Category: But How?

But how? Part 22: Guidance

Al Denelsbeck

There is an extremely common debating/arguing tactic wherein, instead of defending a position when challenged, one goes on the counteroffensive, attacking an opponent’s position rather than explaining or justifying their own. I have made it a point to try and avoid such a stance in this topical series, because the whole premise is defending and defining a secular position. This one, however, is going to present both approaches because the perspective could be very useful. So let’s look into the atheistic answer to the question, But how does one obtain any moral guidance without religion?

First off, atheism does not, by nature or definition, propose any such guidance, mostly because it is presumed that none is needed, which highlights the curious attitude within nearly all religions that people (other people, at least) are aimless children. As detailed in part seven, many aspects of religion are cultural assumptions rather than necessities. More directly, atheism is simply a lack of belief, and is not an ideology. It’s like saying, “I’m not a dancer” – no rules or criteria are implied by this statement and few, if any, people would splutter, “But… but what do you do when the music starts?”

Secular humanism, which is often closely linked to atheism, is an ideology, and does provide some basic moral guidance; in short, one does what is best for others, using other people as the arbiter rather than any claimed authority figure. What’s curious about this is, secular humanism only exists because of religion, since it is the ground state of moral decisions in the absence of authority; I mean, morality is defined by how we treat others – that’s the entire purpose of the concept. And the notable aspect of humanism is, it’s not really an active thing: it does not codify behavior, it does not involve dictating or preaching or, really, much of anything beyond simple guidelines, and fully 50 percent of why those guidelines even exist is because religion has devoted so much effort into establishing an alternate concept: that the appeasement of some authority figure rates higher in priority than the people in our community. Expressed this way, it sounds like a dictatorship, and anyone is welcome to define the fundamental difference, especially in a way that makes religion “good.”

I don’t want to be unfair, and will readily admit that a lot of religiously-motivated guidelines and proscriptions revolve around how we treat others; that’s excellent, and I say that honestly. There’s a big caveat that’s going to come up shortly, however, so right now I’ll simply repeat that the primary difference between humanism and religion is the overall goal: humanism puts people first, while religion puts authority first. That’s obeisance, not morality.

Which brings us to the heart of the matter, which is, we’re not stupid. We can actually figure out, with very little effort, good courses of action; benefit and detriment are not exactly advanced concepts far beyond the scope of our primitive little brains. And this is where it gets the most amusing, because a frequent lament from the religious, part of the rabid motivation behind decrying evolution, is that we would be savages, nothing but animals, without the guidance of a holy spirit. Savor, for a moment, the frequently-repeated idea that we were made in god’s image, and what this is supposedly saying. Even if we blithely ignore the idea that such a god must be a savage itself (the more literal interpretation of “in god’s image”,) we still come back to the nuanced idea that we were intended to be this way, for whatever reason, and yet still given free will to decide whether or not we could actually decide something. Yeah, figure that one out. Meanwhile, those that understand biology know we are animals ourselves, by every definition except the weird religious one, and those that understand animal behavior know of the community-supporting instincts that countless other species maintain, ensuring the cohesion of the pack or troop or hive; in a disturbing number of cases, it’s far better than what we humans get up to, despite our vaunted intelligence and guidance from on high.

In fact, far too often, it’s precisely because of this guidance. It is an ultimate authority that is invariably referred to when concepts such as heretics and infidels are resorted to, and it’s remarkably easy for people in this country to forget (or openly and forcefully ignore) that the violent response fostered by such concepts still goes on today in numerous parts of the world. But even if we consider these exceptions rather than common facets, the amount of religiously-inspired bigotry, throughout the world, is astounding, as is the blatant classism that’s due to religion. People do not flaunt religious symbols as reminders of how to behave, for themselves or others, but to define themselves as ‘special.’ And an awful lot of religious activity, supposedly to instill moral behavior, does not consist of making a convincing case for the benefits, but only of pronouncing what someone must do, on penalty of god’s wrath. Again, not guidance, and in fact, blatant arrogance and condescension towards others in the assumption that they cannot make decisions on their own, nor fathom a decent rationale.

It is instructive to examine the differences between sin and crime. Crimes are actions that deprive or injure others, or at least (in the case of traffic laws) stand the chance of doing so, and within most enlightened and progressive governments, are enforced without regard to class distinctions; that last aspect is where secularity comes in, establishing a more equal status among all residents. Sin, however, can be just about anything, and very often demonstrates no harm or even outward effect other than offending a claimed deity; think of homosexuality, masturbation, eating shellfish, building fires on the sabbath, taking the lord’s name in vain, and so on. Every religion has its own particular set, and outside of things that receive the title of ‘sin,’ there are countless more proscribed actions and attitudes in attendance. Many of them, however, are particular to only one religion, and often seen as irrelevant or downright goofy when viewed by others. Right here is where religious conflict arises, as those steeped in the ultimate authority angle take grave offense at those who do not follow or recognize such proscriptions, and rather than accepting the idea that differences in cultures are hardly anything worth worrying about, they insist that their own peculiar rules should be followed by all others regardless. The argument that atheism is “just another form of religion” is trashed by the simple fact that atheists, and humanists, claim no special status nor demand allowances for a personal culture; they just don’t think anyone else should demand them either, an emphasis on equality that is anathema to far too many religious folk.

We come back to the religious idea that obeying authority is what defines ‘good,’ which might initially sound reasonable – until, at least, we consider the huge number of authority figures throughout history that were vicious and loathsome. The moral lesson that we inevitably realize is that authority must be beholden to the higher standard of ‘good’ (or ‘beneficial,’ as I tend to say to distinguish it from the cultural belief that “god=good”) – if our leaders are incapable of maintaining a standard of beneficial actions to as many as possible, then they do not deserve a following. The utility and benefit of this simple criteria cannot be emphasized enough, since it was only in its absence that so many of history’s abominable events even took place.

Now we get the the part where it gets the most interesting. I’ve remarked before that I have never, ever, seen one perfectly devout religious individual, either personally or even heard tell of; without exception, all seem perfectly willing to ignore certain aspects of their faith and/or their scripture. And truth be told, the emphasis on the important aspects, the ones worthy of attention and devotion, changes frequently. Some of the sins and proscriptions mentioned earlier, while considered part of the religion held by any given individual, are nonetheless ignored as unimportant or irrelevant, as are many others. Most striking is the distance often implied or stated between the fringe elements, the zealous fanatics or terrorists, and the ‘mainstream’ religious cultures, because the aspects that the fanatics are frothing over are usually right there in the scripture; it’s the mainstream faithful that are ignoring those passages. Which is fine, and commendable really – most of those passages are batshit anyway. But if they are, as we are told, intended as guidance, then how does this even occur? Are we admitting that some of these words from on high are not only useless, they’re outwardly damaging to culture and individuals? How can we, poor ignorant savages that we are, dismiss the bits that condone slavery and child beating? How are we even capable of thinking that exterminating the heretics is something not worth pursuing?

The answer, of course, is that culture defines our guidance and acceptable actions more than scripture in these cases, and for most cases; in times past, it was culture that made us feel we should be following them. And culture is us – we define it and shape it, often all by our feeble little selves. Let’s face it: if we’re trusted to drive vehicles and fly aircraft, raise kids and even possess sharp objects, we’re probably capable of making a few nuanced decisions.

Which is not to say that we can do without any form of guidance and trust in our sense of community; we are still a conflicted and subconsciously-motivated species, prone to justifying base desires in myriad ways. But neither are we so abysmally stupid that we cannot reason out good courses of action on our own without the input of any supposed higher power, especially when we can see countless aspects of this input that not only serve no beneficial purpose, they’re actively harmful to others and inhibit a respectful and mutually supportive society. [It is, unsurprisingly, this aspect that fosters the abandonment of faith in many people, since it’s hard for any thinking person to look at guidelines for the appropriate treatment of slaves and believe that this came from a higher being and not some self-important priest back in the bronze age.] Most importantly, useful guidance is going to come from having the goals of a strong and supportive community, an attitude that is not fostered by obeisance or the self-imposed status of being devout.

If we can look back at history and be appalled at the actions of the authority figures therein, then we have everything we need to make decisions without special guidance; we already know what constitutes good and bad. And when the inevitable argument that “god must be good” comes up, we have the simple criteria that we can easily see what’s good, and what’s not, for those around us – redefining “good” is unnecessary. And I should never have to offer this reminder, but usually do anyway: it is not god that is dictating actions, but some lesser authority figure, often while interpreting scripture rather cavalierly. We are frequently told that god has the power to do anything, so no help from us is necessary, is it? Meanwhile, the same people tell us god wants us to be good, so we have the power to make these decisions, correct? And as a final point, the very first thing that any authority figure bent on manipulation insists upon is utter, unquestioning servitude – don’t think, don’t speak up, don’t deviate from the status quo. Yeah, great – that’s always proven to be beneficial.

[I insert here a peculiar reflection. The foremost path to holy damnation is, naturally, failure to accept god in one’s heart and all such variations. However, valuing people around us in defiance of this, while earning one a place in hell, still stands to benefit others – a rather selfless pursuit, with of course one person earning punishment while perhaps many others gaining benefits; this is why I have often pointed out that being concerned with one’s own salvation is remarkably self-centered and anti-social. Curiously, however, this is exactly what jesus is said to have done, dying to absolve others’ sins. But then, the message we are repeatedly told this provides is, “be blindly faithful.” Seriously, what the fuck? Now, while this is solely a christian issue, it demonstrates a very common trait throughout all religions, that of abandoning thinking and careful examination for parroting scripture, no matter how hypocritical or pointless it may be – and these same people want to tell us that this is a useful path.]

Here’s a final aspect that bears examination. Throughout the world, there are countless religiously-motivated efforts to control the actions and choices of others, ranging from trying to suppress science and biology education in public schools through anti-homosexual legislation to outright beheadings; the influence of religion is far-reaching even when being completely pointless and, in many cases, highly detrimental and damaging. Now, numerous religious folk could read this and assert that this does not describe their particular sect of religion. But quite frankly, who gives a shit? No one is concerned with who ignores which passage, and it’s pretty damn cowardly to try and protect one’s status by simply saying, “It wasn’t me.” If the guidance is what is supposed to set religious folk apart, where is the guidance to act against such abuses, to instead emphasize beneficial works and goals? Why do these distasteful ‘fringe’ elements still exist, and who’s going to take responsibility for it?

And why is it, whenever anyone actually speaks out against such abuses, the vast majority of religious folk begin to whine and froth that it’s an attempt to destroy religion? Suddenly, they want to be closely associated with such elements? They want to be defined as abusive, manipulative, and unstable? I would have thought that eliminating such elements – cleaning their own house, as it were – would be the kind of good actions that they keep telling me their god wants them to do, but what do I know?

But how? Part 21: Assertion

Al Denelsbeck

So, I started this category many moons ago with the idea that it would be used to answer (mostly unasked) questions that religious folk like to pose towards atheists, essentially showing how a secular standpoint covers more bases than it’s usually given credit for. At times since, the structure of posing an initial question hasn’t really worked, yet I still felt that the topic fit in with the overall theme. We’re going to completely subvert the concept with this one, because today’s topic is assertion, which is about as far removed from seeking answers as one can get.

The vast majority of religions rely distinctly on assertions – statements of supposed Truth™ that come without any supporting evidence or even rationale. At best, there are references to scripture, which is a term used for stories that are asserted as being not just true, but divinely-inspired – in complete disregard of the entire concept of fiction, including the bare fact that it’s thousands of times easier to write than absolute truth. Challenge any religious person to provide support at all for the idea that their scripture is factual, and the vast majority of the times all you’ll hear is, “Because it says so right inside!” It’s extremely hard to treat such claims with dignity rather than blurting out, “You’re just not grasping how fiction works, are you?”

Much worse, however, are the millions of direct claims made without even the support of scripture, ranging from what was really meant to radical reinterpretations and, at times, completely unrelated statements. While most of the major religions rely on a specific set of scripture, they somehow manage to section off into thousands of variations, each with their own sets of rules and truths. If you think about it, scripture should certainly be able to stand on its own, without any authority figure to express or interpret it – no priests or rabbis or imams or other holy folk – but this is hardly the case, is it? And from these myriad religious leaders comes a huge selection of verities, many at remarkable odds to one another despite supposedly coming from the same source. Saying nothing, naturally, of the wide variety of religions the world over, all laying claim to truth and purity.

Overall, though, it’s not hard to see why assertion is even used in the first place. Our nature as a species is to puzzle things out, to seek answers, and we especially don’t like uncertainty – there are strong indications that uncertainty sets up negative reactions in our brains. The physical world isn’t very accommodating in such regards; lots of things that we deal with have no certainty to them, no absolutes, no clear demarcations. Nature has but a few laws, and beyond those constraints everything exists in a vast grey area. We are the ones that impose names and numbers, that rely on Olympics and Guinness Books, that determine species and states and speed limits, that even have a concept of best. The only comparisons in nature take place on extremely limited scales, determining what’s better right at the moment. While there may be a fastest springbok in the world, the sole thing that matters is if any of them are fast enough to avoid the predator currently bearing down.

Yet, with all this plainly evident around us, we take solace in absolutes; we want answers that will remain the same regardless, so we never have to compare, never have to think about them again. And we want this bad enough that we’ll actually fall for assertions, readily ignoring the fact that there is no method of absolute certainty, and no examples of such. We even use worthless shortcuts in our thinking to produce such states, believing, for instance, that the most expensive product is the best. Advertisers, restricted by laws against fraud or unsubstantiated claims, nevertheless find ways to assure us of their product’s superiority with such statements as, “the most efficient in its class,” never telling us what the class consists of or exactly how few others inhabit it. Time and again, we’re told to speak confidently – it will help us in public speaking, in sales pitches, in interactions with potential mates; we’re almost never told to back up our claims, just to sound like we’re assured of ourselves. Such a simple and transparent thing, and we’ve been relying on it for centuries, if not millennia.

There’s more to it than that, however. We’re also ridiculously prone to following the flock, eschewing individuality of thought and decision in favor of group acceptance and support. If enough other people believe it, then hey, it must be true, assuming unconsciously that they’ve done the legwork, at least. Conformity and social dynamics takes precedence, far too often, over rational consideration, making us more afraid of standing out than of making a wrong decision. Churches, unsurprisingly, prey on this, usually requiring weekly (at least) devotionals in the biggest roomful of people they can manage – with commensurate fees, of course. While we can receive schooling in our youth and somehow, miraculously, retain most of this throughout our lives, basic ethical guidelines from a single set of scripture seem to flee our minds within days. Funny, that.

It is interesting comparing this approach with that used within most forms of schooling, and maintained throughout all scientific endeavor. Certainty is considered unattainable, and truth is a lie; we have only what we can demonstrate, the effects that stem from the causes. The binary yes/no, true/false ideology is ignored in favor of probability, the confidence we can have in seeing the same results over and over again. No one has to assure us that heat will dissipate among its surroundings, or assert that gravity really exists; there’s no point to it because it’s readily observable. Questioning is just fine, even encouraged, and usually results in answers and demonstrations – no faith is necessary nor requested. In fact, this callback to our school days is informative in itself, because the worst teachers were the ones that asserted and failed to explain. Aside from that, it was the bullies that shouted to try and drive their points home, unable to make a plausible case and too insecure to consider other alternatives. How many among them were trying to drown out not just the voices of dissent among the others, but the voices of uncertainty within their own heads?

When it comes to religious ‘discussions,’ especially online and anonymous, the assertions come flying fast and thick. It’s easy to understand why so many religious folk find it necessary to separate the schooling of their children from the public offerings, and easy to spot those that have received this little gift. The only thing that one can do with an assertion is repeat it, more forcefully if necessary – who hasn’t seen the ALL CAPS tactic? – or perhaps buttressed with the threats of damnation. It’s unfortunate that too many adults fail to perceive of the disservice they do to children in this regard, terrified of the possibility of ‘straying’ or perhaps assured that this was the best way, but those who cannot handle a logical chain of thought, that know only how to repeat, cannot fare well in countless aspects of our culture; bearing a self-imposed title of superiority isn’t one percent as useful as being functional and able to think on one’s own.

More numerous are the ones who straddle the fence, willing to engage in actual discussion but unable to relinquish the hold of the assertion. Faced with the myriad things imparted to them in their religious schooling that are not reflected in any form in our physical world, they cannot entertain the thought that the assertions were dead wrong, but instead try to find ways to excuse the discrepancies, often creating entirely new assertions just to shore up the original ones. From such tactics we have the oft-repeated ideas that the vast fossil record is a test of faith, or that the six days of creation were metaphorical days (because, you know, we feeble-minded humans needed an easier term to grasp than, “thousands of years.”) Very frequently, these new explanations, springing only from the imagination of those proposing them, are then treated as unassailable facts, instead of just one of many thousands of possible explanations for the discrepancies. It’s commendable to be open-minded, as we are often urged, and consider other explanations – but this should also (if we are being honest and truly open-minded) include explanations that do not support the assertions, rather than whatever one works best to shore up the faith, all others be damned. Moreover, there isn’t a lot of value to considering the thousands of different explanations, unless we actually stop and consider which ones fit best, and especially, which predict future results; this is probability, the functional application of considering the options, because it serves to start selecting out the unlikely ones and culling our options down to the fewest possible.

