has tamed religion and forced it to actually behave in a more moral way. Anyone who clings to the notion of an eternal and unchanging code of morality is lying, either to themselves or to you.

Some may claim that giving up even the illusion of an unchanging morality from the divine will lead to moral decay - gulags for the sick, eugenics, violence against those of a different intellectual bent, etc. Assuming that such a thing is true - which is a debatable point - this claim in favor of a religion-based morality still doesn't hold water, and is in fact rather dishonest (and, ironically, therefore probably immoral) for a simple reason: through most of human history, people have clung to models of morality either dictated by or justified through perceived divine revelation, and that has resulted in persecution of dissenters, genocidal wars, torture, suicide bombings, honor-killings, etc. etc. Even if an openly fluid non-religious moral ethos completely replaces religious ones, and even if it is the worst that all believers claim it might be, it would not really be any worse than the religion-based versions. At worst, it would be pretty much the same, and then we're in the same place that we've always been - except that now we're honest about it.

In truth, those who push the notion (even if they don’t actually subscribe to it) of an un-changing morality handed down by god are the ones who are unmoored from moral anchors. They are allowing arbitrary codes that they themselves only half-heartedly hold to take precedence over the very real needs of people. They are more concerned with having their own prejudices and psychological comforts unquestioned than with actually doing good. They will often try to misdirect you – claiming that you are entering into a dangerous moral relativism, when they are the ones who are holding that their own arbitrary a-priori beliefs are somehow more important than the suffering or joy of others - and the assumption that arbitrary positions are somehow equal to verifiable facts is the very definition of relativism.

In other words, don’t buy it. Think about morality, consider that we do have moral impulses that we can sharpen and make use of for the good of ourselves and those around us, and don't allow yourself to be sold on something that may be doing more harm than good.





*I say “as a general rule” because there are, of course, some exceptions.

**Or, at least, most modern translations do – but what the original Hebrew and Greek said, and whether it was a blanket condemnation or rather a rejection of ritual homosexuality (common in the ancient Middle East), is a matter better discussed by people who know more about the subject than I currently do.

***There are, of course, many rationalizations that believers may give for ignoring these rather evil commandments – “that was a ritual requirement that Jesus did away with,” “that was specific to that time and place,” “God’s subsequent commandments show that this changed.” The problems with these rationalizations are twofold: 1) the same believers will still cling to commandments that can be easily dismissed in exactly the same way (such as the general condemnation of homosexuality), and 2) the same believers often claim that the moral codes of the Bible are “eternal and unchanging” while simultaneously admitting that they have changed.

S.C.A. - Part III

This is Part 3. Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is here. This part deals with a political organization that works on church/state separation issues, so if discussion of these issues leaves you inclined to attack strawmen and insult blog writers, do us both a favor and skip the damn entry.

…so far we have my father, the Society for California Archaeology, the Student Conservation Association, and the Society for Creative Anachronism. Now onto the next S.C.A. with which I have become affiliated – the Secular Coalition of America.

Interestingly, my willingness to pitch in with this S.C.A. is partially linked to my experience with a previous S.C.A. – The Student Conservation Association. As I described, my time on the Air Force Base left me feeling rather disturbed at the degree to which that particular government agency was in the hands of a particular brand of hard-right wing Christianity. This coupled with my growing unease at the Bush administration’s willingness to cater to the same group, and the realization that both members of congress from both parties seemed to want to follow suit in order to gain votes.

Now, so that the easily-offended or presumptious don't assert that I hold a position that I do not hold, I'll discuss my concern a bit more thoroughly. Beginning with the 70’s, the group that has become known as the Religious Right – a minority group within Christianity, but one that has been very active in using political rhetoric and targeted voter drives to push their particular agenda - became active as a political force. Their effectiveness is well open to debate, and they have been used by politicians at least as often as they have used politicians (and arguably, the politicians have typically gotten the better of them). However, they are tenacious, and had managed to get some traction with the Bush administration - things such as the presidents regular discussions with a particular set of religious leaders, the Office of Faith Based Initiatives (which has proven to have a rather questionable track record), and the push to have laws passed that allow medical providers to refuse care for religious reasons* all come from this rather weird alliance.

