We Are All Atheists When It Comes to All of the Other Gods That Have Ever Existed
Some of us just go one God further. I think I have tracked this quote to the original source, Stephen F Roberts, and here is the original version:
Brief history of The Quote…
“I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” …Stephen F Roberts
Last fall, I wrote a brief review of Hector Avalos’ Fighting Words and on the topic of inscripturation Alden complained that Avalos was quote-mining The Bible to come to his conclusion. In fairness, I had only highlighted some of Avalos’ quotes to emphasize problems with relying on scripture for proof of God. I didn’t replicate the entire book in my blog post, and my desire was for my readers to read Hector’s book. I had not intended to make the entire case in the blog post. Hector is the scholar, I am the reader and reviewer.
Avalos also uses passages from other Scriptures such as the Koran to emphasize his point that understanding of the scriptures is a scarce resource because readers need help interpreting what it says and usually rely on pastors, priests, rabbis and imams to provide that help. The teachers have the scarce resource, because they have “access” to the true insight.
At some point, those of us that have tried to access religion through the writings of theologians and scholars are simply going to throw our hands up in the air and say “None of these writers has any more access to the Truth than I do.” We reach the conclusion that no matter how deep and esoteric the arguments of apologists are, it all comes back to whether or not one can achieve Faith through study. Either we are going to have it or we aren’t.
Declaring myself to be an atheist was based on the realization that I could never be “reasoned” into the faith that I was unable to find through prayer and serious attempts to actually connect with the God that I was raised to believe in. Honestly, I tried to connect through the Catholic Sacraments and I ate the crackers and drank the wine. I ventured into a more evangelical and less structured course of independent religion, one less formal but still based on the same Scriptures. (Some of the Catholic scriptures were excised in this new religion I tried, but the basic source was the same.) I went so far as to get “baptized in the Holy Spirit.”
Through all of this, I realized that in all of my own teaching and preaching, I was faking it. In prayer, I never could get the Faith I needed to be religious and I finally accepted that I am an atheist. From that time on, I have not only read theology, but I have read criticism of theology.
I went back to religion and tried Wicca and Asatru. I read the writings of respected witches. I read both the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda, and studied the writings of Asatru. I was present at a Drawing Down of both the Moon and the Sun. It felt wonderful and magical and I could understand how a person could think that it was real; but the emotional high that I gained in that experience was very similar to what I experienced while “speaking in tongues.”
I had to finally reject even the pagan religions. Honestly, I have tried religion because I want to be a good person and the religious claim that I have to have some spiritual base in order to be a good person. (Even that is not enough to get to Heaven.) “Something, anything, is better than nothing.”
When Dawkins released the hardcover version of The God Delusion one of the sharpest criticisms of him was that a biologist has no business writing about religion and rejecting it. “He’s not a theologian,” they said, “How can he possibly reject religion or call it a delusion?” Of course, that many of his critics were people who reject evolution yet are not biologists was an irony that they didn’t recognize.
PZ Myers responded to such ridiculous criticism with “The Courtier’s Reply,” a piece that Dawkins included in the paperback version of The God Delusion. The conclusion that we come to is that no matter how fine our examinations of the description of the emperor’s clothes, the Emperor is still naked. Naked is naked when you don’t have faith.
Tangled Up in Blue Guy is often used to explain to the world (at least a very small portion of it) the reasons that I am an atheist. It would be easy for me to just say “I am an atheist” and get on with my life. Many of us spend a great deal of time examining just how atheist we are or have a right to be (weak v strong, agnostic or merely anti-Christian, anti-Muslim, anti-Hindu.)
The problem comes when we announce our lack of faith. Along with the ridiculous claims that we are atheist because we are angry at God, or something traumatic happened, or we just want to be hedonistic and reject that we will have to answer for our actions come Judgment Day; we are also challenged by people who tell us that we just haven’t looked closely enough at their religion to be able to categorically reject it.
“Come to our church, it’s not like any of the other churches. We are truly Bible-based. We aren’t like the religious right. We aren’t hypocrites. We aren’t always shaming you into tithing. We study evolution and it doesn’t conflict with our faith. We arent…..”