That ‘future use’ bit is the primary and overriding benefit of knowledge. If we learn something that can tell us what will happen, it’s hard to argue the usefulness of this, isn’t it? Religion and scripture are notoriously bad about this, the vast majority of predictions related through them having already failed to occur (and still conveniently dodged with even more assertions.) As we learned about physical laws and properties, we put them to continual and ever-expanding use, improving our living conditions hugely, and even informing us of what can go wrong – while religion has been attempting to guide mankind in moral and behavioral manners for centuries to millennia with remarkably little to show for it. Instead, most of what assertion accomplishes is the indulgence of the religious individual, permitting them to avoid ever having to admit to being wrong, denying the value of certainty through dependable results and replacing it with certainty by declaration, all evidence to the contrary being dismissed. And all that this accomplishes is a sop to their own ego.

We, as a species, have a hard time admitting to being wrong, a peculiar facet of competition and social judgment. The ugly truth is, we simply cannot avoid being wrong – it’s going to happen, every day in fact. We can deny that this occurs, or we can learn from it, using it to guide our future selves into more accurate and useful decisions – and this is actually the way our brains work, their primary purpose in fact. Sometimes it’s easy; sometimes it takes a lot of thought. Yet nothing about thinking is actually hard – the only hard part is not getting the answer right away, the indulgence that we desire (especially one that panders to our egos.) But, you tell me: is it better to work for this indulgence, and arrive at answers that provide future benefit, or is it better to find ways to fake it just for the immediate gratification?

And finally, a simple observation: truth should be plainly self-evident – I mean, how could it not? Yet if we ever have to insist that this is how things must be – if we ever have to assert a state of affairs to convince others because the evidence simply doesn’t support it – how can we, in any manner, consider this truth? Why would such a thing even be necessary?

But how? Part 20: Consistency

Al Denelsbeck

This episode of ‘But how?’ is going to deal more with observations than answering any specific questions through a secular outlook; as such, the title question itself doesn’t really fit, but there still may be a lot of things that become clearer nonetheless. So let’s take a look at consistency in regards to religion.

From time to time, I hear the argument that ‘science’ changes all the time, but religion (or whatever the speaker’s personal definition of it, anyway) remains the same, as it always has. There are two immediate observations that demand attention right off the bat. The first is, ‘science’ used in this manner is the body of knowledge gained through scientific means (rather than the process itself) – the facts, not the practice. But since science is a methodical process of learning, reflecting mankind’s horrific lack of omniscience, of course it changes, just like every human being changes every minute of their lives as new experience adds to their store of knowledge. Having it any other way would be remarkably dull and pointless.

But even to think that science (or our body of knowledge) ‘changes’ significantly is warping reality to leverage a particular viewpoint. Our knowledge expands constantly, but not very much of that consists of changing what we once believed into something else. It’s not hard to find changes in dietary recommendations, for instance – even though a lot of these are corrections to radical misinterpretations of scientific studies by popular media and agenda-driven sources – but this is a tiny aspect of scientific endeavor. Physical laws, engineering formulas, the functions of cells, the nature and behavior of electromagnetic radiation, the atomic table, and so on and so on… all hashed out long ago, few of them even being refined, much less changed. We knew, to a large extent, what DNA did before we even knew what it was. In fact, a large portion of scientific findings right now consists of confirming theories and suspicions, such as gravitational waves, the Higgs boson, and even relativistic time dilation. To say that science constantly changes broadly implies that someone who got their PhD fifty years ago would find it to be worthless now, which of course is far from the case.

The second point that must be highlighted with such an attitude is, to think that religion – any religion, or even any aspect thereof – remains the same only demonstrates a stunning ignorance of religious history. Religion doesn’t quite change as much as, say, fashion, but it’s a lot closer to that than to any charitable or even magnanimous definition of “unchanging.”

Even on very small scales, there is little consistency to be found. In a previous post I expressed significant doubt that any two religious people could agree on a majority of ‘facts’ about their religion, which is especially amusing since the structure of so many faiths is to follow the pronouncements of their religious leaders, regardless of how little sense they might make or any ability whatsoever to support such pronouncements with evidence; “faith” is itself a structure of unquestioning acceptance. Most religions are built on authority, and as we are told, there is only one authority to be found… well, okay, not to be found in any way, but there nonetheless. We know this because we have it on good authority – just, not the authority which is the only authority that counts; mouthpieces are enlisted instead, spokespeople for an omnipotent being, because. Seriously, we never get any better explanation than, “because.” This state of affairs results in more schisms, sects, and splinters than any other topic you can name; put this down to hyperbole if you like, but if you do find a topic that is more fractured and scattered than religion, the comparison still won’t be complimentary. Any devotee will be happy to tell you how correct their own version is without cognizance of the bare facts that a) their version is not followed by many people, and b) it did not exist a hundred years ago. That sounds enormously contentious, and anyone is welcome to dispute it; show me how the attitudes, proscriptions, practices, and rituals are exactly the same as they had been – I wish you the best of luck. In the meantime, we are expected to believe that billions of people over the history of mankind got it all wrong until right here and now, when this handful finally got it right. Even if there were some way to establish this ludicrous proposal as absolutely true, it’s rather damning of religion itself being able to fulfill the one function that it has.

More entertaining are the inconsistencies found within any given faction. We are often assured that scripture (any scripture you care to name) is god’s word and therefore irrefutable fact, but we somehow cannot find anyone that doesn’t willfully ignore those sections that they find inconvenient. At best, we get to hear that said sections are intended only metaphorically, but how this is determined is never fully explained – it’s certainly not a consistent set of rules or indicators that are followed throughout, applicable without fail to all aspects of scripture. Moreover, there is no agreement over which sections are metaphorical and which are literal Truth™, but there is a certain ironic trait to be noted: some of the sections largely considered metaphorical gained this current status because science demonstrated that they could in no way be literal.

[It occurs to me that a large number of religious folk may be entirely unfamiliar with this, since their perspective comes solely from their personal involvement in their church or temple or whatever, which not only fosters at least some consistency, but rarely involves any questioning at all. Yet as an outspoken atheist that’s quite active online, the huge variety of beliefs and practices is apparent. While I’m more than happy to consider any given viewpoint as a personal perspective, those presenting such perspectives never have the attitude that these are individual views, but rather representative of The One True Way – often enough with commensurate condescension over anyone who fails to recognize this. I shouldn’t need to remind anyone how frequently such attitudes result in bloodshed, either.]

The various schisms shouldn’t be surprising, however, when we recognize that few, if any, collections of scripture maintain any consistency within – not in message, not in tone, not in guidance and ideals for humankind, not in portrayal of events nor their connection to other historical records, and most especially not in concordance with demonstrable physical properties. One would think that Truth™ would be easily demonstrable, certainly not in disagreement with the world around us – and yet, these disagreements, such as promises of otherworldly realms and the assurance that miracles do indeed take place, are almost what defines religion. While physical traits and laws are dependable, repeatable, and predictable, concepts such as ‘supernatural’ and ‘metaphysical’ exist as departures from this consistency, unable to be demonstrated or even defined firmly; as such, anyone can use them virtually at will. The vague nature of these terms means that they can only serve the purpose of self-confirmation, since there are no standards to be met and thus no way to actually rule them out.

As a small aside, note how often the people who find ‘supernatural’ influence in everything from being uninjured in a car accident to finding their lost sweater somehow manage to show how their god is caring. When the bad things happen, these are never ‘miracles’ – a curious set of evidential standards. On those rare occasions when death comes to someone they know, there is often no hesitation in claiming this is still part of a plan, with the assumption that this is a beneficial plan, though how this could possibly be determined remains unknown. Faced, however, with the overwhelming evidence that things on this planet can in no way be considered universally good, a lot of religious folk quickly point the finger at people being flawed – despite their assertions that we were all made by a perfect being. If this is all part of a plan, doesn’t this mean that it makes no difference what we do or how we behave?

Even ignoring those overriding issues, there is the simpler one that most scripture cannot even agree with itself, featuring countless contradictions within. Coupled with imprecise passages wide open for interpretation, as well as the tendency among to faithful to choose only those passages that fit a specific purpose, we find that scripture can be used as justification for just about any behavior imaginable, bringing us back once again to how often the practices of any given religion have changed over time. Take a quick look at the hotbutton issues of any religious group, and compare them to what was considered important just three decades ago, much less one hundred, two hundred, or five hundred years ago. It is especially amusing to see how many women are openly religious, given the fact that all of the abrahamic scriptures dictate how little influence females are permitted to have. Those sections aren’t actually part of the plan, I’m guessing.

As you might imagine from the other subject matter on this blog, I have a lot of exposure to those that try to argue against evolution, and the inconsistencies in these discussions are vast. They range from the simpler, “evolution takes place, but it was all started by god long ago,” to the fundamental creationist standpoint that the Earth is only 6,000 years old and every other interpretation is fostered by satan – good thing the religious have it all spelled out for them and can agree on this issue. Even intelligent design, a concept claimed to be scientific in nature that nevertheless shows how god must exist, has two interchangeable definitions of ‘irreducible complexity’ that don’t logically intersect. And yet there is a notable consistency among many religious debaters – not perfect, mind you, but transcending most demarcations among the religious that anyone cares to make – and that is the standards of evidence and proof. Evolution, naturally, is proven completely false by any inconsistency found therein, any lack of direct evidence, any two factors which do not seem to agree, and this is regardless of how little the religious debater actually understands about evolution (which is most often very little indeed, despite how simple it really is.) Holding any religion at all up to the same standards would trash it instantaneously, which is naturally why it is never done. This appears very distinctly in many arguments, often revolving around those people who blindly follow the pronouncements of scientists or the dogma of science itself, despite the fact that religion is built upon these two concepts and could not exist without them – faith is good when the religious do it, but not when it’s perceived to be done by anyone else. That science is, by nature and practice, diametrically opposed to the concept of faith is simply never grasped in such conversations.

More amusing is how science is actually used in the same discussions, far too often. An oft-repeated canard is that the second law of thermodynamics disproves evolution, demonstrating how little the person using it actually understands about physics, but much worse, the first law of thermodynamics trashes gods in every named form. This selectivity in finding science useful or delusional occurs quite often (and not just among the religious, it should be said.) In discussions on the studies that found portions of existing DNA in dinosaur bones, the religious arguments often revolved around a) it being impossible for DNA to exist that long, and b) that testing would show that the bones weren’t really that old. Both of these, naturally, are scientific processes, ones that weren’t ignored during the original studies, but apparently one can pick and choose the science that they find dependable (I think it revolves around how conveniently it supports a pre-existing view.) Don’t get me wrong: scientific findings do indeed clash, and can be used to prove previous studies wrong – it happens quite frequently. But such changes in scientific knowledge take place with careful demonstrations, rather than the typical religious argument that if we evolved from monkeys we shouldn’t still have monkeys. I’ve said it before, but there’s something precious about the faithful soul that thinks their cute little canard somehow would never have occurred to the thousands of scientists who have been working with the same concepts for decades.

I’ve also remarked before about the hypocritical double-standard of personal choice and ultimate authority, shown far too often by religious folk. When confronted with much of the same stuff above, or the combined nonsense and pointlessness of most of their scripture, the defense is that religion is a personal choice, and even a right that they possess (it’s not – it just cannot really be denied, like whether or not one likes vanilla ice cream.) Personal choices, however, are never used to influence legislature, to dictate how children should be raised, or even to slaughter infidels. Personal choices do not extend beyond one’s own brain; anything else obviously isn’t ‘personal.’ And if we are recommending (or forcing) any course of action for anyone else, we should be able to rationally support such with the overriding beneficial aspects, rather than some childish appeal to writings several thousand years old that do not even present the planet in the correct shape. But note, too, that the argument of religion as a personal choice vanishes as soon as the individual leaves the arena of debate, and becomes Truth™ everywhere thereafter.

There are more amusing bits. I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard variations of the argument that there are too many religious people in the world, so they can’t all be wrong. Aside from the simple response of, “why can’t they?”, there is the curious double-standards of category that arise every time this argument appears; all of a sudden, every religion can be joined together in harmony – the Native American who believes in a trickster god somehow supports the concept of karmic rebirth, it would seem. The argument also somehow skips over the bare fact of how many people the world over believe in all of the scientific findings we’ve made over the centuries, like the age and origin of the earth and how long life took to develop. It also ignores the plain, simple fact that it doesn’t really matter what anyone believes, since opinion does not establish reality; what kind of results can be produced? We’re still waiting for that, from any religion…

Also, curiously, a lot of religious folk seem to somehow believe that everyone who promotes the concept of, you know, physical laws and life as happenstance is forwarding an agenda, yet their church, which wouldn’t even exist without both a faithful flock and a shitload of donations, is only interested in promoting Truth™. And let’s not forget the argument that atheists and their ilk never tackle sophisticated theology, despite the fact that 99.9997% of religious folk have absolutely no knowledge of such themselves and never produce it when making their own stand. Add in how atheists never pick on the reactive and bloodthirsty religions, but only the peaceful and non-reactive ones like those that the arguer belongs to – despite professing that there is only One True Religion.

[Another aside: in the aforementioned case, islam is usually the ‘reactive’ religion in mind, demonstrating how few people understand that islamic terrorism is a tiny, radical subset of a larger faith that is no more violent than christianity – all of them have their extremists. And while extremism can have many root causes, the concepts of ultimate authority and deity-approved actions certainly aren’t detrimental, are they? Nor are they specific to any religion, imagine that.]

I could go on, but I suspect the overall claim of consistency is effectively trashed. There is a more interesting concept that can be found within, however, and that’s how often the rules and standards and practices exist only as far as they support the religious standpoint. If one already has a preferred answer and selects only the stuff that supports it, then a case can be made for anything at all. A consistent set of practices and standards, however, especially ones that predict results, are the only things that will tell us when we’re on the right track – anything else is self-indulgence.

But how? Part 19: The defense against evil

Al Denelsbeck

I was working on another post that dealt with clarifying some details about atheism, and the initial premise of this was one of those points. As I started to address it, I realized that it wasn’t going to be covered in a paragraph or two, and so it has become the latest installment in the But How? lineup, to wit: But how does atheism or secularity defend against evil?

What I was originally correcting was the idea that atheism equates with satanism, a belief that, though asinine, is held by a surprising number of people. The short answer is, if atheists don’t believe in god, they sure as hell (a ha ha) don’t believe in another character from the same stories, especially one that the nonexistent god was supposed to have created – this is kind of a “no shit” point that it would seem unnecessary to make, but many people don’t apply logic even this far. And in fact, if it helps, atheism shouldn’t be considered a disbelief in god, but all of them, every one ever proposed, and indeed all supernatural things whatsoever. So no angels, demons, wraiths, blah blah blah. I won’t assert that this applies to every atheist out there, but it’s pretty safe to treat it as an overriding rule.

Yet there’s another argument that comes into play, and that’s the frequent idea that, if you do not “accept god into your heart” or any variation of a faithful defense, this automatically allows one to be controlled by satan or overtaken by evil tendencies or whatever – the variations are numerous, but largely similar in concept. This assumes the preconception – a priori if you want to sound like a pompous ass – that evil is a distinctive, coherent force or property at least (if not personified in whatever archvillain one prefers,) and not just a label we apply to actions or concepts that we really disagree with. The former has never been demonstrated in any objective manner whatsoever, while the latter is how the concept is used constantly, even by the devout. We’ll come back to this shortly.

Further, as the meddling kids pull off the rubber mask, we find underneath (in chorus now) “M’sieur Blaise Pascal!” – the argument is just a variation of Pascal’s Wager, and suffers the same flaws. Briefly, if there is no god but you believe in one, no biggie, but if there is a god and you don’t believe, you’re hell-fodder. Pascal liked math, which might be the reasoning behind reducing this whole concept to a binary state (or that might just be pop psychology,) but it ignores the myriad problems such as which god is correct, or whether faith through fear is true, or the utter pointlessness of requiring faith without evidence (making it some sort of petty game,) and all that rot.

Let’s take a closer look at this game. We are to believe, it seems, that without divine acceptance, we are either prone to or automatically within the thrall of evil itself. Since this is a deliberate state of affairs, one must ask what purpose this serves, and most especially, why is it weighted towards the bad side? Challenges of a similar nature that we place before ourselves are for developing skills that will be useful later in life (you know, improvement and survival,) but in this case, the ‘payoff’ happens after death and is, by most accounts, quite final. This explicitly implies that the status of our souls is some kind of currency, and not for our own use. The only religions where a retained status after death makes even passing sense are those with a reincarnation cycle that allows progression, and even then, we must ask why.