Whatever their political gains or losses, the loosely-associated group of people, churches, and political groups known as the Religious Right have been very effective in promoting the notion among much of the population that they ARE Christianity. This is, of course, bunk. As with any huge number of people, there is so much variation amongst Christians that the notion that one particular sub-set or agenda can represent all or even most of them is absurd. However, the various entities comprising the Religious Right have nonetheless been so successful in branding themselves as the “defenders of Christianity” that even some Christians who disagree with them feel that they still have to vote in a particular way in order to remain “real” Christians (I have no idea how many Christians end up feeling this way, but I do know that it is not uncommon, based on conversations I have had with a large number of Christians who have made statements to that effect). This has also had the effect of convincing many non-Christians that Christians are generally judgmental, legalistic, hypocritical, and weirdly obsessed with the sex lives of others. Needless to say, such misconceptions run counter to the interest of the majority of Christians.

Concurrent with the appearance of the religious right as a political force, secular groups also began to appear. Contrary to the claims put forth by many of the more vocal Religious Right individuals and organizations, the secular groups have generally been both reactive and one step behind their opponents.

Like many people, I had stopped believing in any religion long ago, but paid religion itself little mind until the early 2000’s. Many folks would cite the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks as the catalysts that got them to be more critical of religion. This was not, however, the case for me. While I can not claim that they had no impact, what really hit me was the reaction from many of the vocal and politically active Religious Right groups and people AFTER the attacks.

To be certain, the majority of religious groups did not engage in divisive and needlessly inflammatory behavior in the aftermath**, but many did. We saw blame placed on everyone from Muslims at large to atheists to feminists to gays, with the accusers all conveniently ignoring the very real intersection of politics with history with economics with a particular brand of religion that actually caused the events. And what I began to notice was that I was seeing many examples of prominent would-be theocrats using these events, with varying degrees of success, to try to forward their own agenda. It is fortunate, perhaps, that they usually attached themselves to tried-and-true politicians who would use their support to get elected and then not follow through on their promises, either real or implied.

This caused me to become more concerned about church/state separation. One doesn’t need to be much of a student of history to know that government establishment of religious orthodoxy, whether through force or simply favoritism, tends to cause problems not only for the non-religious, but also for the religious that do not fall within that orthodoxy. And as most religious people don’t fall within the rigid orthodoxies that governments have often demanded, it is best for government to not endorse one for the benefit of everyone (the exception being the rather weak and milquetoast national churches of modern Europe, which were themselves often quite vicious before their de-fanging in the 19th and 20th centuries – look up the history of England if you doubt that). My experiences on the Air Force Base and the concurrent proseletyzing scandal at the Air Force Academy crystalized this concern, and led to me thinking more seriously about the nature of our politicl system.

Around this time, the next S.C.A. – the Secular Coalition for America – formed. It works as an umbrella organization for church/state separation organizations, and was able to put a lobbyist (now two) on Capitol Hill. Contrary to what many pundits like to claim, the S.C.A. is not anti-religious – in fact it spends a lot of time working with overtly religious groups that are in-touch enough with reality to see the necessity of enforcing the establishment clause – but it does actively lobby against government-enforced or government-espoused religion.

Like any political group, they take positions that I disagree with from time-to-time, or they choose to fight battles that I think are silly or inconsequential. However, the majority of the time, they do what I believe to be the right thing. Also, the S.C.A.’s model of working with religious groups to achieve common ends for the common interest is one that I think other secular organizations could learn a good deal from.

So, I support this organization with donations and, more importantly, by writing to my congressional representatives when issues that I feel are important come up. The ultimate value of this is simple – when the only people speaking out on issues are from the Religious Right, that’s who the elected officials tend to support. When people, religious and non-religious alike, who oppose those views speak up, we have a good chance of preventing poor policy.