Greta Christina expresses her frustration, too. We have many aspects of our lives that we wish to explore and experience. We shouldn’t have to examine all religions before we completely reject the idea. The world is too fascinating and frustrating and hard to understand without spending the rest of our lives digging into all the religious teachings. We don’t have faith, and can’t be reasoned into it.
I’ll use an analogy to clarify what I am trying to say:
I like the taste of beer, but I recognize that some people don’t. They may have gotten sick when they first tried beer, and every time they think of beer it reminds them of throwing up. They may have thought it too bitter. There are many reasons that people don’t like the taste of beer. I am not going to list all possible reasons. Suffice it to say that they just don’t want to drink beer.
So, I argue with them and say “But you haven’t tried Summit Great Northern Porter. All of the other beers you may have tasted might be crap, but Great Northern Porter is made from better hops, it is smooth-brewed. It is the perfect culmination of malt and color, that will finally convince you that beer is a good thing. If you don’t believe me, read this:
Firm, round, full-bodied mouthfeel is what immediately strikes me about this beer — it’s fundamentally a remarkably soft beer. I find it equally remarkable that the coffee smells that enticed me in the aroma are far more subdued in the flavor than I’d expected, giving way to more sweetness with a little bit of a toffee character to it. Yet for a flavor profile that screams “all malt”, the brew finishes with a nice dryness that bears testament to the use of black malt rather than the softer chocolate malt that some brewers use (but that yields a less satisfactory finish). The malt can’t claim all the credit though since this beer does have a fairly substantial dose of hops, and those hops make their presence known in the flavor with a deep earthiness spiced with a peppery edge. Quite nice overall, and very well balanced.
How can someone not love beer after reading this? (As a side note, for anyone who is planning to buy me a beer someday soon, Summit Great Northern Porter really is my favorite beer of all time. I was at a bar in St. Paul and ordered a pint. The beertender accidendally poured me a Guiness Stout, and I nearly spit out the swill. She offered it to me for free and was shocked that I didn’t want it.)
A person can reject beer without having tasted Great Northern Porter. I am not comparing religious faith to beer in order to demean people who have deeply-rooted faith. I am only trying to point out that it makes no sense to continually come at an atheist with a parade of religions and theologies in order to try to get us to have faith in a God or Gods or Goddesses. We don’t have faith, and there I times I just wonder why I have to deny the specific tenets of every religion in order to have my atheism taken seriously.
Cross-posting from Tangled Up in Blue Guy.
Speaking as a closet Omnist, I have an obvious response to this: All serious gods that have ever existed are what we scientists would refer to as “models”. None are accurate on their own, but rather bring out some detail of a deeper reality.
An Atheist and an Omnist are, therefore, quite dissimilar in the sense of number of deities they believe in. (At least, this is true if you use a suitably broad sense of “believe in”.)
Having said that, I don’t like beer, but I don’t mind at all if you do.
What I still fail to understand is what my religion or lack thereof has to do with these people’s comfort level. Same with my drinking of beer. Are they seriously so insecure as to not rest easy until everyone else is doing it?
(cross-commented from your cross-posted blog)
Mike, Mike, Mike… Did you know that Guinness is full of antioxidents and is quite good for you? I like Guinness, but I certainly don’t drink it all the time. (by the way, if you don’t like Guinness, you should try Malta…)
Now, beer aside- your analogy is distinguishable because taste is a matter of opinion. The existence of God is an issue of reality. But, I certainly give you the freedom to not believe in Him. And, to reply to The Nerd, I’m okay with your being an atheist, too.
By the way, your opening quote sounds witty, but it doesn’t make sense. Atheism says there is no God, period. No spiritual world, no afterlife, yada, yada. I am not an atheist because I don’t believe in Krishna or Baal; I just happen to know the real God. It may sound arrogant, but as the old Walter Brennan line goes, “no brag, just fact.” I dismiss the other Gods for a number of reasons, none of which is “I looked for God but couldn’t find him.”
(The Courtier’s Reply doesn’t make sense, either.)
I am not going to mount a defense of the Courtier’s Reply until you get more specific.
Guiness as sold in Ireland may be an ambrosia, but the imported version in the US has a watery after taste. It has no finish.