It’s easy to assume that this ‘automatic evil’ pretty much necessitates that atheists alone would participate in more evil actions overall than any other demographic, but what it should actually demonstrate is which religion is the One True Faith™, because every other religion would be susceptible to the very same thing. Can evidence of this be found? Yeah, good luck with those statistics. It would also necessitate that it should be quite hard to tell when we ourselves – and by this I mean everyone – are under the influence of this evil; otherwise we would consciously steer away from it. What we’re inexorably approaching is the definition of ‘evil’ itself, to even quantify the actions. This is where it gets interesting.

Any religion you name will have adherents that answer it this simply: “Evil is anything against my religion.” Not exactly an objective measure, especially when religions routinely clash over this definition, often in extremely bloody ways, still – yes, check a week’s worth of world news, this is not a thing of the past. Teaching evolution? Evil. Allowing women to show their faces in public? Evil. Eating cows or pigs? Evil. Starting fires on Saturday? Evil. It’s pretty safe to say that everyone is able to be considered evil by at least someone else, even if it’s for playing music too loud too late at night. I’m going to call this a pretty shitass way of determining the benefits of one’s actions. Which is why so much of law is dedicated not towards promoting some arbitrary religious definition of acceptable behavior, but towards restricting those actions which are openly detrimental to others in a demonstrable and inarguable way. Benefit and detriment are not difficult concepts for the vast majority of human interactions, and wonder of wonders, we have brains capable of fathoming them.

Keeping with the theme that divine grace must be obtained, this means that we must choose the correct faith among all of those available. Again, most religious folk treat this in a pretty binary way: there is one religion (the one they grew up with, by a vast margin,) and a bunch of obvious delusions; this pretty much assumes that getting it right is mostly a matter of birth or happenstance. If we exercise reason all the way up to considering that any other religions might be legitimate, then the game becomes, how are we to choose the correct one? I mean, let’s be real: they all promise to be the word of god and/or the One True Way, so assurances aren’t a solution. Thus, if we end up using our judgment, we’re going to have to understand what good and evil really are – which, again, isn’t really that hard. The alternative is to believe (as many do) that revelation, or our instincts, are supposed to guide the way. Instincts obviously haven’t done much to whittle down the plethora of choices – indeed, there are more now than ever before in history – while revelation pretty much means that god is doing the choosing, doesn’t it? So now we aren’t supposed to make a choice? This process isn’t resolving itself too quickly, is it?

[It is worth bringing something else up here: if we consider any behaviors that religious folk have gotten up to over the centuries as being wrong – holy wars, witch hunts, misogyny, bigotry, slavery, anti-semitism, beating children – then we are assuming that we can and should use our own judgment of what’s right or wrong. Which is fine – I’ve always argued in favor of this remarkably simple action. But religious folk, all too often, resort to their scripture as being the final word, abdicating thought in favor of blind fealty. Curiously, they only seem to do it for things that a) are currently socially acceptable, and b) align with what they want to do in the first place.]

Another commonly claimed aspect of the inevitable descent into evil without faith is, “doing the devil’s work” – the primary point of becoming evil, so we are told, is that one recruits more followers, satan’s own missionaries. So of course, this should be pretty obvious as well. Since we’re here on an openly atheist blog, this is rather solid evidence of this recruitment, isn’t it? No argument from me, believe it or not. Of course, it also applies, and often much more so, to most other religions as well – the line up there about “missionaries” was not accidental. Religious folk are notoriously bad about seeing things from a narrow perspective, and this usually includes the idea that they themselves couldn’t possibly be evil, but if we’re going to treat this as a serious aspect of theology, then we have to dispense with the special rules that automatically favor any given party. Again, which religion is the correct one? I mean, we’re talking about the polar extremes of good and evil, so this should, by all rights and definitions, be pretty damn obvious. But it isn’t, is it?

Let’s step back and consider what the recruitment of evil might actually look like. No one, of course, wants to be evil, so nothing overt can take place; it would have to be subtle and misleading, easy for people to mistake as good while not actually accomplishing anything good. Quite a few different techniques might fit with this, such as an environment where questioning authority figures is bad, and the delineation of rules that don’t really accomplish anything but cannot be broken, and most especially, the creation of separate groups of people that reinforce certain standards within and discourage questioning and critical examination; this might even go so far as to establish ‘pat answers’ that don’t really answer anything and dismiss difficult topics completely. You know, like, “It’s all part of a master plan.” Yes, I just described the vast majority of churches to a T.

Contrast this against both atheism and secularity, which don’t have churches and rarely even promote group gatherings, encourage critical examination and the consideration of alternatives, and concentrate on guidance that can objectively be considered good by everyone, or at least as many people as humanly possible. Oh, and the complete eradication of arbitrary privilege and ersatz authority.

I’m not trying to be funny, and I’m not making the point that churches or religion overall are tools of the devil – I consider the whole concept to be horseshit, remember? But the fact remains that, if you want to guide someone away from their inherent tendencies, there are a lot of ways to do this, and churches have employed them all at one time or another. Up to and including the very idea that not following their guidance was evil, regardless of where it actually led – you know, like witch hunts and holy wars and misogyny and slavery and so on and so on – you cannot kill an infidel unless you’ve first established the very concept of ‘infidel.’

All of this has been working from the standpoint that the churches promote, that evil is a coherent thing. However, it’s actually very easy to see how flawed this idea is, and secular humanism (and pretty much any ideology and philosophy not tied to a religion, as well as psychology and sociology) dismiss this as nonsense. Anyone – me, you, your folks – can do evil, or to be more objective, things that are openly detrimental to others without any outweighing benefits. I make it a point throughout this blog to clarify that it’s not what people are, but what they do; trying to apply a label to someone is a shortcut in thinking, and purposefully dismisses everything that they might do that wouldn’t charitably fit within the label. When we examine the figures from history that are most often tagged as evil, the first thing we note is that there is no religion, nor lack thereof, that they can claim as common. Second comes the bare fact that none of them acted alone; they all had followers, thousands to millions of them in most cases, and these followers had even less commonality. Moreover, the vast majority believed they were doing good. The problems arise when one’s definition of good and evil are more self-serving and insular, to say nothing of political and expansionist goals hidden behind pre-existing religious motivations. Believing that there are absolutes in life makes decisions much easier – not better, just easier; see the bit above about ‘infidels.’

Or, we could view it all from a sociological and biological perspective, where good and evil are not useful concepts because they’re far too vague and subjective, and absolutes simply don’t exist. Instead, we see things from the standpoint of motivations, and become aware of how humans justify actions under the combined influences of survival behavior, status, protection, and yes, even tribalism. We become aware that everyone, given the right motivations, can be induced to do things highly detrimental to others, and often these motivations are easy to manipulate – moreover, these have been demonstrated countless times in tests. We start seeing how even rationality is not the distinctive trait that we often believe, but instead colored by impulses and reactions and ‘fitting in.’ For instance, does it make any sense at all to care about what any sports team is doing? What is this accomplishing, how is it improving anything at all for us? But still, it’s a huge interest among humans. Figure out why, and you start to understand how small a part rational thought actually plays – and that ‘rational’ is too subjective a term in itself.

So, since rationality is weak, that means that spiritual or scriptural guidance is a good thing to use in its place, right? Isn’t that the whole message? But again, this argument doesn’t carry very far – to the church doors and no farther, really. Every religion makes the same claims, but obviously, not every religion is providing the same guidance, and while it would be nice to assume that the faith we were raised within is, by the most remarkable of coincidences, the perfectly correct one, good luck convincing anyone else of that. Meanwhile, rationality and decision-making, despite the fact that there are no absolutes within, still perform astoundingly well, so well that we use them constantly and, surprise surprise, they are the very foundation of learning. If the creators’ message was that we shouldn’t rely on them, the message has certainly been quite mixed, since they’re more dependable than anything else that we’ve ever embraced. Worse, most religious folk even stuff rationality into their faith, as they decide what parts of scripture are just too batshit to follow or willingly dismiss the bloodthirstiness as metaphorical or ‘contextual.’ [Actually, a very large percentage of religious folk don’t even bother with the scripture, but simply follow what everyone else around them is doing…]

So we come back to the original question: How does atheism or secularity defend against evil? And the short answer to that is, by knowing what it is. And while it’s easy to believe that secularism handles the issue of evil by dismissing it as nonsense, it’s a lot deeper than that. Since we can all perform bad acts, there is no magic membership that exempts us from worrying about it; no holy emblem or weekly ritual will fend off the looming specter. We protect ourselves from evil, or more specifically from doing highly detrimental things to others, by maintaining an awareness of what we do and why we do it, by realizing it should not be defined by arbitrary standards or ‘what everyone else believes.’ We can figure out good and bad without difficulty in the vast majority of cases, and do not need ancient texts to fill in for our feeble reasoning powers.

And I feel this is necessary to add, even though the hint was dropped more than a few times above: the very idea of a ‘wolf at the door’ has been a manipulation technique for a long time now… and so has the automatic bestowal of ‘privilege.’ Like the late night infomercials that promise to solve a problem we never knew we had, religions have always been at the forefront of telling us of the looming threat, as well as actually defining it for us – with, naturally, the promise of making it all go away, send $29.95 to the address on your screen. And look, here’s a friend of ours who is a happy customer. But don’t worry – abusing those people over there isn’t evil, because they’re evil, so we’re actually doing good, be careful not to slip in the blood…

Though people have a really hard time believing this about their own churches and faith, they readily accept it, and even consider it necessary, when regarding all of those other faiths, especially the ones that, you know, hate outsiders and have all those nonsense rules. You know the ones. But there’s a logical point that is usually missed when making these considerations: just because all of the others are wrong, doesn’t mean that at least one has to be right.

Of course, all of this is coming from one of them atheists, so paying any attention at all is evil – close your eyes and run away, and certainly don’t think for yourself.

*     *     *     *

There are two other arguments that I have used several times in the past that are relevant to the considerations in this post, both intended as thinking exercises. The poet Baudelaire once wrote, “The devil’s finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist” (this was paraphrased in the film The Usual Suspects, where it helped the plot along.) And the nonexistence of both the devil and evil itself is what I’m saying above, so ol’ Baudy’s got the drop on me, eh? But, there’s an even greater trick, and that would be the devil convincing the world that he was god. Yes, that’s right, it would mean that every bit of scripture was a lie. But good luck finding any indication of this, like anachronisms, and events completely without evidence, and unbelievable stories, and followers provoked into vicious actions, and petty behavior from the gods…

The other argument that I’ve posited, strictly for giggles, was if there really is a creator, but religion itself is a test to see if humans will accept it blindly through crass attempts to appease our overlord, or if we will trust in our senses and everyday experiences and move beyond that, showing that we are truly an advanced species that can utilize the brainpower that we have. And then we go to the next level.

I still consider them both nonsense myself, since they both rely on supernatural stuff that just doesn’t work (which means that the second one defeats itself, really,) but they remain a set of alternate considerations intended to spark a bit more thinking than usual.

And a further note. They’re both “What if?” scenarios, which are admittedly pretty lame; anyone can make up anything at all and ask what would happen if it was true, which is really only useful to keep stoned college students occupied, at least until the Doritos run out. Yet, such scenarios are used all the time in religious discussions, and in fact, religion itself is largely the proposition that scripture and/or any interpretations thereof might be true, because we can’t actually support this at all (not to mention how often the bits that are demonstrably untrue are openly dodged.) This can’t lead anywhere except towards a favored conclusion. But critical thinking, and for that matter most of the sciences, instead focuses on support for any proposition, the weight of evidence and probability, and becomes both more trustworthy and less subjectively indulgent.

But how? Part 18: A vague creative force

Al Denelsbeck

I would be remiss if I did not talk about this particular aspect of religion, the belief in a vague, indeterminate source of creation – and, honestly, I have, numerous times in the past, but always while dealing with something more specific. It deserves its own dedicated post, which will be many times more specific and detailed than the topic itself has ever been, so let’s delve into the question, But how about a vague and indefinite creative force?

My guess is that some variation of this belief is held by a large percentage of religious folk – or at least, held in part, and we’re going to come back to this shortly. It encompasses deism and weak theism, and can supposedly incorporate not just any particular religion, but all of them. Thus, the conflicts between various religions, the contradictory supreme authorities, and all such difficulties are resolved, so it seems, by the idea that none of them are quite true, but have the right underlying idea. Often enough, the idea itself is vague and subject to a lot of interpretation. The common denominator is usually a creative force or being that is responsible for “starting it all.” Other ideas, such as something or someone with a plan, or something/someone who wants humans to accomplish… something… come up from time to time, and what we start getting into is each person’s individual concept of what this force/being might be. Suffice to say there’s no chance of answering the millions of these and I’m not going to try.

The point I’ve made before is, so what? Such a vague definition doesn’t really support religion at all. We’re talking a truly huge gap between some ill-defined starting point and whether masturbation is a sin or what should be eaten on Fridays, much less whether children should be taught evolution and whether or not I can consider myself good, and worthy of some afterlife reward. There is, in fact, no connection to anything at all, without further distinctions, so it’s not support for any behavior – or if you like, it’s support for any behavior whatsoever. Both are equally worthless.

Which is where the “in part” fragment above comes in. Because even complete and abiding belief in a vague creative force provides nothing upon which to build or support an ideology – something else is necessary on top of that, but this deficit is never recognized, most likely because it doesn’t actually exist. Pretty much every time the argument for vague creation comes up, it’s to dodge all of the flaws in the specific, organized religions that people actually believe in. If some concept of creation or supernaturality can escape the flaws in logic, then perhaps religion is not completely corrupt – you know: they’re not wrong wrong. And of course, it works very well with the much-abused concept that you can’t prove it doesn’t exist. In this way, belief and faith are considered salvaged from total failure, even though the vague creation idea doesn’t actually support them. I always thought religion was supposed to provide something for humans, and not just serve as partial credit for a wild guess, but maybe I was wrong about that. Well, not completely wrong…

We can ask what there is to actually support the idea of this vague force, why the concept even exists in the first place, since obviously scripture can’t be used. And there are two primary answers to this. The first is, so much of the world is religious, so even though there are countless variations all over the world, changing throughout history, they remain evidence of something, the one commonality among all of them. This has been expressed as a sensus divinitatis, a proposed ‘sense’ of the human body to recognize the divine. Which is a bit like saying that humans all over the world strive for more money, so this is our ability to sense Scrooge McDuck. C’mon, how else could you explain this?

It’s a sense, so this means it has some survival value to us, right? And we would be able to tell when this vague creative force is not around? That’s what a sense is, right? I’m willing to bet the immediate answer to this is that the creative force is always around us, so it never shuts off – which calls into question how you could consider it a sense, but also means we are proposing more properties for this creative force without any evidence of such. And we must assume that atheists don’t have it, is that correct? What about those of us who once believed? Does it go away, like after an accident? Funny, mine seemed to go away the more I thought about how little sense (a ha ha) it made. Perhaps it’s something you grow out of…

The second primary answer to why we are to believe in this vague force is the hoary old argument that everything has to come from something. Except the creative force of course. I’ve covered this feeble argument before, but basically, who says everything has to start somewhere? Demonstrate the creation of matter, in any way that you like. No, the Big Bang was not the creation of anything (look it up if you need to) – matter and energy remain here no matter what, just changing form or transferring to another location. The only thing that starts, to be perfectly honest, is consciousness, the collection of memories of living things, even as the matter that supports it comes from someplace else, not even bothering to carry this consciousness with it. It’s an exceptionally short-term function, unable to even pass along to offspring, but because it’s a distinct property of our lives, we feel it applies to everything.

This same bias in perspective may be what leads us to think that nothing is a default state, leading to the “why is there something rather than nothing” questions and so on. Or it could simply be that for a few thousand years we’ve been hearing the same old creation stories and have had the concept drilled into us. No matter what (god I’m on fire,) matter and energy can be found every place we look, and we have a firm understanding of the vast majority of its behavior, so assumptions about a necessary beginning come only from ignorance of this.

Now we come to the even more vague deities, the ones that are “all of everything,” or natural laws, or life essence itself, and all such claims – often characterized by the misuse of terms, e.g., Deepak Chopra’s perversion of the word, “quantum.” Most of these are so vague that one can only derive a value from them by enjoying the sound of them – sentence structure without internal relation. Seriously, god is nature? What does that even mean? I thought god was supernature? But without any properties or effects, these remain just words. You might as well say god is matter, or god is the space within atoms, or god is bacteria; what does this change, and why should anyone find this important?