So, check out the S.C.A., and while we’re at it, here’s the lobbyist, Lori Lippman-Brown, being interviewed by Stephen Colbert – trying to tempt him into illicit sex no-less!

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Better Know a Lobby - Atheism

Colbert at Christmas
Colbert Christmas DVD

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview

...and in episodes 46, 53, 59, 68, 81, 89 of Skepticality she is interviewed.

While I can not claim to be completely satisfied with the S.C.A.'s work, I do think that they are doing a good job and that they tend to be realistic in their approach. I am, overall, supportive, and whether you are religious or not, you should check them out - odds are that if you have a good grasp on history and politics, and are reasonably intelligent, you'll also appreciate their work.






*No doubt somebody is going to start telling me that medical care providers should be allowed to refuse certain procedures and treatments based on their beliefs. In most professions, I would agree, but because medical care providers are often in shorts supply AND have very specialized knowledge that is not readily available elsewhere and difficult for the layman to clearly assess AND because we as a society invest them with a good amount of authority that most other people do not have AND because the structure of our health care system is such that second opinions can be difficult to come by, well, they are something of a special case, and should not be allowed to withhold, not discuss, or manipulate treatment by anything other than scientific medical standards. This is different than most other professions – including my own – where practitioners are relatively common, the work we do accessible enough for the layman to grasp, we are invested with relatively little authority, and we don’t alter the health or lives of others – and therefore we don’t need to be held to the same standards.

**Although even those who were generally doing good still went to some default assumptions that were, in light of what had just happened, very strange. I recall seeing an interview with a Catholic priest on September 12th. He was being interviewed as he was on his way to the site of the World Trade Center to help out – and admirable activity all the way around – and he was asked why he was going. He stated “I represent the opposite of what happened here. I represent faith.”

Now, he could have said that he represents peace, or that he represents love, or that he represents compassion, and I would have agreed and been right there with him, he was going in a hard time to try to do good and that was absolutely commendable. But faith is the opposite of what happened? Whatever else can be said about the guys who rammed the plane into the building, they absolutely had faith. That faith and conviction was in the service of a murderous and evil cause, but it was, nonetheless, faith and conviction. Faith was an element of what had happened, not the opposite of what had happened.

Where I Stand

A comment from Msnc on my last blog post (and my previous Rick Warren blog post) pointed out something that should have been obvious to me (so, a note of thanks to Msnc) – because of the generally polarized nature of any discussion regarding religion, people who hold a position that cannot be easily summed up in a word or a phrase tends to be disregarded, and that person is assumed to hold a position rather different (and often more inflammatory) than the position that they actually hold (and the position to which they are assigned is often one that, really, nobody holds).

So, I want to clarify my thoughts on religion and the existence of the divine.

I describe myself as an atheist. I do this knowingly and consciously, but not without the risk of being misunderstood. I do not claim to absolutely know that there is not god/God/gods/goddess/etc. What I do claim is that, based on my own personal observations and my understanding of how the world works, I can say that the god that I most often hear people describe – one who interferes routinely in human affairs, whose fingerprints are found on all aspects of the world, and who has a plan for each one of us personally – is extremely unlikely. Put another way – it’s a low-probability hypothesis.

A deistic deity, one who set the universe in motion and then let it run its course, is much more likely, but still a low probability hypothesis. There are many different hypotheses for how the universe began, and I know of no reason to think that a god setting it into motion is any more likely than any of the other hypotheses. In fact, it seems less likely than many of them.

But again, I am talking of probabilities – I do not claim to know the absolute truth, I am admitting that, like all of us, I can only go on the information available to me and determine what seems most likely. If new evidence comes to light, I will be forced to re-evaluate my positions. I become frustrated with people who refuse to re-evaluate in the face of evidence (such as evolution deniers or flat-Earthers) or who allow themselves to become suspicious of or hateful towards those who don't fall in their camp (thus my irritation with Rick Warren), and my frustration sometimes becomes invective (a fact that I am not proud of, but that I have to admit is true - though my level of vitriol has consistently been outdone by the host of media spokesmen from "the other side" - at least I'm not claiming that anyone deserves to be tortured for eternity) – but I do not ever believe (as folks seem often to claim I do) that I am inherently superior to these people. I do believe that I am being more honest (if for no other reason than that I speak in probabilities and not absolutes), but honesty is simply one trait, and any person is composed of many traits, both positive and negative.