The opening quote makes perfect sense from my perspective, and your task in evangelizing me is to convince me that the God you know is any more real than the Gods that the Greeks knew, the Norse knew, the Hindus know, the Shintoists know and even that the Native American spiritualists know.
I think that one thing you need to show me is that you are willing to examine your faith from the perspective of an atheist. It may be hard because you were born into a belief, and while you have changed the form of expression of that belief from the Lutheran Church to an emergent church, it still refers to the same Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
At the same time, your atheism does extend to the Mormon faith, to the Unification Church, Scientology, etc. Try telling Tom Cruise that you don’t believe in Thetans. He’ll jump up and down on your couch. We think he is nuts, but he “knows” the truth of Scientology the same way you “know” the living God.
As I explained in the main post, you can smugly insist that you aren’t bragging, that you just stating the facts. But so does Sarah Palin when she says that Alaska’s Oil is a gift from God to Alaskans, or when her preachers states that “God has a Plan for Alaska.”
The field of study known as “Symbolic Interactionism” examines how perspective colors sensation. It is a subfield of social pyschology, and one source for you to help understand why I am not convinced that you “know” your God as “fact.”
I’m not saying that it will make you an atheist, but it is useful to help understand why simple declarations of faith are not convincing to those who don’t have faith.
And to The Nerd, thanks for your comment. On the issue of tolerance between Beer Drinkers and non-Beer Drinkers, just for a little light-hearted exercise, try to imagine a world for non-beer drinkers in which pledging allegiance included the phrase “one nation, consuming beer,” or a coinage which included the phrase “in beer we imbibe” and you’ll get an idea of why we cringe at the breaking of the walls of separation.
Some day I’ll write a critique of The Courtier’s Reply- I’ve often thought of doing it.
Guinness has a watery aftertaste? I haven’t noticed that. But, I have a Guinness chocolate cake recipe that’s enough to convert anyone – at least to chocolate cake.
“The opening quote makes perfect sense from my perspective”
Now you’re sounding like a postmodernist… 😉
I don’t believe that I really need, or can, prove anything to you. I will “give a reason for my faith,” but as I’ve said before, belief is a decision. That’s not taking the postmodernist position that we each have our own truths; I believe Christianity – the whole Trinity thing – is true for everyone. I’m just saying that it’s not my job to make you believe it, but if anyone really wants to know why I believe what I believe, I’ll tell them.
And, to correct the record, I am still (or again) more Lutheran than anything else; in fact, I attended our local Lutheran Church last Sunday.
The definition of the word “postmodernist” seems to be as fluid as the philosophy, I guess.
“Summit Great Northern Porter is obviously swill. I know that because I’ve tried Guiness Stout and that’s swill. That’s all I need to know. Anyone who thinks I need to know anything about Summit Great Northern Porter to know whether or not it is swill is giving a Courtier’s Reply.”
It’s fine if someone doesn’t want to even try Summit Great Northern Porter. The question is whether it is right to say it is swill when you don’t even know the arguments in its favor and to ridicule (and it _is_ ridicule) someone who has tried it and thinks there are good reason to think it’s not swill.
IIRC, the criticism of Dawkins was that he claimed to be arguing against the existence of all deities, but actually was arguing against a small subset of ideas about what “God” means. The “Ultimate 747” argument, for example, was an argument against a certain type of deity. It’s a good counter to the argument from design, and it neatly demolishes pertty much all fundamentalist ideas about deities, but it doesn’t touch any theology that doesn’t include on the argument from design (e.g. most of liberal Christianity, for example).
Saying that some Emperor, somewhere, or even a large class of Emperors, have no clothes, is all well and good. That doesn’t prove anything about all Emperors. Pushing the analogy a bit further, it especially doesn’t take into account Emperors who are not prudish and have no problem with public nudity.
Alden:
I class myself as an atheist, but only in the sense that I don’t believe that there IS a god. The scale Dawkins drew up in the God Delusion is I think a good one, where the “very religious” catagory, being full of people who “know” that there-is-a-god, is juxtaposed with a kind of strict atheist, who “knows” with equal fervor that there most certainly is no god. This catagory of atheists, as Dawkins pointed out, is probably sparsely populated, especially when compared to the hordes of religious folk at the other extreme. The next step in the scale still carries the label atheist but doesn’t go so far as denying the existence of any deity. Rather, it treats it as a distant, nebulous thing, which cannot be said to not exist, but really has no impact on reality as far as we can tell.