Given that establishing either evidence for or a source of such concepts is exceptionally unlikely, we’re forced to conclude that what someone is working from here is simply feelings of spirituality – perhaps after other concepts of gods either failed to stand up under examination or were in some way dissatisfying. I realize I’m at risk of playing armchair psychologist, but if this isn’t addressed, the vague spiritualist will happily proclaim that those know-it-all atheists didn’t disprove their special version of god, as if there was such a thing as a burden of disproof – apparently, the default “nothing” state doesn’t apply to creative forces. Go figure. Regardless, if we have no properties and no explanatory power from such concepts, where else could it stem from except for self-indulgence? Even an overactive imagination isn’t going to provoke someone towards belief – that only occurs in mental illness.

‘Spirituality’ is an ill-defined concept in itself, mostly just covering feelings of awe from someone already inclined to seek a religious experience. The same feelings are easy to provoke in any number of ways, including meeting celebrities and being under the influence of drugs, but apparently these don’t count. Supposedly, if we feel awe when looking out over a majestic landscape, or when contemplating the interaction of life within the ecosystem, that’s our ability to recognize this evidence of creation. Aside from the fact that we have very good reasons for appreciating a fertile, habitable locale as opposed to an abandoned lot, it strikes me as far more awesome that such things arose through simple physical laws rather than being planned. Moreover, the idea is supposed to be that everything – including criminally-inclined and destructive humans with all of our pollution, including viruses, including species that eat other species alive from the inside – would have to be created too, so where are the spiritual feelings over those? And if anyone is accepting the entire universe as it is, well, fine – this is no different than accepting it without such creative influences. When both states – a creative force and the total lack thereof – fit the evidence without issues, how do we suggest that creative properties even exist, and why?

I keep coming back to this, but it’s key: there must be something that the idea of a vague creative force provides to us for it to have any value or point whatsoever. If we assume that creation is a ground state of being, akin to a physical law, so what? It’s not a law that we can use to either manipulate anything (like all other physical laws) or even predict; it is a definition without a purpose, like saying that I smacked you upside the head because porfodooti, porfodooti being the necessity of smacking you. Making up properties isn’t an accomplishment; young children do it all the time. What it invariably amounts to is, “argument for vague creative whatsit; therefore, I’m privileged.” Nobody ever argues for such a concept as if it’s a simple fact, like saying there’s a discarded cup on the street. It has some importance to them, in some way – most often, I think you’ll find, in a way that they know they can’t support with a rational argument, so they resort to a vague indefinite thing that can’t be disproven and consider that a win. They are convincing themselves that this curious force doesn’t need any properties yet still provides for their desire, whatever it might be.

The argument also comes up, surprisingly frequently, that we don’t know everything, so we can’t say that a vague creative force, or a monster in a Scottish lake, doesn’t exist. Both parts of these are purposefully misleading, however. No one that I have ever heard of in my life makes any claim of omniscience, or even close to it, while yes, actually, we can claim such things don’t exist, based on the very simple fact that we have no definitive evidence of them existing. That’s how our entire sensory system works, how our memory and learning processes work – everything is evidence based. Anything else is imagination, which is distinctly different, not just from the ‘reality’ standpoint but even distinguished quite well in our minds. Imagination occasionally plays a part in insight and theoretical science, but only insofar as it points us in a direction to look for evidence; without that evidence, it’s a dead end.

Even that is going off on an existential tangent to treat the idea with rigor, because it doesn’t matter at all. Anyone proposing any concept or trait has the burden of proof, the necessity of showing how their proposal is valid, applicable, and relevant. Plenty of things exist that we are unaware of, I’m sure – and the reason we remain unaware of them is because they have no affect on our lives. We can use our imaginations to propose a literally infinite number of possibilities, just like we can imagine plenty of fairy tale plots and whole new words (I’m still fond of ‘porfodooti.’) What about a vague destructive force? Shouldn’t that follow as well? And has anyone stopped to consider the logical necessity of a force for humor? It’s universal among humans and even some other mammal species, so it must have meeeaning. A significant percentage of the species on this planet reproduce sexually, so there must be a vague fucking force. Seriously, I can do this all day.

That hints at another interesting aspect of such arguments. To continue with that example, there are useful, beneficial traits of sexual reproduction (as opposed to asexual reproduction like bacteria,) and it’s easy to be ignorant of such traits. But to, first, assume that this ignorance is shared by everyone, and second to believe this opens the door for any explanation that can be imagined, is not exactly a path to solid results – yet it happens all the time. “How did it all start?” is a valid enough question, while often laden with assumptions that there must have been nothing before. Yet this doesn’t automatically permit, or even suggest, any kind of creation. If that’s the specific answer that we’re seeking, then it’s easy to believe it’s a logical, perhaps even inarguable, solution. Proceeding without such a personal bias, however, has been what has produced the vast amount of info that we do have regarding the formation of the universe, none of which points in any way towards a creative force.

And there’s one more aspect that demonstrates the bias inherent in such arguments, because even the assumption of such a force does not support the idea, pretty much universally held, that such a force is beneficent – it could just as easily be openly hostile to us, or manipulative, or any of an infinite number of other possibilities, with ‘indifferent,’ ‘oblivious,’ and ‘completely without any emotion or intention whatsoever’ having more than a little logical support as well. Again, hardly the stuff to build an ideology around. I’m fully on board with the idea that something provoked the expansion that we call the ‘big bang’ – but intentionally? There remains nothing to support that, and only personal reasons to believe it over the stunning amount of evidence that the universe is governed by simple physical laws. No one prays to gravity, or even expresses a belief in such – it just is. To go any further than that requires some emotional desire for it to be different, and that’s just self-indulgence.

But how? Part 17: god’s plan

Al Denelsbeck

[EDIT 4:30 PM: This post went through numerous drafts over a period of days, which means it was in process long before this little squirt of utter bullshit came out, and I managed to post it before Jerry Coyne posted his commentary – once again, I hate looking like I’m copying or springboarding from someone when I’m not (and happy to give them credit when I am.) But yeah, very topical, and illustrative of the same issues I talk about below.]

You can blame the previous installment for suggesting the topic this time around, but it’s a common concept within religious apologetics regardless, so it deserves the critical examination. I’ll be right up front with this: I consider the claim of anything at all being “god’s plan” a cop-out, pure and simple, an excuse to dodge the inherent flaws and inconsistencies in a religious worldview. However, disliking a concept (or, alternately, liking it) isn’t a solid reason to pass judgment on it, so let’s take a close look at all of the ramifications of “god’s plan.”

The structure of most of the ‘But how?‘ posts has been to explain how a universe without any deity can function just fine, and how so many of the factors or traits ascribed to such are just as easily, if not more so, explained without any such supernatural influence. In this case, however, there will be nothing to fill in or alternately explain the traits attributed to a master plan, since such arguments have no traits to begin with – the master plan is always assumed to be an unfathomable thing, an explanation unto itself when the logical flaws in religion appear. The naturalistic world displays no evidence whatsoever of a plan, nor does it present any reason why we should invoke or seek one. That so many people find this a disagreeable or contentious conclusion is a strong indication that motives and desires should be examined carefully in such topics, because wanting it to be true is enough to cause significant bias and a lack of objectivity, especially when it comes to producing philosophical/theological arguments. Sophistry is very easy to accomplish, and goes unnoticed as long as someone finds the conclusions so gratifying that they don’t bother to examine them critically – quit while you’re ahead, in other words. Yet there are actually so many flaws in the concept of a master plan that it’s amazing it still exists, much less getting used with such frequency and confidence.

To begin with, if we accept the premise of a omniscient, omnipotent being, there actually can be no such thing as a plan of any kind. Any being that knows everything cannot plan to do something, since the results are already known, and thus all it can do is follow the script. Planning is a concept that requires uncertainty about the future, and the desire to produce a preferred outcome among many options. We cannot, for instance, plan on gravity taking effect only at a certain time, since it’s going to whether we like it or not, nor can we plan for a book that we’re reading to end a certain way.

There is also the failure when compared against omnipotence, as well. Any being that can do anything and everything does not need to plan – any such desired outcome can be produced instantaneously. So even given an uncertainty about the future, plans are still a pointless aspect of a omnipowerful being. And in fact, the passage of time becomes pointless and meaningless as well – why should there be any such thing as a ‘future’ when anything can happen immediately? This also trashes the claims that such supreme beings live ‘outside of time’ or all throughout it or whatever. Obviously, nobody’s been thinking these things through in the slightest.

But okay, let’s go ahead and bend the rules a little, and posit that the properties we have been assured of for centuries don’t actually exist; this supernatural being is instead very powerful and very intelligent, but not ultimately so, being limited on both fronts. It is also trapped in the passage of time as much as we are. Thus, the future is actually uncertain, and not everything can be achieved immediately. We still have to face the third necessity of planning, and that’s a desire for a certain outcome. Which by itself is a really loaded avenue of thought. Nearly all of our human desires are easily traced back to survival, whether related to procreation, or status, or even just figuring out mysteries – the ability to find solutions to puzzles has been responsible for accomplishments as basic as figuring out how to plant crops and as advanced as calculating mass, velocity, and gravitational influence to maintain satellites in orbit. Natural selection can account for these easily, and the ones that haven’t (so far) been adequately plumbed by this theory – things like the appeal of thrill rides or the purpose of nostalgia – aren’t really leading in a religious direction anyway. But what desires would a supernatural being possess, and where would they come from? Survival, social instincts, avoiding danger, even any form of accomplishment – all meaningless to such an existence. All of our frames of reference are from the standpoint of humans whose existence is not guaranteed, and who must compete, beings with finite abilities and lifespans no matter what. We cannot even say that anything supernatural could get bored, or has thinking processes at all, much less something bearing any resemblance at all to our own. In fact, it is safe to say that perpetual existence is something that would be pretty damaging to the makeup of our own minds, so any being that could handle this is not very likely to be similar in any way.

god's plan webcomic by John McNamee at piecomic.com
Pie Comic by John McNamee
This is, of course, the “we cannot fathom the mind of god” argument, and I agree with that completely – but that pretty much trashes all traits assigned to this god, including plans, including intentions, including why we would have been created in the first place. We have handy-dandy little functions like empathy and a desire to get along with the rest of the tribe – these don’t even make sense to the idea of a singular supernatural being. Going with the premise that we were created by such, we have no idea why we were created, and whether it’s actually leading anywhere or whether it’s just an observation to see how quickly we will destroy ourselves. As I’ve said before, it could even be that all of our concepts of religion were introduced to see how long it takes for us to spot all of the nonsense and discard them. We cannot assume beneficence, or indeed anything at all – the plan is entirely up for grabs, and even if any such being could appear to us right now in an inarguable form and say, “This is what I want you to do,” we can’t even tell if this is because it’s a good thing, for humans or the god or the universe as a whole, or just for the shits and giggles of a being that, let’s face it, can start all over again without any effort whatsoever.

Which means that the appeal of a master plan can only come with a lot of bare assumptions, ones that we have no evidence of and no reason to believe are valid. Even the tautological assurance that scripture is true because scripture tells us it’s true fails to take into account the simple possibility that misdirection is part of the game. Whose game, of course, is a question that remains to be answered, but I’m quite sure that the first thing I’d do when trying to mislead someone is assure them that I’m legit, and I doubt this insight was lost on all of the people who were scribbling down scripture throughout the centuries. Nobody has even come close to ruling out the possibility that scripture is simply creative fiction, while two distinctive traits make the probability of this high enough not to be ignored (unless, ahem, you’re trying): the bare fact that there are other religions in the world, which obviously cannot all be right despite having their own self-confirming scripture; and the uncomfortable evidence of the extensive editing that has taken place over the centuries. But it gets even worse.

Whenever someone insists that everything is part of a master plan that we aren’t meant to know, the very first question to pose is, “Then how do you know about it?” Let’s be real, here: if we can be created by some being, then that same being can just as easily a) tell us what it’s all about, or b) completely eradicate the very idea of questioning to begin with. This idea that we have some information regarding what we’re involved in but, ha ha, “I can’t tell you,” goes beyond pointless. There are two scenarios that make it past the logic failure: the first is that it’s all a game of this supreme being with no intention of making sense or reaching a particular conclusion – which not only defeats the definition of ‘plan,’ it eradicates any reason to care about it in the slightest – and the second is if doubt and uncertainty are specific functions that we’re supposed to have. Which is fine – let’s run with that posit too. Think about everything in our lives that we doubt, and what uncertainty does for us, why we even have it. Does it revolve around, to a significant margin, danger and survival and erring on the safe side? Does the uncertainty that there might be a speeding car coming around the bend, or that the fish being sold from the back of a van might not be the healthiest thing we’ve ever eaten, demonstrate the functions of doubt well enough? Does the presence of umpteen-hundred laws regarding consumer safety and contractual obligations tell us that doubt is misguided or frivolous? If anyone wants to argue that doubt is part of the plan, that’s fine – the first thing to doubt is the claim that there’s a plan in the first place.

But let’s not leave that one hanging all alone. Note that, in the vast majority of cases, the idea of a plan is used not to clarify anything, but to excuse the discrepancies, the anachronisms, and the contradictions that continue to crop up in religions worldwide. In almost every usage, the phrase is intended to stop us from questioning and doubting. It slots into the huge open space left in our concepts of religion when reality isn’t demonstrating any of the properties that this god and its creation are supposed to have. Theodicy is the (quite large) branch of theology that tries to cope with the very existence of evil in a created universe, and untold years have been spent on this pursuit – yet, this is only because of the overriding assumptions that there is both a beneficent deity and a plan. The problem is solved by assuming a deity that is not beneficent, as well as being solved by no plan at all – and it must be said that evil almost becomes a non-issue from an atheistic standpoint, because it is no longer a defined aspect that must have been created or intended, but simply an artifact of a competitive species (and not particularly hard to trace back to survival instincts, as well.) No more part of a plan than a sex drive or the ability to taste food.

If, instead of simply using it as an excuse when things aren’t making sense (such as the countless contradictions throughout scripture,) we instead apply this idea of a plan throughout, we have to accept that we are only puppets, in many cases doomed to ignominious ends precisely because the rules have been withheld from us – the plan obviously being far more important than the entirety of life on this planet. Pick any scripture that you like, and recognize that with the concept of a plan, every death, every torture, every abuse, all suffering, was intended – again, this is the problem of theodicy. For instance, if we take the creation story from the abrahamic scriptures, we have to reconcile the plan against the ‘fall,’ and the expulsion of adam & eve from eden, making the issue of punishment for their behavior, in fact the behavior itself, a script. Scripts are fine for fiction, but it’s quite a different matter when it’s our lives that are playing the parts. All of the things we were supposedly created to feel, love and pain and camaraderie and the desire for a strong society – everything – are all play-acting in denial of the control that the supreme being wields over our lives. We were created to find these immensely important, but then told they really don’t matter at all. Did you sweat blood over raising that child, born with a disability, to face life optimistically and with a fine sense of ethics? Too bad – she’s going to die at age 17 in service of this master plan. Bear in mind, once again referring to the abrahamic scriptures, that this supposedly happened to every single being on the planet, save for the select few on the ark. How, exactly, did the centuries of life leading up to that event perform some function? Are we to believe that all of god’s petulant hissy fits that resulted in mass slaughters, throughout any religion one cares to name, were all planned? Is this idea somehow comforting to all those who promote it? Or do they ignore the ramifications?

The argument can be made that this concept of an ultimate goal means we all play a part, and no matter how pathetic our lives or ends, it serves to push this goal along. Sounds fine on the face of it – until you recognize that we were created to suffer, and could just as easily have been created not to. And again, this is assuming that it’s a worthwhile plan, and not because some god is simply bored. Going a little deeper, it is the definition of nihilism; it doesn’t matter what we do because our actions are through ignorance of the true goal – we cannot act to shape it without knowing what it is.

Going still deeper, it has served as justification for virtually any action that religious folk have taken, no matter how heinous (and there’s been a hell of a lot) – obviously mere mortal desires and comfort must take a backseat to this plan, and since god has it all under control then whatever happens is obviously a part of it, right? This might even sound good when it’s used in conjunction with whatever actions we feel like taking, but it pales a bit when it comes to watching our village get decimated, or when the bomb rips apart the bus. Seriously, in the face of this master plan, what does any action, any feeling, any desire, matter?

But again, these desires do have a specific benefit to an evolved species, requiring no philosophical gymnastics to try and explain or excuse. Even the idea that organized religions are all just the efforts of a self-absorbed few to consolidate their power structure – which no one has disproved in the slightest – fits in quite well with evolved traits. It does mean, however, that we are responsible for our own decisions, and answerable not to what we imagine some supreme being really meant, but to all of those around us instead. We have the ability to foresee and predict the consequences of a large percentage of our actions, and we have reached the level that we now occupy precisely because this ability is so remarkably useful, making it both functional and explanatory, not to mention an overriding drive of humanity. To discard all of that, to dismiss all accomplishments of mankind throughout history, in favor of a shallow, feeble attempt to excuse all of the logical failures and anachronisms of religion, is undeniably pathetic. We can do better.