I do hold that many ideologies (and religions are ideologies) hold codes of conduct, belief, and behavior that are harmful. That is not to say that the people are inherently inferior, but that their beliefs (which they hold for a wide variety of reasons ranging from the understandable to the absurd) may cause them to behave in ways that do not serve them, their communities, or the world at large. But I believe this based on evidence, and I am happy to discuss this with anyone who disagrees, provided that they are respectful of me as I will try to be towards them.

And this is where labels become a problem. Many folks will claim that because I do not claim to know whether or not the divine exists and am merely assigning probabilities, then I am an agnostic and not an atheist. In a technical sense, this is perhaps true, and int he past I have used this label for myself for that very reason. However, my experience with those who claim to be agnostic is that there is a general sense that the existence or non-existence of divinity are both equally probable – a notion that doesn’t hold water. And so I don’t use that label. I use the label atheist because most of the self-described atheists with whom I have crossed paths hold the same position as I do on this subject, and don’t claim absolute knowledge, but simply that the probability is weighted towards the non-existence of a god.

Do some of these folks hold themselves to be superior to believers? Yes, some do. But most of them don’t. The problem is that the loud-mouths are the most likely to be heard, and are also typically the most belligerent.

Do we think that we are closer to the truth of the universe than believers? Yes. But, believers believe that they are closer than us. The 50/50 agnostics think that they are closer than anyone else as well (or that they have a better idea of how likely it is to find the truth). So, if thinking that you are right is arrogant, then that is a label that can be applied equally across all of humanity (except for Joe, over in the corner there).

I would argue that thinking that you are right is only arrogant if you fail to meet two conditions: 1) you are aware of why you believe what you do and have a basic humility as a result, and 2) you fail to adjust your beliefs when evidence shows them to be false, or at least unlikely.

So, the believer who is aware that they are believing in a god based on faith and not evidence, and who is willing to accept new information is not arrogant. Neither is the atheist who sees the world in probabilities and is willing to adjust those probabilities as new information becomes available. The one-liner in the previous post refers specifically to those who fail to meet these two criteria, and then accuse others of arrogance.

So, that is where I am coming from. My thoughts on this matter have changed over the years, and no doubt will change in the future again (contrary to some claims, my mind has not decayed and I have not become set in my ways, as is known to those who have produced good counterarguments to beliefs I have held). What direction my beliefs will go I cannot say, as that will be dependent on evidence that I am not yet aware of.

A retort to Warren and Others

Last week, I vented my spleen about comment from Pastor Rick "Repackaging Halfwit Homilies" Warren.

Well, as so often happens wonderfully, someone else, in this case Daniel Meissler, summed it up much more succinctly than I ever could have:

Let me get this straight. You think the Creator of the Universe cares personally about your life, and that you know, with absolute certainty, what he wants for all of humankind.

While I think that we’re basically alone, not very special, and are just fumbling through our random existence trying to do the best we can.

And I’m the arrogant one?

Nice.

From Ebon Muse, a neat little primer on John Stuart Mill's Method for Critical Thinking. Sweet.

Oh, and from Hemant Mehta, fun with Elizabeth Dole, hoping that prejudice and fear-mongering is thought to be a winning combination in North Carolina.

The Purpose Driven Half-Wit

A quick heads up from From Hemat Mehta.

Rick Warren, author of "The Purpose Driven Life" was interviewed on Nightline. When asked if he could vote for a non-Christian for president, he answered that he could vote for a Jew, and then followed it up by saying that the only non-Christian he couldn't vote for is an atheist, because "the presidency is to big for one man" and "atheism is arrogant."

Now, Warren is someone that I have always thought was a dick, and I am not too worked up over what he thinks. What bothers me is that the sentiments he expresses are, in my experience, extremely common, and that really irks me.