That is definitely where I sit. I’m too much a scientist to bandy about absolute statements about god(s), but I’ll carry on my life as if there weren’t any.
[…] friend Mike has written an interesting post (which can be found here and here) entitled “How much religion do we have to study?” He’s referring to how much […]
Pseudonym wrote
In fact, in “The God Delusion” Dawkins was quite specific about the kind of God he was arguing against. It is the personal God of orthodox Christian belief, a God that created the whole universe intending to do so, that watches every sparrow’s fall, that listens to (and perhaps answers) prayers, and so on.
Such a God does fall to the ultimate 747 argument. A God that can intend the universe as it is must have the ‘cognitive’ capacity to ‘mentally’ represent that universe, thus having a complexity at least equal to the universe. In addition, it must have the additional auxiliary capabilities to do the stuff it is claimed to do, taking its complexity above that of the universe. Hence it explains one complex thing by invoking a more complex thing that is itself unexplained.
Oh, Richard, don’t you get it? By sufficiently advancing the complexity of the creator, we create an entity that needs no explaining. Such a complex entity is beyond the comprehension of mortals, and so we needn’t worry our little human heads about it.
When we die, all will be revealed.
Mike and Richard, the existence of God is not advanced in order to explain the universe. The existence of God does, of course, offer explanations for many things.
Of course that is the background for religion, isn’t it? The explanation for things not as yet understood. When we discuss the origin of life or even the universe for that matter, the explanation for many things relies less and less on the existence of God and turns more into a belief.
Your first sentence should probably be fleshed out a bit, as I am not sure what you are trying to say.
Mike, you’ve completely lost me. All I’m saying is that God doesn’t exist because we need an explanation for things. I don’t know of any Christian who believes in God because they need an explanation for the origins of the universe, or whatever. Those people tend to be deists, I expect. And, doing away with the “need” to believe in God to explain things says nothing about the existence or non-existence of God (since the existence of God question is not about explaining anything else).
I have to agree with Alden that very few people believe in God because they need an explanation for things. Of course, if some atheists would stop hiding behind the Courtier’s Reply and actually read some theology (as opposed to only ID apologists), they would realize this. But this doesn’t mean that God can’t explain things.
Here’s an example. If I eat pizza Friday night and then wake up Saturday morning and see left-over pizza in the fridge, I don’t say to myself “Look! Left-over pizza. I hypothesize that I ate pizza last night.” No, my belief that I ate pizza comes from the fact that I directly experienced eating the pizza. My eating pizza on Friday night does, in fact, explain why there is pizza in my fridge Saturday morning, but I don’t believe I ate pizza Friday because I see pizza in the fridge on Saturday.
You have got to be kiddng, Bradley. You seem to think that all atheists are atheists because we have never read theology.
Your pizza analogy makes no sense. People often don’t realize the way your mind works. When you see the pizza in the fridge, you initially form a hypothesis that you ate it and then search your memory for evidence.
Try a little harder, because if that is theology, it is weaker than anything else I have studied.
Huh? I didn’t claim that was theology. It was an analogy as to how somebody can believe X is evidence for Y, even without believing X because of Y. Also, note that I said “some atheists,” not “all atheists.”
“When you see the pizza in the fridge, you initially form a hypothesis that you ate it and then search your memory for evidence.”
I suppose if you had a few too many beers with your pizza the night before, your mind might work like that, but I don’t see any reason to think that is how your mind always works.
Also, I never said anything about why atheists are atheists. I was talking about why theists are theists (and why some atheists might possibly not understand why theists are theists).
There are many more examples of how our minds “do science” informally. We also “do calculus” when we are playing sports. While you may do science and math estimating very quickly, if you break down your thought processes into minute steps you will realize that in the pizza example it is not ridiculous to state that a hypothesis was formed and evaluated.