But how? Part 16: Revelation

Al Denelsbeck

The topic of this one has occurred to me several times before, and I think I avoided it because I consider it a cakewalk, a facet that’s all too easy to explain. And yet, there are a lot of people who put great stock in it, never seeming to view it with any form of critical appraisal, so let’s go ahead and look at some answers to the question, “But if there’s no god, how do you explain revelation?”

Naturally, by this is meant religious revelation, and not the sudden realization that Spongebob Squarepants is an homage to Hemingway. A very large number of religious folk credit some form of revelation or another as evidence of god, and there are a wide variety of experiences that they relate in support. I won’t be able to address every variety of course, which will leave the opening that is used so often, not just over religious topics either: you didn’t disprove this one, so it counts as proof. That’s not at all how logic works, but it does demonstrate the bias that underlies so much of belief (and again, not just religious belief.) Despite all that, let’s see what can be found to answer the question anyway.

The first point that I’ve always made, that no one has ever seen fit to respond to, is how all religions have their adherents who claim revelation, now and throughout history. Given the diversity of faiths, including the outright contradiction among many, we have three potential explanations: that revelation is false for all others except mine (the standard, yet unvoiced, belief); that god is fine with whatever faith anyone already has (making any distinction at all completely pointless); or that revelation is just wishful thinking. And while it would certainly be useful to rule out the last one to give any weight at all to the existence of a supernatural being, very few ever seem to expend the slightest effort in this regard. With a certain amount of snarky delight, I will point out that no one has disproved that revelation is nonsense…

Let’s not abandon this aspect yet, because there are a few ramifications to be considered here. Revelations are usually not just a matter of someone being affirmed that their faith in jesus/muhammad/moses/krishnu/ra is correct, but that there is a particular set of actions that they should be taking, and these have ranged as widely as, ‘spreading the good word,’ to, ‘beheading the infidels.’ When extremism rears its ugly stupid head, many of the devout are very quick to distance themselves, even defining what the True™ religion is – but if these actions were dictated by revelation, what then the value of revelation? Holy wars throughout history have been the clash of devotees who believe they have divine authority – that’s pretty much what defines a holy war. Yet all sides cannot be guided by divine information, unless god is intentionally setting up human fights, and again, what purpose would religion serve then? There should be some useful way to determine that revelation is more than simply ego.

There are definitely some things that we should expect to see, if god had any contact at all with mankind in such a manner: an undeniable tendency towards the one, true religion; a lot of people switching faiths; a notable tendency for those of a certain faith to accomplish more, or maintain a better overall quality of life – some benefit, anyway; and perhaps some unquestionable avoidance of dire consequences, courtesy of divine forewarning. Hell, couldn’t we even see some examples of scriptural clarification, where some debated (or badly misinterpreted) passage becomes crystal clear? Yet none of these are in evidence. The number of adherents, the percentages of populations displaying any given faith, vary widely throughout history, with a distinct downward trend for all of them right at this moment (and certainly no steady increase for any.) No one faith can be said to be in better condition, regardless of measuring method, and in fact, several polls in the US at least have shown that religion tends to be strongest in areas of the poorest quality of life – more on this in a second. It’s usually not to hard to find individual examples of people who had a premonition and avoided some situation that might have killed them, such as not getting on a flight that crashes, but this happens routinely even without any premonitions. And just to harp on this aspect a bit, why is it a miracle if someone survives an accident that was fatal to dozens or hundreds of others? Are we to believe this one person was that special? Could you show us how, please? It should be impressive…

Let’s look at the idea of numbers a bit closer. While there are a very large number of people who credit their own revelations, there really aren’t many at all that have switched religions over it, are there? No matter how you look at it, the majority of religious folk in the world have to follow the wrong religion, since not one religion possesses a majority throughout the population – and this is using the broad categories of christian and muslim and such, ignoring the myriad sects within that bicker amongst themselves over who follows the right version. While I know of no source that tallies how many people switched faiths due to revelations, the Pew Report lists 28% of Americans that have “left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion – or no religion at all” – it’s probably safe to say that those dumping religion were not following god’s recommendation in that regard. Of the remaining, it was primarily a lateral shift within christianity, with catholicism taking the biggest hit – feel free to speculate on how much of that was due to the reprehensible attitudes the catholic church has been displaying recently.

Even if we assume, just for a data point, that those who converted to evangelical protestantism did so at the urging of god, this still means that everyone who converted to something else, as well as everyone who stayed put in any other faith because their revelation simply confirmed their position, is wrong. The numbers aren’t being kind, to either any particular religion being correct nor to revelation having any value. Again, most religious folk seem to have no problem with believing that everyone else has it wrong, and never tumble to the conclusion that it must be ridiculously easy to be deluded in this respect. But of course this could not possibly happen to me.

Let’s backtrack a bit, and ask what revelation actually is. 99.9999% of the time it’s strictly personal, an experience that no one else has, so of course, we’re supposed to take anyone’s word for what happened – you can see where some problems might arise with this. In fact, it is so ludicrously easy to fake revelation that one might think some ground rules should be in place, some basic standards to differentiate. Feel free to look around and see if anyone, ever, has bothered with this. It’s almost as if nobody cares whether the experience is genuine or not – and, really, that’s what we see. If someone else’s revelation confirms our beliefs, then that’s good enough to be considered genuine, and if it denies them, well then it must be false. But let’s not undersell it either, because such experiences are not related nor responded to with any level of indifference, as if someone finally watched an episode of Dr. Who last night. No, revelations are generally considered quite important, life-changing in fact, and unsurprisingly there is a certain status to being someone to whom god communicated directly, better than receiving a call from the President.

Having set that up, I’m going to surprise a few people by saying that I’m not making a case that most revelations are intentional deceit, because I don’t really believe that myself. Yet there is a strong positive aspect to having a religious revelation, with little negative potential as well, and of course no real bars to clear. Worse is that god is no longer, apparently, doing much in the way of physical manifestations, and has a magical realm to spend time in, so no one really expects such contact to be in writing, for instance, or even a figure appearing in a puff of smoke. No, it’s all in the head – that sounds sarcastic, but it’s not wrong either, is it? When physical manifestations do occur, it is almost always in the manner of a “sign,” and this can be nearly anything.

Once again, I don’t have any figures to throw out in support of this, so all I can do is pose the question: how often are revelations and signs asked for in the first place? How many have come hard on the heels of the desperate desire for a response? How many communications occur when someone finds themselves confused, anxious, depressed, or disillusioned? You remember that point above about religion tending to be stronger in areas with poorer conditions – just how are they related? Or to be more specific, exactly how much of it is because people with few other options find it necessary to appeal for help from a higher, beneficent being?

Such situations become ripe for confirmation bias. It’s easy enough to have a dream about something that presses on our minds constantly, but when it’s religious in nature, how often does this automatically become that sign, that revelation, that confirmation that everything is going to work out? (I have apparently been told, on several occasions, that I’m going to end up in school in my underwear, late for class because I can’t figure out my schedule – it hasn’t happened yet but it’s going to, I’m sure.) How often does a strange pattern in a tree trunk, in a cloud, on a grilled cheese sandwich, become a message because it bears some vague resemblance to someone whose appearance was never recorded, only guessed at by artists? Consider how many things that we encounter daily that can be interpreted as something more, something transcendent or even just remarkably odd, as long as we’re inclined to try and find such things in the first place.

The immediate argument that arises is the emotional one. It must be important, so we’re told, because of the feelings behind it – these wouldn’t occur for any normal situation. So sure, let’s examine this aspect. You’ve probably heard of Beatlemania, the name of which was cribbed from Lisztomania, and are well aware of people losing their minds and even passing out because of the supernatural power of three guitars and a drum kit, right? Consider meeting with a favorite celebrity – how, exactly, is this different in any way from meeting anyone else in the world? Sure, maybe they’re more attractive than average, but is that really enough to provoke such overwhelming feelings? How about the people who get a rush when they see a famous painting for the first time in person? Chances are, the view is considerably much worse than their previous experiences with photos and printed depictions of the exact same work, but the emotional effect doesn’t exactly reflect that, does it? In such cases, it’s not the impact on our exterior senses that has anything at all to do with it, but the perception that we have internally. In other words, we’re emotional because we think we should be. And yes, the mind is perfectly capable of controlling the body to such an extent. Note, this is just over La Gioconda or Hannah Banana or whatever – imagine if we believe we’re meeting god.

When I was in my late teens, I had a dream that I was shot in the chest at close range by a masked assailant. I immediately awoke, but lay in bed motionless for a long time, trying to get my psyche (and pulse rate) back under control. There was no question that it was all in my head, a simple nightmare, but the emotional effect was devastating, true horror, and difficult to get over – and note, this was a negative effect that I had no desire to maintain. We can, very easily, be manipulated by our minds, and ‘meaning’ is entirely up for grabs. We can even have a deep emotional reaction to something undeniably trivial, and it happens frequently, the source of so many of those remarkable (usually non-religious) revelations right before awakening, but also provoked by various pharmaceuticals of questionable legality. Now consider if we’re particularly religious, and have a dream of powerful emotions that not only involves a god, but somehow promotes our self-worth – how inclined are we going to be to tell ourselves it’s just a dream?

Now let’s look at environment. Part of the function of churches (probably most of the function) is to maintain an exclusive, self-supporting environment that reinforces certain manners of thinking, exploiting our tendency to take our cues from others around us. It is hardly going to be surprising that any church that speaks favorably of revelations is far more likely to have them spontaneously appear among members of their congregation, yet this isn’t even necessary. Such things are openly recognized in many cultures (including all those heathen ones,) and the idea of visions, spiritual journeys/pilgrimages, and divine messages has been around for centuries, predating many forms of scripture as well – even this blog title has a distant connection to the idea. We’ll actually pay to have our photos taken with a celebrity, just for the prestige and superficial implication that yeah, we hang out with such higher beings; it’s not a stretch to think that the desire for divine recognition is capable of fudging objectivity to no small degree, saying nothing of those who really would lie about their experience just for the status.

So hopefully, we’ve established that being mistaken about a revelatory experience is exceptionally easy, especially if someone favors the idea in the first place, and it’s even easier to claim to have one. That brings us to the concept of trying to distinguish true revelations from false – again, something that few if any religious folk ever attempt in the first place. So we might ask by what method we could determine the veracity of a personal vision or experience? Obviously, some form of information that isn’t available through any other means, or that supports divine intent at least. How often does this occur? Are there even any events recorded throughout history that demonstrate this to any objective degree? Joan of Arc is perhaps the most well-known of those who acted on their divine communiqués; she was apparently told to repulse the English invaders, which didn’t happen, and achieved martyrdom because she’d been executed after a corrupt trial (and of course, one must ask what god had against the English, and why this event required the intervention?) Was that divinely important? Are there better examples that can be found? Because the religious revelations seem to be faring poorly, compared against scientific ones: Copernicus, Kepler, Einstein, Maxwell, Darwin, Pasteur, Faraday, Bohr, Mendeleev, et cetera et cetera. All of these contributed undeniable and overwhelming advances to our knowledge, our cultures, and our technology and standards of living – and without the demarcations of religion, mind; the revelations are as powerful and equally applicable to buddhists, sikhs, or rastafarians. Anyone is welcome to credit these to god – it’s happened numerous times before – except that this not only trashes the value of religious revelations that urge us to accept jesus into our heart to get over alcoholism, many of these scientific revelations were instrumental in proving scripture wrong and weakening the faith in god’s word overall, so, yeah…

“But you don’t understand,” say the faithful, “god is not here to prove himself to us. He provides help when it is needed.” Or some variation thereof – it’s amazing how many people know what’s going on but somehow never agree with one another. This protest allows for the personal, you-should-do-missionary-work kind of revelations that so many confess to having, which really isn’t evidence of divine intervention at all, nor really a lot of use, especially when compared to how much has been accomplished by those scientific revelations above – is the argument really that god is that ineffectual? Are we to believe that, faced with introducing the concept of germs to mankind a few millennia before we got around to finding it out on our own, or perhaps halting several hundred different slaughters by appearing to some megalomaniacal leaders and saying, “Listen, you little shit,” a supreme being instead chose some urbane citizens to try and convince a couple more people to go to church? You’re fucking with me, right? No, seriously, imagine the number of people throughout history that could actually have altered events for the better, that were overlooked because god was busy making faces appear in oil stains.

Another rebuttal is that, “god only speaks to the faithful,” so let’s think about this for a second, as the phrase, “preaching to the choir,” plays in the background. Of what possible use is this? It’s like having a secret handshake in the club we formed in our youth, or thinking that inside jokes make us clever. Such divine contact could arguably be the best possible evidence for god that exists, the exact way that anyone could become faithful, and it’s wasted on those who are already there? The whole building is falling down, but it’s important to keep polishing the working doorknob?

“It’s all part of a master plan that we cannot fathom.” If we can’t fathom it, then how does one know it’s a master plan? Or I can simply point out that it’s part of the master plan that I make this whole topic look abysmally stupid, and perhaps provoke some religious folk to stop parroting what others have said and start actually using their critical functions instead. The idea of a ‘master plan’ can be used for any argument, any decision, any possibility, which makes it pointless to contemplate – unless, of course, someone is just using it to dodge the lack of coherence in the first place.

Because, in all seriousness, the case for religious revelation is amazingly thin, hardly the kind of extraordinary evidence we should easily be able to obtain from divine contact, and the rest is excuses why it’s not extraordinary. Yet there’s nothing that counters the basic premise that revelation is just misinterpretation, wishful thinking, delusion, and/or outright prevarication. Though the supreme being is selectively choosing to intervene, enacting some master plan or another, actually contacting mortals to provide assistance, somehow this cannot be done in a way that can be distinguished from fakery.

Again, most religious folk who support the concept of revelations usually accept that they’re very often patently false – for every religion except their own. My faith is a virtue, not yours – an amalgam of egotism and gullibility. But this gullibility is a very large part of the problem, because it creates an atmosphere of considering weak, ludicrous claims as potentially valid, one that not only requires having to point out, at length, the overwhelming nonsense of it all, but that fosters politicians who use tactics such as being told by god to invade Iraq.

Oooh, that one’s playing dirty, isn’t it? Except that the religious have purposefully excluded all methods, trials, and functions that could establish how George W. Bush was full of shit, or could be used to call any politician on their rather obvious pandering to religion, which is only done because it works. When such low standards have been set, anyone at all can use and abuse them – and have, throughout history.

There is also, quite often, a certain level of hypocrisy herein. Most religions have some form of active evil, perhaps a specific being like satan or just the inherent properties of being human, but essentially, a manner in which we can easily go astray from the good path that we should be taking. Such a concept virtually demands some form of assurance that we’re not dealing with a mistaken impression, much less the efforts of the prince of lies to mislead us. Having some manner to establish certainty beyond a subjective opinion would definitely seem to be not just worthwhile, but the very epitome of piety, the strength to overcome one’s own ego and desires to flush out the evil influences – yet we see just the opposite, the unquestioning acceptance of whatever answer someone likes best and the nonsensical reliance on faith. The message is hardly consistent.

And then there are the people – thankfully, not many – who really do hear voices in their heads, only it’s not divine contact, but mental illness instead. Maintaining that this is okay – commendable, even, evidence of a special status – is not helping at all. I have personal experience along these lines, when an uber-religious friend of mine was diagnosed with schizophrenia. It’s disturbing, believe me, and rather difficult to convince someone that there’s something seriously wrong when they’re surrounded by zealous nitwits who continually trumpet that this is a marvelous thing, provoked by their own self-indulgence, unwilling and unable to contemplate that maybe this isn’t what they desperately want it to be. Nothing untoward, to my knowledge, ever came of this particular case (except the wanton destruction of his own car on a whim,) but the same cannot be said for a lot of cases out there, some of which might have been avoided in a culture that was just a bit less gullible and uncritical. When there is some difficulty in establishing what is real and what is not, giving any weight to a ‘possibility’ that has never even been proven possible is a lot less functional than setting some firm criteria to establish authenticity. If it could be just our imagination, it probably is. And if there is some need for divine contact, rest assured that a supreme being could manage to overcome such obstacles.

But how? Part 15: Benefit

Al Denelsbeck

In earlier posts I have tackled, I think, all of the aspects about to appear within this one, but I think it’s worth having them here in one collection, under a heading which makes it easier to find. On top of that, the argument is a common one, and probably cannot be answered often enough. Sooner or later, every atheist is challenged to address all of the benefits of religion that we must do without if we had a completely secular society, so let’s take a close look at these benefits.