Okay, first off, it's one man. Even if that man (or woman) believes that they have a god/goddess/fairy/magical huffalump in the sky helping them, they don't. It's simply not true, no matter how they try to rationalize it. So, you're voting for one person, no matter what they believe.

Secondly, how is atheism arrogant? I hear this all of the time. But nobody is ever able to explain to me how it is that saying "hey, there's no evidence to support the claim that a god exists" is somehow more arrogant than "the almighty creator of the universe has a plan for me personally!"

Beyond that - it is supremely arrogant to say "the weird, inconsistent belief system that I subscribe to IS ABSOLUTELY TRUE because I have faith (read - I base this entirely on assumption and have absolutely no rational reason for making this claim)!" To say that the universe is ordered in a particular way because you (or your ancestor) simply said that it was, with no logical support, is astoundingly arrogant.

So, really, it's the theists that Warren and others like him would support who are the arrogant ones - claiming that they know based on nothing more than their own assumptions that the all-powerful force behind everything is looking out for them - not the "arrogant" atheist that he wouldn't vote for.

My Deconversion

My older sister (to whose site there is a link on the side of the page) recently suggested that we create some companion entries - hers about why she is a Roman Catholic, and mine about why I am an atheist. While we hadn't gotten started on that just yet, I figured that I would dust off the entry below and post it - it describes how I started on to my current path.

As someone who is not religious, and who, in fact, does not believe in any supernatural being, god, spirit, or otherwise, I find that I am often misunderstood by believers who find themselves unable (or, more likely, unwilling) to comprehend where I am coming from. People routinely assume that I chose to not believe (usually this is accompanied by a statement that I made said choice so that I could do whatever I wanted and lead a hedonistic, immoral lifestyle), that I dropped belief on a whim without thinking about it, or that I never was a believer to begin with. I am going to start by explaining why these explanations are nonsense, and then I am going to tell my de-conversion story.

So, as for the idea that I chose not to believe – as the story below will demonstrate, I did not choose not to believe, I simply stopped believing. To the notion that I did this because I wanted to be immoral and not feel like I'd be held accountable, I have three responses: 1) the people who make these statements are typically rather immoral people who tend to callously use religion as a shield to justify their own actions. For example, one of the people who has made this statement to me the most frequently is a member of my extended family who has been married three times and cheated on every wife on multiple occasions, has been emotionally abusive towards all members of his family for at least the last five decades, and has routinely knowingly lied or passed on malicious rumors about those who he dislikes – in short, he is one of the most immoral people I have ever known. However, he is a Christian, and as such he routinely tells everyone who is not a Christian how horribly immoral they are.

2) Most forms of Christian theology hold to a doctrine of salvation by faith alone. That is, no matter your sins, if you believe in Jesus as the messiah, you will go to heaven. If you are not a believer, then it doesn't matter how well you have lived your life, you are going to burn in Hell for eternity (the notion of an all-good god creating an eternal torture chamber is rather problematic as well, but that's the subject of an entirely different essay). So, an atheist who spends all of their time and money helping the poor is damned, while a Christian who, say, is like the relative I describe above is saved. How, precisely, is that a sign that any force is holding people accountable for their actions? If anything this sort of philosophy encourages immorality in those who believe themselves to be saved. No doubt some people will claim that a Christian will be more moral because they are moved by god to be so – to which I can only say that anyone who makes such a statement has paid absolutely no attention to the world around them.

3) Connected to the above two statements, atheists make up a smaller portion of the prison population than they do the general population, and those societies (such as much of northwest Europe) with the highest proportions of atheists and agnostics have significantly lower rates of crime, better physical health, and lower rates of sexually-transmitted diseases than countries with low proportions of atheists and agnostics. If not believing in God made someone more likely to behave in a corrupt and immoral manner, then both of these situations would be the exact reverse of what they are.