Perhaps I reacted a bit strongly for this blog to your implication that atheists are only familiar with religion through ID apologetics, and your assertion that we are hiding in the folds of the courtier’s reply.
I see that the emperor has no clothes, and the detailed theologies do little to clothe the emperor. I am not unfamiliar with theology, and what to you seems like evidence of God is not so obvious to me.
Perhaps? That’s putting it mildly.
Do you have any evidence for your “do science” and “do calculus” assertions?
How do you know what seems like evidence to God to me? I haven’t said a word about that.
My point in saying that some atheists should read more theology is not that I think it will convince them or change their minds about the existence of God. My point is that it will help them understand what theists actually believe.
Take your blood pressure medicine, please.
Evidence of how people’s brains process? I have a few years of psychology. I don[t have a specific study to pull up and quote, if that’s what you mean. Your hysterical response to my generalization on how the mind works reveals the lack of self-awareness that you are projecting on to me.
Don’t make the assumption that atheists have never studied theology. We, at least many of us, are aware of what theists believe and find it unsatisfying. We know that ID apologetics are the realm of people who seek to twist science to show design where there is none, and while we rightly ridicule ID it is not what we think is the encapsulation of religion.
I will point out that when people find out that I am an atheist, they don’t respond by asking me how I can justify that in light of Hilarius of Sexten’s “Compendium Theologiae Moralis.” They respond with “Well, then, how do you explain the existence of the universe? How do you explain how you are alive?” The other day someone said “Well, you don’t want to be an atheist because…” and he told me the story of an atheist who was injured in a freak accident.
So, don’t try to pretend that all theists are versed in complex theology and that atheists are ignorant of it. You have completely missed the point of the Courtier’s Reply. The point is that no matter how detailed an examination of theology one attends, it is still based on human thought about religion and can never be presented as objective evidence of the existence of God.
I’ve never of the idea that we do “do calculus” when playing sports or that our minds “do science” informally. That’s why I was asking for some more information about it. There is nothing “hysterical” about that request. If you don’t have it just say so. I’d settle for a page number in one of the textbooks you used in your “few years” of psychology.
And no, I don’t make any assumptions about whether atheists have read theology. I know many have. Again, you missed my the word “some” in my reply.
And, as I just said in my last reply, I don’t think atheists should read theology because it will give “objective evidence of the existence of God.”
And you are of course correct that your average everyday Christian doesn’t refer to theological works all the time or even any of the time. My point is that if you are going to write a book about why God is a delusion, you at least read enough theology to understand what people actually believe. (For example, I don’t know if you’ve read Aquinas, but if you have, I hope you agree that Dawkins didn’t really understand him in his treatment of him. Now, I could really care less whether an atheist has read Aquinas or not. But when you write a book and decide to write about Aquinas, you should at least make an attempt to understand him.)
BTW, I find it somewhat amusing that an atheist would call my request for evidence “hysterical.”
Well, I find it hysterical that you would ask for evidence of something that is so basic to human thought processing. While you think that this may be a cop out, I regret that I sold my psychology textbooks nearly 29 years ago. If it is really important to you I am sure that you can trot down to a library and pick up a book on introductory, developmental, cognitive or even behavioral psychology.
I also find it strange that this is the thing that you picked out to demand evidence for, of all the things that I brought out in this and other posts I have written here. I am amazed that the other three co-bloggers haven’t booted me from this blog, considering that they are actual practicing scientists.
I will also be honest enough to say that while I have read a bit of Aquinas, I have not studied it in enough depth to critique Dawkins’ treatment of his work. However, in his introduction, he clearly states that if the preponderance of religious people actually based their beliefs on the in-depth study of theology that you and Alden enjoy, he would have written an entirely different book.
I don’t think it is a cop out … it very well may be true. If you feel like convincing me that it is true, that’s fine, but until then, I have no reason to think it is.
The reason I picked it out was because you seemed to think that it caused a problem for the analogy that I gave.
Where in the intro does he say that? I only have the hard cover, perhaps he added that to the paperback version. But that’s beside the point. He brought Aquinas up in the book, so he should be responsible enough to figure out what Aquinas is saying.
[…] Clashing Culture, I once asked the question of how much religion we were supposed to study before we finally come to […]