The first thing we need to consider is that ‘benefit’ can be construed a lot of different ways, which I’m going to break down into just three for the sake of simplicity, and to ensure that the distinction is clear. There’s personal benefit, which doesn’t extend past the individual; there’s social benefit, which provides a general improvement to a group, town, or culture; and then there’s overriding benefit, which is as close to universal as anything might be, crossing cultural and racial and national boundaries. Few topics can actually fit into this latter one – even vaccines depend on both an economic structure that makes them viable for a populace, and the ability to both distribute them and ensure enough participation to achieve group immunity. These distinctions are important, since very frequently, the benefits of religion are treated as if they are an overriding benefit when they can barely be considered a personal one.

Another distinction that needs to be examined is if the benefit is actually demonstrable, rather than nothing but hearsay and supposition. For instance, probably the most prevalent claim in regards to the topic is how, without religion, we would be anti-social, nihilistic, and outright evil – a ridiculous number of people even seem to believe that atheism equates with satanism. Yet the actual evidence for this descent into savagery is completely lacking, while numerous contra-indicators lend more than a little weight to exactly the opposite effect; secular societies tend to be more social and cohesive, and certainly not completely chaotic. So any claims for benefits should be more than just assertions, but backed with solid evidence – this shouldn’t be hard to find, should it?

Let’s take a look at more of the most common claims of benefit:

Religion is a force for peace – For this to even be plausible, we should expect two things: that deeply religious societies have a lower percentage of conflict, crime, and social corruption than others; and religious motivations and/or connections to warfare be significantly lower than other motivations. Any knowledge of either history or current world events render both of these ludicrous. From Europe’s long bloody history with the catholic/protestant schism to the current clash of shia and sunni muslims throughout the Middle East and beyond, the US’s religious justifications of slavery and racism to the righteousness of the Conquistadors, religion is instead deeply intertwined with violence and oppression. This is no surprise at all from a sociological standpoint; privilege and righteousness frequently lead to abuse. In fact, an indefensible claim of superiority, one that cannot be demonstrated in any way, quite possibly leads to more conflict: the bully whose superiority is questioned resorts to physical violence. If you think this is an inappropriate argument and not practiced by adults, go look at the news regarding the Middle East for a week.

It has been claimed that the presence of religion has actually served to temper the potential violence – without its influence, the situations would have been much worse. It’s a possibility that certainly deserves examination, but again, just raising the possibility is not in any way establishing the viability – the real work hasn’t even begun. If the claim were true, we should expect to see the manifestations of religion within conflicts to be, you know, peaceful, or restraining, or at least urging a more civilized discourse, yet this is exceptionally hard to find. Even in situations where economics or classism are surely major factors of the conflict, the appearance of religion within is easily seen as justification and motivation, rather than palliative. And of course, we cannot ignore such prominent bits of history like the Crusades and Inquisition, which are directly defined by their religious influence. Even if we could establish that they were motivated more by power or greed (and no one has effectively made this case at all,) it is clear that the purpose of religion within was not to slow things down – quite the opposite, in fact.

Religion builds communities and social cohesion – I suspect, whenever anyone makes this claim, they are imagining Amish barn-building parties and not a different church at every third crossroads and, um, all that shit above. But yes, indeed, churches do maintain a certain level of community, certainly more than the average suburban neighborhood in the US, and they do lend themselves to generating cohesive goals, or at least ideas. And this is good – as long as the goals or ideas are beneficial. It is usually assumed that they are, but the evidence proves this inaccurate far too much of the time. Legislation against same-sex marriage, or regarding ‘teaching the controversy’ in schools, or even the nonsense idea of ‘abstinence-only education,’ all comes from these same communities, to say nothing of cults, extremism, and similar manifestations – “community” does not automatically imply, “progressive.”

And far too often, the community is rather small anyway – yielding a few dozen to a few hundred people, separated from numerous other ‘communities’ of baptists, catholics, muslims, buddhists, and so on, all just down the street. It all depends on what you’re using as a comparison, doesn’t it? While any church might be better than a village full of individualistic families with no common goals, it’s much worse that a community that encompasses the entire village itself, drawing no dividing lines between personal ideologies. There are not the vast number of splinter sects among every major religion because of how much it fosters community.

Moreover, can churches even be said to build, foster, or encourage community, or are they simply taking advantage of the human trait towards this in the first place? There are millions of communities, from Facebook groups to book clubs, Mensa to the NRA – it’s not like mankind would be made up of hermits without the influence of religion.

Religions promote charity – Let’s get one thing out of the way first: I do not, in any way, consider money or efforts spent towards self-perpetuation and promotion of the church itself to qualify as ‘charity,’ any more than I consider it as such when practiced by any major corporation; again, believing that “church equals good” or “church equals charitable” is an unwarranted assumption. Can we agree on that? I hope so, but if not, think of it in the context of a church other than your own. Now, removing all of that from the equation, how much do religions really provide towards charity?

Chances are, you don’t know – very few people, outside of those doing church bookkeeping, have any idea, really. But if I ever run across a community where the church buildings are more run-down than every other house, I’ll let you know – don’t wait up nights for it. While the days where the churches and temples were the most elaborate structures in the city are largely past, it can’t be denied that they are usually expensive and well-maintained structures, to say nothing about the megachurches, teleministries, and even colleges, all built on the donations of the followers. So you tell me: are their contributions to worthy, charitable causes exceeding the amounts spent on church buildings (and priest housing, and travel expenses) by a factor of ten? Even five? I’m curious, myself, because the contributions are continually sought under the assurance that they are used for good causes…

While all this is going on, countless charitable organizations are plugging away, using minimal funds to maintain core functions while channeling most of their contributions towards the areas that need it more. Have you ever seen a stylish and elaborate Red Cross building? Wouldn’t it make you suspicious if you did?

Then we have to consider that, in an awful lot of cases, the ‘charitable’ efforts of religions are thin disguises for recruitment, and even early indoctrination. Let’s think about something for a moment: religion, by and large, is a nuanced thing, dealing with ethics and social structure and, basically, mature decisions. While we have a minimum voting age, there is apparently no minimum age for religious instruction, even though (as can be attested by virtually anyone who’s been through it) young children are not going to grasp even a tiny portion of what it is supposed to provide. The point isn’t to build core ethical values, and you’ll never see churches teaching comparative religions (at least not honestly) – the point is to hammer the ideas home very early, in the formative years, to try and establish the ridiculous stories and bizarre ideas as ‘normal.’ And that dig about ‘honesty’ above isn’t a cheap jab – the misinformation spread by churches and religious groups is rampant, concerted, planned, and intentional. Are you sure that ‘day care center’ is solely concerned with helping the young mother with her children? If a parent requested that no religious viewpoints be expressed to their child during this care, do you believe that will be respected, or even that the ‘charity’ will not be withdrawn at that point?

The same can be said for the various programs and clinics aimed at adults, as well – it’s an extremely common tactic to target the disadvantaged and down-on-their-luck, leveraging their vulnerability to try and convince them of the love of the church. That’s fine, really, but when there are strings attached, we’re not really hitting the definition of charity, are we? Alcoholism programs that require religious services, financial counseling that continually promotes a faith in god? Are these necessary, or even germane? And how many of these come from the same parishioners who fret and babble about the ‘secular agenda’ of teaching evolution and permitting abortions? But I suppose manipulation is okay, as along as it’s the right kind of manipulation…

[A quick aside: In the neighborhood we just left, I routinely received visits from a near-homeless guy, living on welfare and scrimping for money to get by. At christmas, he was given a rather elaborate bible by some religious soul, obviously warmed by their own largesse. Not, apparently, by their sense, since he was illiterate and couldn’t read at all – I’m sure he would have benefited more from just a decent meal. His few bills, by the way, were paid by the state, not any of the umpteen churches in the area…]

Crediting the churches with their charity efforts, even if no self-serving aspects are to be seen, still remains a bit selective, considering how many other charitable organizations exist – it’s not like religion has a monopoly on the practice. On the rather frivolous website theChive, content is primarily reposted or solicited humor, trivia, and cheesecake photos – but when they hold a charity drive (which is often,) the results are astounding. There is no appeal to salvation, status, moral responsibility, or really, anything at all except the background of those in need, and the bare challenge to meet/break the goal – and invariably, they achieve this within hours. No one needs the input of religion to be charitable. And, it deserves to be said in recognition of the previous claimed benefit, theChive’s web ‘community’ is undoubtedly larger than 95% of the churches in the world…

Religions offer moral and emotional support – Hard as it may be to believe, I find this a noble practice; everyone, at one time or another, just needs a little social interaction and support, even when it doesn’t actually change their situation at all. Our own mental perspectives have a lot to do with how well we cope with adversity, and simply ‘being there’ for someone can mean a lot.

Yet, the perspective thing can go both ways. The overriding aspect of most religions – that there is some form of being that intended for things to be this way – has its own input into how people view their personal situations. Within most religions, there is no ‘shit happens’ – no random events, no impersonal effects of mere physics. Instead, we are asked to believe that everything happens for a reason, a grand plan that we are not privy to, and of course this includes all of the bad things that happen to people. This is no minor thing; it has such a significant impact that a major branch of religious philosophy, theodicy, is devoted to hashing out the problem of evil from a loving god. Maybe in another few thousand years they’ll get it to the point where people are no longer bothered by it…

In the meantime, we have to recognize that judgment and damnation, or the planned death of our children, has a fierce impact on our emotional states. That merely feeling horny as a youth, instead of being a perfectly natural and biologically functional thing, is often considered wicked. That even a simple mistake can be responsible for ruining one’s entire afterlife. Oh, yeah, religions often provide us with an afterlife to look forward to, which is great – provided, of course, that one does not waste the entirely of their presentlife fretting over making it to the right side after death, and there are an awful lot of these people.

Even something as simple as moral guidance can be problematic, since the religious definition of ‘moral’ often leaves a lot to be desired (see ‘force for peace,’ above.) Rather than coping with the incredibly difficult concept of being beneficial to as great a number of people as possible, religious morality usually involves selective quotes from scripture and a serious dose of self-righteousness; there has only been a few million people killed because they were ‘heretics’ and deserved it. Even if we can somehow establish that homosexuality is truly immoral, laws against gay marriage don’t actually affect it in the slightest, do they? They only exist to register the disapproval of the vapid devout. This is what comes from failing to understand what the function of morality even is.

And like charity above, moral and emotional support isn’t exactly a hard thing to provide; aside from the numerous individuals that are perfectly capable of rendering this elaborate assistance, there are plenty of professional organizations that do the same – without baggage, without strange rules, without skewed perspectives. In my own personal experience, I’ve spent no small amount of time helping friends cope with the emotional and perspective problems stemming entirely from religious sources. Without those influences, they would have been in a much better state of mind.

Religion is, and has been, an inspiration for the greatest works of art throughout history – Paintings, music, sculpture, literature – our museums are filled with references to religious themes and inspirations, true enough. And this applies as long as you don’t include any art at all from the last two centuries, where religious themes have become so minimized that it effectively disproves the idea. There are, however, a few contributing factors behind this apparent inspiration. The first is, we have almost nothing from the Middle Ages on back – most works have vanished, and even the historical record is sporadic and fragmented badly. The Renaissance, of course, is what most people are thinking of when they speak of this topic, and that’s when the churches were commissioning these works directly – with what money, anyone can surely wonder. The churches were also responsible for preserving them (when they didn’t alter them to reflect the more uptight tastes of later church authorities.) Anyone who believes Leonardo Da Vinci or Michelangelo were divinely inspired is perhaps unfamiliar with the commentary Leonardo repeatedly slipped into his works, and the anatomical studies that may well have prompted the shape of a brain in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. It is also worth noting that, of most of the religious works to be found, creative interpretations abound, much more so than scriptural accuracy.

Literature has its own special qualities. Overall, religion is a story, relating remarkable, epic events and larger-than-life people, the staple of all storytelling (who wants to hear about what I did yesterday?) As such, religious motifs lend themselves to creative interpretations and expansions, which carries over into music as well. But if we ignore the selectivity, we find plenty of other subjects tackled at every point throughout history, love being far and away the biggest, closely followed by tragedy.

And finally, like charity and community above, can we even remotely propose the idea that, without religion, far fewer works of art would have been made? It’s possibly true enough from the monetary angle, since (in part due to the churches themselves) many people lacked the funds to commission their own topics, but do we honestly believe Michelangelo would have taken up gardening instead? Without Shakespeare, we wouldn’t have as many derivatives of Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth around, but would we actually have fewer movies and plays? There is a notable difference between using religion as a theme, and crediting religion for the artistic ability.

Religion makes people feel good – Despite the vague nature of this claim, I really have heard it expressed as a benefit, more than once. Taken all by itself, it might be somewhat useful, and in fact, it likely serves as one the biggest supporting factors claimed for religion in the first place. More on this in a second.

First off, it’s not like our society, or most for that matter, has any shortage of indulgences – put in a DVD, eat some ice cream, fire paint pellets at total strangers. Seriously, the way this is often expressed, we’re expected to believe people’s lives would be total shit without religion. In a few, isolated cases, this is probably true, but not for most, and certainly not in a way that justifies the huge emphasis it is given within our cultures.

Secondly, feeling good is that personal benefit pointed out in the beginning – nothing wrong with that, but again, hardly worth the effort. ‘Feeling good’ is also a perfect justification for drug addiction, isn’t it? Hey, I feel good calling religious people self-indulgent twits…

It is the same kind of perspective that causes the religious to defend their personal choice, which is just ducky; keep it personal, and you won’t hear a word from me. Yet, there isn’t much about religion that’s personal in any way, and even those who manage to keep their mouths shut are still influenced in how they vote, what they teach their kids, and what views they have on ethics and society. Liking Metallica is a personal choice; we’re never going to see any proposed legislation regarding it, are we?

Feeling good should probably also come with at least a modicum of value and supporting evidence, as well. Countless cultures throughout history undoubtedly felt good about their exalted status as god’s chosen, or the master race, or the enlightened – was that worth encouraging and protecting? Perhaps we need a bit higher goals than that.

Many aspects of religion are tailored specifically to make people feel good – that’s the selling point, and the reason why it still exists. You will be rewarded, god loves you, there is a goal, you will not die, and on and on. Now, this can be done for anything, if our only criteria is to feel good – it’s called a motivational poster. The rot sets in when it’s incorrect, misleading, or fosters detrimental actions or attitudes – again, some standards would be useful here.

Most especially, the personal benefit angle crashes spectacularly when it’s tied to something detrimental to someone else, something that all of those who assert their ‘personal choice’ tend to forget, conveniently. So much for moral guidance. And this applies to every benefit mentioned above, and all others as well; defending religion by selecting only those items that sound good while ignoring those that are extremely, irrefutably damaging is reprehensible, and hardly worthy of the minds we have. I’ve said it before and will need to keep saying it: there is no reason to try and determine the balance, how the scales end up weighing. Do good; don’t so bad. That’s all the elaborate, nuanced, complicated guidance that’s necessary. If your idea of ‘good’ targets others or reinforces your own status, you need to exercise more thought in the matter.

This tendency towards selectivity needs further critical examination. The Crusades and Inquisitions mentioned above did not just happen despite the influence of religion, they never would have occurred without it. The ideas of witches and demons and holy lands do not come from anyplace else. Even when the participants actually believed they were doing good, this definition of good was created solely by religious influence (to say nothing of those who were only using religion as an excuse to consolidate their power or status – I’ll leave you to speculate on how many that might have been, and how poorly religion worked to temper their actions.) When it comes right down to it, just about every time that someone wants to speak of the benefits of religion, it is to try and offset the pretty goddamned nasty aspects that are also part and parcel, things that we wouldn’t have had without religion in the first place. It’s a desperate attempt to justify their personal viewpoint, conveniently ignoring the long, bloody history in favor of… what, exactly?

I’m also not impressed with the arguments, which always appear, that all of that above is not my religion, the sudden, distinct dividing line that gets created whenever anyone is observant enough to note all the bad stuff going on. Up until that point, of course, religion is usually used in a universal sense, with great emphasis put upon the sheer numbers encompassed within that overriding, ill-defined descriptor. There are two things that I’ll observe, in response. The first is that I have never, ever seen any self-professed religious person challenge the statement that religion is good; the challenges only appear when the umbrella term that they shelter under is no longer a point in their favor. Second, the exact same traits that they follow, emphasize, and venerate by even being part of a religion are what’s responsible for that list of pseudo-benefits above. Since we’re now in the realm of fine distinctions, what’s the fine distinction that makes their faith good? Isn’t that the important bit? Even if we want to consider religion a force for both good and bad, what’s the point that’s being made then?

I’ll be the first to point out that human nature produces a lot of the behavior we’ve seen throughout history and still see today; I will never say that eradicating religion will eliminate conflict and abuse, and make everybody love one another. But to try and take religion, as a whole, and assign it any properties at all, much less beneficial ones, to permit some handy little label is ludicrous beyond reason. If someone wants to be considered good, then they should do good things, not seek out an association with a cultural convention. If they’re inspired by religion to do it, fine, no problem – others may be inspired by simple empathy, fairness, and the sense of ethics that we’ve evolved to have over millions of years. However, to make any claim at all that religion deserves credit for benefits, and is thus worthy of a ‘good’ status, is an exceptionally shallow, superficial, and above all self-serving perspective. We can do better.