So, how about the idea that I dropped the belief on a whim without thinking about it? Well, as will again be described below, I didn't drop belief on a whim, I didn't even intentionally drop it. But, there is something else underlying this type of claim. A good friend of mine, who is both a good and intelligent person and a devout Christian, once asked me why I didn't think my lack of belief through. He didn't ask if I had, he assumed I didn't and then asked me why I hadn't. The underlying assumption is that if I had thought it through, then I would have come to believe the same thing as him. The fact that I clearly believe differently makes it difficult for him, or many believers, to accept that I may be clear-minded about this. I don't go around claiming that believers would come to my conclusions if they thought things through, yet most believers feel perfectly free to make such assumptions about me.

So, now for the last claim that folks make – that I was never really a believer to begin with. This is a common claim made by many folks about those who have left the religious flock. Perhaps it springs from the insecurities of those who make such statements. I know that I once called myself a Christian, and that I at one point believed in an omniscient and omnibenevolent god who had sent his son to absolve us of our sins. If others deny that this was my beliefs, they are denying truth and reality because the truth makes them uneasy.

So, now, on with my story…

As I say above, I was raised a Protestant Christian, though my family ceased attending church when I was around nine or ten. I remember the church we attended quite clearly – and can still find my way back to it when I visit my home town, despite the fact that I haven't set foot in it in over twenty years. I remember praying when I went to bed, I remember my parents telling us stories from the Bible, and I remember that this all went unquestioned for me. I considered the existence of God to be so clearly self-evident that I didn't understand how anyone could question it.

When I was in my early teens, I had an experience in which I found myself wondering if I was truly being a good Christian. I began to read the Bible, and though I had not attend church regularly in years, I did begin going with a friend's family from time-to-time. This was the time in my life when the fissures in the veneer of religion began to show themselves to me. I noticed that there was a sharp difference between what was stated to be moral behavior, and what was actually practiced, and I began to notice strange things about the Bible. I found that many books within the Bible contradicted each other, or even sometimes themselves.

For example: in the Garden of Eden story, we are informed that Adam and Eve have to eat from the fruit of the tree of knowledge in order to understand good and evil. We are also told that in eating from the tree, they have committed a tremendous sin. However, the notion of sin implies that one intends to do evil. If one does not know what evil is, one can not intend to do evil, therefore one can not sin. Now, many people will respond to this question by stating that God told Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit from the tree, and therefore they knew it was wrong. However, God told them not to eat the fruit AND intentionally gave them no knowledge of good or evil, right or wrong, and therefore such a warning is meaningless because they could not have known it was wrong to disobey God because God had built them to not know what wrong was.

…and that's only a small sample of the odd claims in the Old Testament, and doesn't even get started on the various oddities contained in the New Testament.

So, the Bible itself caused me to start questioning Christianity. What caused me to really be alarmed, however, was the behavior of my fellow Christians. As a teenager, I had a friend who was quite devout, and a member of First Baptist Church in Modesto. He began to dress in an eccentric way, and so the leader of the youth group that he was a member of decided that this was a sign of Satan's influence (mind you, when these people lost a screwdriver while building a set for the church play, they took it as a sign of Satan's influence – because apparently Satan has nothing better to do with his time than steal tools from poorly-written and even more poorly-acted plays). My friend found himself subjected to a program in which members of the church questioned him about all matter of things, asking such probing (by which I mean stupid) questions as "do you ever dream about having sex with ghosts?" No, I am not making that up…I couldn't make something THAT inane up. After my friend refused to give up his style of dress, he found himself ostracized from the church group except for those occasions when they decided to preach at him. However, he found that while these folks may not have time to talk to him, they did have time to spy on him and harass his friends (including myself).

I also routinely saw Christians engaging in acts of abuse towards anyone who was different from the norm. The number of times that I saw eggs or water balloons being thrown from a car with a Fish ornament on its bumper while the driver and passengers yelled something along the lines of "FAGS!", "MUSLIMS!", "JEWS!" or some other such thing was truly astounding.

So, it became obvious that the Bible was not an authority, as it was self-contradictory and didn't stand up to scrutiny, and Christians were not inherently more moral than anyone else.

However, none of these things caused me to become disillusioned with religion in and of themselves, that was done by simply watching the world. The world did not fit the mold put forth in the Bible. Certainly this included scientific discoveries (and not just evolution, but also the fact that the Earth is round and revolves around the sun, both of which the Bible clearly says are not true, though it is rare to hear anyone remark upon that these days), but also events in the world at large. Watching the news, it was clear that violence in the Middle East was not building up towards a Biblical Armageddon, but was simply spiraling out of control. Famines struck millions of people, and prayer did nothing to aid them. Those who were clearly corrupt routinely got elected to political office, yet those who were honest and virtuous frequently received no reward. This was not the work of a just God, but it was also not the work of a world in the thralls of Satan – there was no method, and there was good in the world, and quite a lot of it, but it was just as likely to come from non-Christians as from Christians.

Even more troubling, I began to apply logic to propositions. I saw that logic was pretty good at determining the truth of statements about the world, and I saw that there was no logical underpinning for the existence of God. Certainly, many different logical arguments have been propped up to justify belief in God, but all of them had fatal flaws in the arguments themselves (many times the argument actually worked against itself when you started thinking about it), and so there was nothing there. I began to realize that I had no reason to believe.

My Christian world view simply did not match the real world in any way shape or form, and slowly my belief began to fade away. It was slow and subtle enough, that I didn't even notice that it was happening, but one day I realized that I no longer believed, and that I hadn't for quite some time.

At first I tried to deny it, and then I tried to reclaim my faith. I prayed, I consulted scripture, I tried to find my way back to God. And I was afraid, but not that I had lost God. I was afraid because I was convinced that the world wouldn't make sense without God (I always managed to ignore that more rational part of me that would point at that world had made no sense with God), and I was afraid that I had become one of the damned.

And then, one day, it dawned on me. I had no reason to be frightened, for there was no reason to assume in the existence of God. The world did make sense, but you had to take it for what it was and work from there, and not try to cram it into a little box called "Christianity" (or any other religion for that matter). More importantly, if I stopped praying and started working, the world could become better. I began giving to charities, I began working to comfort friends, I stopped dividing the world into the righteous and unrighteous, and simply looked at people as people. The religious often like to say that "everyone is equal before God," and yet they also convince themselves that God will bring some to Heaven and banish others to Hell, meaning that clearly, not everyone is equal. However, without religion mucking up the works, everyone was equal in estimation, and what made the differences were our actions and intentions, not our alleged destinations. It was clear to me now that someone who serves other people and works for the betterment of the world was a good person regardless of their religious ties, and that someone who was abusive and destructive was a bad person regardless of their religious affiliation.

In short, the world, while not perfect, wasn't beyond saving, and it was possible to make things better for all of us. And, contrary to what most people want to believe, becoming a non-believer made me more moral because I stopped justifying the actions of myself and others, and began thinking in terms of the greater good for people in this life, rather than focusing on saving myself in the next.

Better Evangelism?

On the forums over at the Friendly Atheist Blog (http://friendlyatheist.com/2008/05/09/whats-the-best-method-for-evangelism/), this question was asked by user Roar:

… What method was the worst when people tried to share their faith with you? I
know some people hand out pamphlets and other people tell you you’re going to
hell on the street corner, all kinds of ‘fun’ things. As a follow up question,
how has rude/mean/annoying encounters like that caused you to feel about the
Christian faith ? My last question is, what method of sharing faith has made you
at least open to talking to the other person about their faith?

I hope the wording hasn’t offended anyone. I’ve never talked to an atheist before (well I did over this forum for the past few days but not in person) and I would really like to learn more. Thanks for taking time and reading this.

It is, I think, and interesting question – and if the user who posted it had truly never spoken with an atheist before, it shows a good deal of intelligence and insight that he recognized that many of the accepted practices of evangelism do harm without winning many people over. Given that the majority of people in our society claim to believe in some form of a god/gods/goddess/great spirit/cosmic muffin, and that a large number of these folks (though probably still just a sizeable minority) see it as their purpose, need, or right to try to convert everyone (a trend that is stronger in some sects than others), I think that this is also a worthwhile question.