But how? Part 14: Atheology

Al Denelsbeck

It’s funny, because there really are too few instances of exactly what this post is, and I’m not sure why – it can’t possibly be because atheists are too nice about it. But considering that the last ‘But how?‘ post was about the feeble attempts at rendering a god existent by logic, it’s time to look at the other side, which is rendering a god ridiculous by logic, otherwise known as atheology. More or less, actually – atheology is indeed a concept, but it encompasses a broader approach than what I’m tackling here. The word worked best when following the last topic, so I’m using it rather frivolously here.

There are, actually, quite a few examples of logical arguments for no god – or to be more specific, showing that the god hypothesis doesn’t work at all. We’re not merely talking agnosticism here, where the lack of proof means taking a position of uncertainty. Nor are we talking about simply poking holes in religious positions and claims, such as floods and rebirth cycles – that’s child’s play, really. We’re talking about actual logical expectations that render the concepts untenable at best, but sometimes even self-defeating. An example of that one is our first:

Omniscience and omnipotence are mutually exclusive. There’s an old saw, a question that runs simply, If god is omnipotent, can he create a rock so big he cannot lift it? It’s a basic paradox examining the failed concept of infinite anything. Yet we don’t even need that to make the premise crash, because it’s pretty simple. Omniscience means that such a being not only knows everything that is, but will be as well – all consequences of actions. No religious person argues against this at all. Yet to know everything that will happen, one must be powerless to change it. If it can be changed of course, then it is not known what any future (or past) state might be, because the change has not occurred yet. Not to mention how badly this trashes all those concepts of free will and man not being a mere programmed player in the universe. Omniscience actually makes any god itself a player in the events that must unfold. However, even a lack of these extreme properties, just settling for “really powerful” and “pretty damn smart,” doesn’t eradicate the ‘man as pawn’ scenario, since anytime man’s actions or effects can be changed at whim, they’re rendered pointless against the impulses of god’s mind. It doesn’t matter how good someone is if they’re killed off before finding salvation, or if god decides to change those rules anyway. It is the ultimate slavery, not just of freedom or will, but consequence and impact as well; wave goodbye to the meaning that people claim religion provides. The only way around this is if god is completely non-intervening – which makes humans bothering with such a being pointless as well.

Everlasting life is soul-destroying. This mostly applies to the abrahamic religions that promise eternal bliss or torment, but also gathers in buddhism and its ultimate enlightenment concept. First off, all of the experiences we have, pain and pleasure and good eats and jealousy and driving really fast, are all tied to the physical body. To even exist, they need the comparative experiences, the counterpoints – we know pain because we don’t feel it constantly, we enjoy pleasure as a special reward. Perpetuating these makes them meaningless.

Rewards and punishments only serve two purposes, however. The first is mere bluff, the promise of consequences. The second is the actual demonstration of consequences, to prevent a repeat of the behavior that elicited them. In both cases, perpetual reward or punishment is utterly pointless.

Not only that, but a perpetual existence would be the most boring thing imaginable, regardless of the state we’re experiencing at the time. People really don’t grasp the idea of forever and ever, and how it would destroy anticipation, surprise, the very idea that there is something else to experience. We’re driven, right now, to accomplish certain things because we know we won’t always have the chance to – life is finite. We seek to improve our lives because improvement is always possible. Every religious person, no matter how devout, recognizes this fundamentally (yes, that’s a pun, I don’t write these blithely you know) – everyone has the same drives towards society and interactions regardless of their supposed belief in what comes afterward. Religious folk should be the most mellow on earth, frozen in their actions and desires once they know they’re guaranteed an ultimate reward transcending anything life has to offer. I’ll just leave that gigglefest hanging out there…

We must also examine how enormously pointless it would be to create a plane of existence to populate for a brief period of time as lead-in to an unchanging, perpetual state. This accomplishes… what, exactly? And is there some value to an infinitely expanding sphere of really happy souls, never changing, never going anyplace? The immediate answer from religious folk is that we cannot fathom what the real plan is, but this is fatuous handwaving – we’ve supposedly just been told this is the state of affairs, and it’s exactly what’s being addressed here; imagining that there’s something else that renders this different somehow is no more valid than imagining that it’s all horseshit (the latter is far more supported by the facts, actually.)

Not to mention that every last vestige of the whole idea, pleasure and pain and the fear of death and so on, all fit precisely (and without any special circumstances or unknown plans whatsoever) into a basically physical, evolved life form. There are no fancy scenarios that have to be created to explain why we have a sex drive if sex is a sin, and why shellfish are tasty and nutritious if we’re not supposed to eat them.

Natural laws. It’s almost stunning what some very basic physical principles can do. Everything that we do, everything that we see, experience, and even predict, boils down to, believe it or not, four simple physical forces. They’re tied into everything, so well in fact that we can predict the Higgs Boson and gravity waves. Pause for a second; we have predicted finding the after-effects of an event 13.8 billion years old. And the only reason we could actually do this is if all of it, from Day One, ran like clockwork.

Even in everyday life, we depend on this. We could not drive a car or cook a pizza if these were not incredibly, precisely dependable. We could never have built the computers we’re using now, and especially not the GPS unit that takes us to our destinations. We can map dark matter because we know what it takes to bend light, packets of energy that have traveled trillions of kilometers across the universe – these forces extend out as far as we can detect, which is a volume of space that defies any comparative analogy. And there is no penalty for breaking the laws of physics, because we cannot actually do so, nor have we ever seen it happen in the slightest. This leaves almost no place for a god to be acting.

One of the few exceptions to this, the curious traits of quantum mechanics, is what some have claimed as evidence of an acting god. There are many problems with this, including the bare fact that the odd effects of QM don’t propagate upwards all the way to the molecular level, that they remain predictable on large scales, and that random events do not translate to ‘intention’ in any useful way. This last one can be applied to just about any ‘god of the gaps’ claim made against anything that science still finds mysterious, since any property can be claimed for these mysteries – it’s evidence of extra-dimensional aliens, or suggests that we’re in a simulation – but without something testable, it remains a teapot in space.

This ties in with:

Conservation of energy. Within those four forces sits a very simple effect: that energy always acts to distribute itself evenly among all matter. In order to provide the energy that moves our vehicles along, we have to rob it from somewhere else with a higher potential, eventually leading all the way back to the sun – this is the Second Law of Thermodynamics that ignorant religious folk like to claim we don’t understand (or doesn’t even exist.) Any concentration of energy will dissipate among all surrounding matter unless held in check by one of the four forces. The burner on the stove heats the pan, which in turn heats the contents, solely because of this process.

Any creation event, any miracle, any alteration of this universe-wide interaction, requires the input of energy, which is then going to dissipate – a net gain of the energy in the universe, unless it is transferred from someplace else. Either way, there are ripple effects from these energy changes, atoms having to cope with a sudden influx, inertia being shed abruptly – depending on the size of the miracle, anything from a sudden spot of intense heat to a shockwave that could destroy planets.

The argument, of course, is that god will prevent all of the negative effects, and can not only create energy at will, he can vanish all of the after-effects. The evidence for this fails to exist, however, and Superman is impervious to bullets because he comes from Krypton – there’s no shortage of stupendous claims, but without either evidence nor value, we have nothing more than stories; excuses do not gain the value of a working theory solely through wanting them to be true. Even the scriptural accounts themselves do not provide any useful reasoning; consider that, in joshua 10, the sun and moon are halted in the sky (not, curiously enough, that the rotation of the Earth was halted – apparently god was not on board with the whole orbital physics thing), a manifestation of energy and inertia physics of a magnitude that could turn the planet into molten slag. Every molecule on and of the Earth had to be stopped in its path without any ill effect – and started again afterward, all so joshua had time to finish slaying his enemies. Because it was much more useful than god doing so himself. And don’t ask who created the enemies…

Curiously, while scientists, and merely the really observant, have never seen the slightest indication of these miraculous violations, the devout supposedly see them all the time, so the argument that god is trying to keep it hidden doesn’t pass muster. Even if a god was deciding to be selective in who witnessed the magic, wouldn’t it make more sense to demonstrate it in front of those who don’t believe?

Moreover, one is also obligated to explain why any god would establish physical laws extending throughout the vast reaches of the visible universe, only to thwart them by producing sporadic miracles – and then attempt to cover these up again.

We are physically-dependent beings. Our whole lives revolve around detecting physical properties, seeking cause-and-effect, observing patterns, and predicting consequences – and this works really, really well, responsible for every comfort, every convenience, every function of our lives from beginning to end. Even our minds, supposedly designed this way, strive for proofs, evidence, and physical manifestations of anything – these traits are related throughout every example of scripture that I’ve come across. By our very nature, we remain skeptical of stories, and realms that do not provide any form of personal experience. The religious folk that deny this, claiming we freely accept heaven and otherworldly planes of existence, are conveniently forgetting that religious artifacts, manifestations of miracles, and even prayer are all attempts to bolster belief with physical evidence, and it occurs everywhere.

The main take on this, if we accept the religious premise, is that we are designed to doubt the very existence of a creator – which makes everything about humankind an enormous game of some nature. Hyperpotent beings should have no problems with not just communicating the ‘true’ nature of existence, but even implanting it directly in our minds so doubt couldn’t even arise – yet this obviously didn’t happen.

The argument, long ago tackled, is that this is the ol’ free will thingy, permitting mankind to choose a path that leads to salvation or torment, enlightenment or repetition, advancement or retardation. Despite the long history of this claim, few ever seem to realize that it does nothing to eradicate the underlying pointlessness. Why have mankind play any game at all? Why, indeed, have mankind, period?

This leads to:

The remarkable self-absorption of both man and god. We know the universe is vast. Even the distances encompassed within our little solar system are staggering. Yet the creator of this panoply of physics seems inordinately concerned with the antics of, really, a tiny percentage of living matter in the paper-thin skin of atmosphere on just one tiny body amongst it all; the entire Earth takes up not 0.03 percent of our solar system’s mass, 99.8 of which is the sun itself – which is one of an estimated 100 billion in the Milky Way galaxy, itself one of an estimated 100-200 billion galaxies in the known universe. And not just concerned, but constantly involved (depending on which religion you choose) and neurotically dependent on the opinions thereof – apparently being superpowerful, able to create at whim, doesn’t eradicate the emotional dependency on an infinitesimal manifestation of living matter and their ridiculous antics.

Moreover, despite knowing all of this, religious folk continually insist that our actions are not only important, but part of a grand plan – we are the humble servants (exact words) of this hyperpotent being. Again, no one knows what this plan is, but we’re integral to it. And somehow, very few ever get to the point of wondering what game this could possibly be, because there’s nothing we could provide that any god couldn’t achieve without us.

Gods are incredibly petty. And this goes for even our own self-absorbed human perspective. In nearly every account given the world over, gods are surprisingly similar to fascist dictators, demonstrating all of the worst examples of the corruption of great power. While one might expect enormously potent beings to be threatened by nothing, what we see instead are myriad examples of abuse, coercion, jealousy, revenge, petulance, and even in the mildest of cases, ego and demands of offerings and sacrifice. All by themselves these are more than a little disturbing, but when considered against the claims that we are intended creations of these personalities, it becomes ludicrous. Only the mentally unbalanced becomes so upset over something they purposefully made to be exactly this way.

Further, these are all human traits, and again, we have perfectly adequate reasons why these exist and how they came about. No supernatural being has any use for emotions of any kind, since emotions are stimulants of survival behavior. Our anthropocentric tendencies insist that we can relate best to humans, and thus human analogs in gods, but the chances of an extra-dimensional being possessing identical emotions are not only infinitesimal, they could serve no function whatsoever. Even if we believe that any creative force actually possesses a personality, it is remarkably unlikely to be anything we would recognize, much less relate to.

Religion is self-affirming. While the majority of the world’s religions expend far more effort into delineating the number of things mankind should not be doing over the positive actions it should (a peculiar form of guidance and planning to be sure,) very few religious people ever find themselves on their god’s bad side, when by all rights this unfortunate state should be held by the majority of the world’s population. The devout not only consider their faith a mark of status and indeed elitism, most are adherents only of the religion they were raised within, and remain largely unfamiliar with the other manifestations of faith they pronounce their superiority of. We have to recognize that religion is serving more as emotional affirmation than any kind of behavioral guide, making it less effective than speed limits.

We cannot ignore the fact that, in service to this indulgence, some of the largest slaughters and greatest inhumanities of our species’ history have been committed, demonstrating that even if any supernatural being existed, a) their influence is remarkably weak, b) they are not the least involved in beneficence and ‘caring,’ or c) their rules for humans just aren’t working. In a few decades in the US, we managed to almost completely overturn racism, certainly eradicating the openness with which it was once practiced – but a few thousand years of god’s word hasn’t been enough to instill peace, or even humility, much less an agreement on which religion is proper. Segue to:

There is no universal similarity in the world’s religions. While we are often told that scripture and religious revelation are god’s communications to its creation, there is such a huge variety of gods related throughout the world as to render this ridiculous. Somehow we are to believe that most of the world’s populations, throughout thousands of years of history, have pursued false idols to a huge degree, but only right here, right now, the church that we attend got it exactly right. Of course.

Religious folk make a great deal out of whatever common elements they can find, such as the number of cultures with flood myths, but we should expect common elements among many cultures, especially of things that occur worldwide. No attention is paid to the differences, however, which outnumber the similarities by a hundred to one, even more when we discount any examples that might have come from cultural crossovers and absorptions. Even further, claiming that any culture at all has strayed from god’s word means an inherent recognition that religion can be entirely made up – if all those cultures aren’t following the real god, who the hell are they following? And if they’re, as proponents of a sensus divinitatis blurt out, merely getting an impression of supernatural influence without accurate details, who gets to pronounce themselves correct in such circumstances?

No religion has ever gotten the details correct. The shape and age of the Earth, the true nature of the sun and the stars, the presence of microbes and how to avoid them, what lightning is, the methods of building a strong community, the hazards of believing promises from leaders… all the kinds of information that one would not only want from divine guidance, they would have been excellent evidence in support of such. Instead, what we actually have are myriad different, conflicting, and truly spectacular creation stories, completely inaccurate depictions of the sky and bodies therein, and total indifference to most of the pitfalls humans could possibly face. Again, religious folk struggle to interpret vague passages within scripture as supporting dinosaurs or an old Earth, but no devotee ever posited these possibilities at all, much less followed them faithfully, until observations rendered them inescapably correct – it’s not really useful information if we had to find it on our own before recognizing it within scripture.

Additionally, the inaccuracies within scripture produce their own problems: either the gods imparted false information to us, or the scribes somehow got these details way wrong. In either case, the only thing it tells us is to stop paying attention to scripture. The third possibility, considered by far too many people, is that scripture is right and everything that we have observed, tested, predicted, and use every day is actually wrong. Treating this ludicrous and desperate proposal with an ounce of seriousness just for giggles, this means that nothing that we do or observe is trustworthy – including what we read from scripture. That’s only a recipe for a rubber room.

No religion has produced evidence, prediction, or function beyond the merely emotional. While absolutely brimming with promises, properties, and guidance, no religion has managed to achieve even a simple improvement in our lives beyond the personal; the most theocratic states are among those with the lowest standards of living and the most oppression, falling in with the dictatorships. In US prisons at least, the percentage of religious inmates is significantly higher than the general population, instead of far lower as one would reasonably expect. Religious miracles are always either unsubstantiated folklore or vague examples easily explained by other means. Scriptural miraculous events have left no traces to be found, despite their claimed worldwide impact. Studies on the value of prayer turn up no effect except bias. Predicted events from scripture have repeatedly failed to manifest. No buddhist ever displays stigmata; no muslim ever drops dead from a shaman’s curse. In short, religion is a cultural artifact, manifested nowhere else, in no other way. We cannot use it to predict reactions, prepare for future events, or even form a rough guideline of the behavior of the adherents.

As numerous science-fiction stories have delved into, if we attempted to explain the function and value of religion to an alien species, we wouldn’t get anywhere – we can’t even do this for ourselves without blind selectivity. The only reason we accept any religion at all is because we’re hopelessly influenced by what others think; religion is spread by cultural pressure. Any comparison of the world’s various faiths for accuracy or explanatory values comes up poorly – adherents can find plenty wrong with every religion but their own, while excusing the exact same kinds of illogical and improbable properties of their own that they claim makes all other faiths corrupt. No religious culture has jumped ahead of all others in any standard one cares to name, while cultures with low religiosity show much higher standards of living, a correlation for which no one has yet managed to find another explanation.

Now, let’s be fair. I said in the previous ‘But how?’ post that logic isn’t all it’s cracked up to be: logic is only the extrapolation of dependable experience, or accepted traits, into rules or predictions, but if the experience is wrong or the traits inadequately understood, logic isn’t sufficient to render an accurate answer. Therefore, a logical argument that no gods exist is worthless, right?

Well, that depends – especially since that question above is a logical posit in itself ;-). First off, most of these are established by the very properties that religious folk claim, and are thus self-defeating. If the details are wrong, well, so is the religion that relies on them.

However, the real test of any logical argument is the evidence that it manifests. If we understand this property and that reaction, then we should expect to see so-and-so when combined – if the result is as predicted, we know that we understand the properties enough to produce something with functionality. There are numerous properties that we can expect to see from supernatural beings (despite the attempt to hide them away from our perceptions) and plenty of opportunities for religion to show worth. Yet positive religious properties are scarce, and predictions are even scarcer; we have more claims for why these don’t exist than actual examples that they do. “It’s all a plan we don’t know,” and “god works in mysterious ways” and “god is present in the areas science hasn’t found answers for” and “god made it all look like he didn’t exist” and “the long list of evidence disproving scripture is a test” – none of these are found anywhere in scripture. But while there is no such thing as proving a negative, we can show that the expected results from any positive claim do not manifest, or are logically inconsistent.

Any and all excuses for a lack of positive evidence can, and should, immediately be dismissed; the point should never be to justify belief despite a void of proof, but to demonstrate the positive, beneficial aspects of any hypothesis. It’s not enough to know a bunch of people with faith, and the fact that ‘faith’ is such a vague, contextual term shows that everyone knows it’s a void – especially when it can be applied with equal facility to every other sect that must be false. Value derives from something that works without faith, without excuses, without someone needing to believe in its existence. We can feel much more comfortable calling something ‘truth’ if it works the same for everyone, regardless of their cultural upbringing or predilection not to believe it. Vaccinations work for buddhists, hindus, rastafarians, christians, muslims, and atheists – despite the fact that their development required utilizing a theory that some of those faiths deny even exists. That’s value; that’s functionality.

There is a common concept, used not just in courts but throughout science as well, called the ‘preponderance of evidence.’ While there may be many different ways that each item of evidence can have come about, if just one scenario can satisfy all of them, probability favors this as the correct one – especially if other explanations involve highly improbable events, coincidences, or inexplicable behavior. So while countless arguments may be forwarded in response to the list above, I’d be very interested to see if anyone manages to find just one that covers them all, to see if it’s any better than the one that already exists: that there are no gods.

But how? Part 13: Theology

Al Denelsbeck

Once again I’m denying that I painted myself into a corner by choosing the “But how?” tag for posts of this nature, though it worked so well for a while. Pretend it’s anything you want it to be, however, since we’re going to ignore it and tackle a frequent lament to atheists everywhere, which is, But you haven’t considered sophisticated theology.

If you ask me what comprises ‘sophisticated’ theology, I’ll have to admit I have no idea – there is no real definition available, it’s just the argument that is often brought up when the most common aspects of religion, the ones used by virtually every religious person daily, haven’t been standing up to critical examination. If we take the more apparent traits of the theological tomes and papers considered sophisticated, we’d settle on it meaning either “circumlocution” or “obfuscation,” (I prefer “logorrheic” myself,) and I really do believe this is one of the prime reasons underlying their selection; it means rebutting them may take a while, which is likely to be avoided, but even if it isn’t, it’s a way to make someone spend a lot of time on the task. But let’s not be unfair – some people really are impressed by examples of dense philosophical pondering without realizing that philosophy is capable of going absolutely nowhere, while others never even read it, simply figuring that so many words in support of their case must be conclusive.

There are two things that I will note right up front. The first is that the argument that nobody has answered any given theological principle is usually misdirection; only a tiny percentage of any religious folk are familiar with more than rudimentary theology themselves, much less having used it to form their belief system. It’s an interesting side argument: is religion about some abstract line of reasoning, or is it what people believe in and why? Rebutting any theological argument really doesn’t make much difference to anyone’s belief, but unfortunately, if it’s avoided, that’s considered a win for religion, having presented an argument that cannot be trashed.

The second thing is that theology is not even remotely a science, and barely a philosophy. It consists, to a vast extent, of trying to find ways to support a foregone conclusion: god exists. You may think this is being either unfair or selective, but that’s what this post is going to illustrate.

A significant part of theology is establishing that a creator might be possible, and if so, then the concept is worthy of consideration. From a scientific standpoint, this is putting the cart before the horse; a more important question is, what makes anyone propose a god or creator in the first place? This highlights the foregone conclusion part, since one could easily argue that a periodic fluctuation in physical laws might be possible, or a extra-dimensional leak of material – speculation is limited only by imagination, and it’s not really deep thought to take that speculation and then try to find ways to support the idea. Draw the right analogy, and virtually anything can seem to make sense. Instead, we typically look for things that are supported by evidence rather than speculation, and even speculation (in the form of the theoretical sciences) needs to be buttressed by something that it predicts or explains. For instance, if there was a periodic fluctuation, would this mean that gravity could be found to be in a state of flux, increasing or decreasing by a measurable amount as it goes through its cycle?

Another glaring failure of sophisticated theology is that most of the arguments have nothing whatsoever to do with the gods that anyone believes in, nor establishes any property that could be of any use. The ontological argument, for example, argues for a perfect being, but how does this tie in with the being that anyone worships? Does a perfect being answer prayers, or even care what happens to the human race, as imperfect as we are? Right here is where religious folk leap up and avow the caring of the creator, usually by our bare existence, but notice how haphazard it is – how many areas of the world seem to receive none of this, the question of how perfection could have anything to do with judgment or torment, how many badly mistaken people (every competing, contradictory religious standpoint) somehow remain untouched by this perfection, leading one to wonder just how badly the definition of perfection can be mangled to make it work for sophisticated theology. If we have to resort to poor philosophical arguments to establish a likelihood of a perfect being, isn’t that by itself a demonstration of imperfection? Perfection shouldn’t be able to be mistaken in any way, by its very nature.

Sophistry refers to explanations that seem logical or rational, but actually fail to make sense, and this appears quite often within theology, and to no small extent in philosophy as well. It’s easy to posit factors such as, “Everything must have a beginning,” (or “cause” if you prefer,) and we feel this makes perfect sense. But there’s nothing that proves this at all, and in fact, matter can become energy and vice versa, but we see the beginning of nothing at all – just changes in state. Such arguments are influenced more from the perspective of humans, beings with finite lifespans, and even that can degrade into examinations of what life actually is and how we define consciousness. Not to mention that, if everything much have a cause, then we must have infinite causes going back forever, or posit an initial cause at some point in the past. To say that an uncaused, eternal being is the cause is to demonstrate that this really isn’t a rule at all, and if the being can exist forever, why not matter? Essentially, what’s being proposed is a very specific state of affairs – that there’s a fundamental law of the universe that proves the existence of a being who’s exempt from that very law – without demonstrating that either condition exists.

The nature of science is to establish that not only is a proposed scenario/trait/law likely, any other possible scenario is ruled out at the same time; not just an explanation, but the only one that fits. Theology makes no such efforts; the argument above (known as the cosmological argument) fails to rule out that all proposed traits therein can simply not exist and the exact same results can be achieved. The idea of a sensus divinitatis, an actual biological input like smell or touch that allows humans to pick up some inkling of the divine, is almost alone in theology in that it is actually based on a bare scrap of evidence: that most cultures around the world have developed some form of religion. The rot sets in when you attempt to get any more refined than the broad term “religion,” since none of these cultures agree on what is being sensed in any detail, unable to even pin down the number of divine beings. Meanwhile, the concept of agency has been carefully examined within the sciences and can even be seen in other species. It’s not hard to create an explanation for anything; the real skill (and value) comes in determining that it’s accurate and even useful.

It is worth noting here that the value of a logical argument for religion is rather haphazardly wielded. While considered important for sophisticated theology, which is used by adherents as needed to reinforce their position, most religious practices and the scriptural stories they’re based upon are so far removed from logic that it’s ludicrous. Original sin, worldwide floods, reincarnation cycles, and in fact, any trial or test of mankind by a creator not only defy logic, they defy any explanation whatsoever, and are maintained solely by assertion and claims of divine mystery. To conflate any theological concept with the religions practiced the world over shows that no consistent standards are being maintained in the slightest.

To go just a wee bit deeper into the philosophical end of it, we must realize that even logic is not the property we assume. It is limited by our own knowledge and experience, and in fact, that’s really all it is: observation leads to inferred property, which may be extrapolated into physical law or overall truth. But in the absence of adequate information, logic can and does fall flat. The history of science has countless examples of logical, perfectly sound explanations that were later found to be completely wrong – we simply did not have enough information to go on, or no previous experience with the effect, so even a logical argument is not proof of anything; this isn’t mathematics. While here, I’ll address the argument that religious folk have used against science: that it changes so often, which certainly makes it sound unstable. But science is not the properties of the universe, it is the pursuit of understanding them. Knowledge, of course, must progress, unless one possesses omniscience, in which case one would hardly need an argument to make a point. Meanwhile, contrast this all against religions where no information, and few predictions, are ever developed in the first place, and in order to make the premises work, mystical, untouchable, unknowable realms are wielded with great confidence. It is easy to say that beyond the Andromeda Galaxy sits a golden chariot, and this assertion will never be proven wrong if we never get that far – that’s considered pretty solid in religious circles. But it’s never proven right either, which is the minimum standard of any science. While the religious may find satisfaction in vague wordplay such as claiming that a creator lives ‘outside’ of any place we could see or find, happy that the definition precludes any further demonstrations, the rules change whenever anyone dares to say, “There is no god.” Abruptly, being unable to prove this wrong is no longer a solid argument; protests against making such a definitive statement, and cries that logic has been violated, are issued immediately. Yet theology is nothing more than making such definitive statements.

[I’m going to backtrack slightly to throw out two curious side observations here about the “science changes but religion always remains the same” argument. First off, there isn’t a religion on earth that hasn’t changed drastically, much less lacks countless devoted adherents who cannot agree on what, exactly, isn’t changing – I can walk less than ten minutes in any direction from where I sit now and find churches for six different interpretations of christianity alone. Second, science does indeed have some unchanging concepts, known as the laws of physics – it is precisely these that the religious deny are laws in the first place, circumvented by a creator and a realm of afterlife and countless other ideas. It doesn’t appear as if “unchanging” is as important a trait as claimed…]

Very often, a prime criteria of any theological concept is its compatibility, either with an existing religious belief or currently understood science, or both – this is especially true of the cosmological argument. But this really isn’t much of a hurdle – I could spit out a dozen nonsense theories in a half hour that could accomplish both, but this would not make them likely in any way, or anything more than creative imagination. Note that few, if any, theological concepts have to be compatible with each other, and this raises an interesting perspective. It’s easy to find protests that science has not considered the so-and-so principle, and this is taken to mean that the principle is capable of universal acceptance by everyone except those stubborn scientists. But the protest never involves whether hindus or buddhists consider it; the difference of opinion among various religions is not somehow considered important enough to merit the attention. I’ve made the point that a sound theological principle should easily be accepted by all of those who already feel that religion is important; that seems to me to be the first goal one would want to reach. If it’s true that theology is intended as explanatory, this would be a minimum standard; instead we have the search for places to hide supernaturality, itself a concept that relies on inexplicability.

This highlights the incredibly vague definition of religion in the first place, and this also makes sophisticated theology a questionable pursuit. Wouldn’t one, firm definition be a reasonable start? If we allow for the devout, personal savior attitude of christianity, and the deity-free precepts of buddhism, and the multiple deities of hinduism, and world-consciousness and karmic cycles and all of the others… what, exactly, are theologians even trying to establish? What’s the common denominator, what principle should we all be agreeing on? Most of the world’s religions have to be wrong in the details – there’s too much contradiction, extending even to local sects – so what value is theology supposed to bring? If we cannot even establish that major practices are correct or delusional, instead aiming only for the indulgence of all of them, why should anyone care? People can be right no matter what the hell they believe? You’ll pardon me if I cannot find the sophistication that this embodies.

And finally, there’s the remarkably inane concept that reality is established by popularity, or even by argument. This is no more sophisticated than blind assertion, and no more useful. Even if everyone in the world became convinced by some theological argument (good luck with that,) it wouldn’t mean that anything had been established other than convincing humans of something, which isn’t a huge accomplishment; we’re a species that believes a celebrity endorsement indicates the value of a product. For there to be any value whatsoever to theology, beyond the self-absorbed justification of existing belief, it should be capable of providing something that we can use to our benefit. It should not simply allow a belief system, but be able to explain, or predict, or even improve something in our lives – these are minimum standards of science, so religion should be able to meet these criteria handily. Yet, the value of any of the major theological arguments remains to be seen, especially since, as noted earlier, the vast majority of those who embrace religion cannot even relate the prime theological arguments.

That was all part one. Part two is why theology even exists. We, as a species, look for cause-and-effect, driven to understand how things work and why. More than a few people have put forth that science handles the how, but theology handles the why – except, it really doesn’t, does it? We only get answers like “god’s will” and “we’re not meant to comprehend,” which is a shitass version of why, if you’ll pardon my pointing this out.

Even worse for theology, however, is a very basic trait that science has revealed: we’re a species prone to seeing agency, or a specific, motivated, aimed explanation behind how things work. Not every time, no – prone does not mean perpetually – but we’re remarkably bad at personifying inanimate objects and random events, even finding order or patterns where none exists. This is demonstrated constantly in how badly people mangle statistics and odds, believing a change is “due” or a pattern of bad luck has to change. On top of this, we’re woefully biased towards human ways of thinking, to the point where we believe animals think like we do and that alien species will be able to communicate with us. All of these traits make it very easy for us to expect some form of guiding intelligence behind the universe; it just seems right. But it seems right because we evolved to think in anthropocentric ways.

We are one of many social animals, species that derive a benefit from a cooperative existence, and that sociability is provoked by the good feelings we receive from positive interactions, and the bad feelings from negative ones. An attractive stranger smiles at us and we’re pleased. We watch people’s eyes, we read their emotions through body language and tone of voice; many species do this. Some of us go so far as to believe trees strive for light and growth, and dolphins enjoy our companionship. Neither can charitably be considered the case; there’s no evidence whatsoever that this is true. We’re just biased in those directions, formed by nature to favor the explanations that feed the social instinct. The entire field of theology can easily be seen to be an extension of this, seeking explanations that provide a beneficent, kindred spirit. This is, in fact, the only thing that theology provides, since it explains nothing, predicts nothing, and is evidenced by nothing. It cannot be tested or falsified, and subverts the simple logical formula If A, then B – there is no B, unless it’s, “I’m happy.” This really isn’t a result that can lead anyplace, nor a reason to consider it a valid pursuit.

This ties in well with the certainty, mentioned above, that unprovable, indemonstrable supernatural traits exist – there can, of course, be no certainty of any such thing, unless we mangle the word to lose all meaning whatsoever. But there can be a desire for such conditions; affirmations of self-importance, or a beneficent overseer, or that we will ultimately be found to be good and thus rewarded. While it is frequently argued that having such emotions is indicative of higher meaning, we’re a species capable of extraordinary feats of denial in service to our egos and desires – this is easily seen in political arguments, and everyone wrapped in a bad relationship, gambling and addictions, justifying purchases, and even our diets. It’s hard to imagine something more ubiquitous, really. No one ever has confidence in a belief that is not self-affirming; the argument that faith is a path to Truth™ never recognizes the bare fact that most of the world does not agree on what this truth is. We should fully expect that there should be one world faith, and no religious conflict of any kind.

We come back to how sophisticated is defined. One might certainly think that human traits that can be studied and measured, that have analogs in other species, that are specific to the survival trials we face and can be shaped by natural selection as much as the unique behaviors of many other animal species, should be considered a hell of a lot more sophisticated than a collection of vague philosophical word games. That chemical and energy processes which can not only trace backwards 13.8 billion years to a period of utter simplicity, but also explain and predict the processes we can measure as far as light will carry, and allows us to manipulate atoms themselves and form computing systems based solely on varying resistance, could potentially earn the title of sophisticated more appropriately than explanations that can be interpreted at will. That taking speculation one step further, ignoring trust and instead considering predictable, dependable results to be paramount, which has led to the vast majority of advances mankind has achieved in medicine, engineering, manufacturing, energy, travel, [insert everything science has ever accomplished in here] – that this reliance on solid progress might, just might mind you, be considered somehow more sophisticated than justifying a foregone conclusion. Given all of this, it seems the label of ‘sophisticated’ isn’t really a comparative adjective, but a judgmental one – the frustrated insistence of the religious that their belief is impressive, rather than self-absorbed. This doesn’t mean anyone is obligated to take it seriously.

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