I would answer it by starting with a pet peeve of mine – I dislike the use of the word “faith” when what the speaker/writer means is “religion” or “beliefs.” When someone says “I am part of the Christian Faith” I have to resist the urge to say “No, you’re part of the Christian religion. You have faith that the teachings of your religion are true.” It’s a mild mis-use of the word, but it always irks me, probably because it feels like the folks who use it are trying to euphemize themselves out of being a member of a religion (for whatever reason, being in a “faith” is generally considered good, while being in a “religion” is not, despite the fact that they are used to mean the same damn thing).

Okay, with that off of my chest…

The basic problem that I have encountered with evangelism is that it tends to work from the premise that the person being evangelized needs to be “saved” – and condescension and insult naturally follows from there. Not only is someone never going to convert me by talking down to me, they will irritate and alienate me, preventing me from hearing anything they have to say, whether it has value or not.

What is more frustrating is that most folks who wish to evangelize make assumptions about their target, and then will not listen when their target points out that the assumptions are false. I can not count the number of times I have had someone inform me that I am miserable because I don’t have Jesus in my life (and then refuse to listen when I point out that I became significantly less miserable when I stopped trying to convince myself that I believed in Christianity), or that they have accused me of all manner of immoral evil-doing because I don’t believe in a god (despite the fact that I have done little in my life that anyone would consider immoral or unethical, and I tend to hold myself to very high ethical standards). I understand what drives this attitude – these folks seem to recognize that if their belief system is not necessary for either morality or happiness, then they, perhaps, have been on the wrong track, and this frightens them – but this understanding doesn’t make the attitude any less harmful to those who have to deal with it.

However, even when the evangelizer is acting not out of fear for their own world view, but from an honest desire to do good for others, this patronizing attitude (“I know the way the truth and the light, and I have to teach it to heathens like you!”) is problematic. If the person is right, and they do have the key to salvation, then they are alienating the people who they can save. On the other hand, if they are wrong, then they are annoying, alienating, and hurting other people for no good reason.

So, Hemant, the keeper of the Friendly Atheist Blog, asks “what is the best form of evangelism?”

Well, I don’t think there’s a good form of evangelism – whether religious or for a secular cause. They all start from the premise that the person who does not share your view is wrong and must be saved from being wrong, and in the case of religion, this assumption is made based on faith – by definition an arbitrary assumption. So, the basic concept of evangelism is inherently arrogant and insulting towards the target.

Now, if you wish to persuade someone such as myself that your beliefs are true, and that I should adopt them, you have to take a different tact. Give up evangelism, and try discussion and argument. These take a completely different form – both argument and discussion start from the premise that you have a position that you think is correct, but unlike evangelism they proceed with the realization that you may be wrong and that the other person may have something worthwhile to say. However, this is more difficult for people in general for a very simple reason – when you listen to the other person, you stand a chance of being persuaded to their point of view, just as they stand a chance of being persuaded to yours, and this frightens many people.

Of course, as mentioned, religion isn’t the only thing about which people evangelize. The author Chris Hedges, for example, argues that many of the current spate of pro-atheist books are evangelizing in nature, and while I think he over-states the case (having read many of them, I can say that while their tone may be objectionable, their content is stated in a way that invites the reader to question rather than simply demanding that the reader accept the author’s conclusions), his argument is not entirely without merit. Likewise, I remember my college years, when I would often find myself arguing with devout Marxists who were completely unwilling to hear any argument contrary to their idea of the inevitability of a proletarian Utopia.

And lest you think that I am simply some hippy liberal Satan-worshipping atheist (and yes, I have been accused of being a Satan worshipper due to my lack of belief in a god – on more than one occasion, I might add), there are ecclesiastical folk who agree with me about the problem of evangelism – check it out:

http://www.episcopalcafe.com/daily/interfaith/a_dialog_with_atheism.php

So, there ya’ go, a rambling and probably incoherent blog entry