Why I don't believe in gods
A new chap is visiting my regular haunt, the atheism board at Debate Unlimited, and firing off huge numbers of posts espousing various Christian doctrines. His endless refrain is that we're intellectually bankrupt because we can't prove that god doesn't exist. Of course we trot out the burden of proof argument that if we must prove gods don't exist, the theist must prove fairies and goblins and all manner of entities do not exist too.
This chap's response has always been that most people through history have believed in gods. Our response, again, is that the truth isn't in the numbers; that millions also believed the sun went around the earth; that there are well-established, understandable reasons why people invent gods; and that, in any case, people have come up with very different gods through history, which demands explanation whether gods exist or not.
However, this whole argument is fraught with the danger of antiprocess. Yes, our arguments are fair, but I must remain aware that I use the argument ad populem on occasion myself, not to prove anything, but to make a point. In particular, when arguing for evolution (goodness knows why I ever have to do that in this modern world, but backwards thinking is scarily prevalent), I sometimes ask what the creationist thinks must be going on in the scientific world that almost every scientist in the world believes evolution to be a fact. Presumably it must either be a massive conspiracy, or all those scientists are incredibly stupid yet have somehow still made it to the lofty heights of academia. But this really is an argument from numbers. I suppose it is possible, if absurdly far-fetched, that god's intervention in the evolutionary process is too intermingled with ordinary 'micro'-evolution to be detectable.
The theist in question has a point, that the prevalence of belief in gods does demand an explanation from the atheists as to why they reject the popular view. I should say that the majority of European atheists are not strongly exposed to theistic culture and the typical reaction is one of indifference to religious belief rather than outright rejection. But for people like me, where are we coming from?
The real answer to this question should be that there is no evidence for gods and therefore no belief in gods. Why would you believe in something you see no evidence for? But this is unsatisfactory as an answer to the typical theist, and also it is not really the true answer in my case. My main reasons for not believing are categorised below. Note that most of these are not disproofs or necessarily logical arguments, they are merely my reasons. The rationalisations have, in many cases, come first, but my mind is somewhat unsatisfied with a list of atheistic rebuttals as a way of establishing its world view, hence these rather more emotive appeals to common sense.
1. The god idea is absurd
Imagine for a second, if you can, that there are no gods. Now reflect on religion: the prayers, the ritual, the faith healing, the tribalism, the conferment of moral leadership on men in funny dresses. All revolving around a complete fantasy. The whole thing is completely ridiculous, almost comical if it weren't so horrifically wasteful and pursued with such gravitas. It is only when you are convinced there is no god that this realisation can become a reason in and of itself: the god concept is self-evidently absurd.
People brought up in non-theistic environment have no problem seeing god for what it is. They have no problem telling you they don't believe in god because the whole idea is no different from any other fantasy. The rest of us must struggle with our in-built conditioning, the social prejudice that sets god aside from other fantastical ideas. In the odd moment of clarity, I found that my brain would process the god idea objectively, and, for a moment, forget to recognise it as special and partition it into whatever protected area of my mind it has for god. And I would almost laugh at the comically infantile nature of the god idea, much as a Western Christian might laugh at the Hindu elephant-god Ganesh or multi-armed Vishnu. Soon, this became the most important reason for my disbelief.
It's nigh on impossible to convey this silliness to anyone living in a god-prevalent culture. Essentially, god is like a child's imaginary friend. This sort of floaty ever-presence, giving us comfort in times of trouble like a baby's blankie. Allowing us to imagine loved ones who have died, frolicking happily for eternity in a land of candyfloss and gummi bears.
This is to say nothing of the utterly absurd theological concepts in religious doctrine. Like the Christian idea of salvation, with god unable just to forgive people and instead having to go through a tortuously round-about process of having himself brutally murdered - that somehow resolving a dilemma of his own creation. The Hindu (and sometimes Buddhist) idea of reincarnation with bad people being reincarnated as dung beetles and the indetectable cosmic essence of Karma permeating the universe and flitting around passing judgement. The Islamic notion that their religion is one of peace when the founder was a confessed conquering imperialist and the strongest adherents keep killing people. The creation of the entire universe in six days. Dinosaurs on the Ark. The idea of 'love' so ineffable it resembles human love only in that it uses the same word. The idea of love being completely sufficient as an inherent purpose to existence. The constant, unending rationalisations of natural disasters; god was angry, god cannot intervene, man brings it upon himself (yeah, man brought down a mudslide to kill 200 children), god works in mysterious ways.
It's sad. But it's also silly. Very very silly.
2. The diversity of religions
This used to be my number one until it was knocked off top spot recently. No matter which way you swing it, there is no consistent concept of god in religion. They all agree that gods exist, but they don't agree what they are, what they're like, what they did, and what they do. Every single religious argument is refuted by another religion. Every argument against another religion refutes your own. People from other religions have ancient texts, ranges of stories, arrays of supposed evidence, and quite equal levels of conviction, personal experience, and revelation.
There is no reconciling religions with each other without throwing out absolutely everything but the concept of intelligent creation - not even heaven is universal or even similar when present. And intelligent creation is irrelevant on its own, it tells us nothing about how to live and how we die.
3. The universe works precisely as we would expect it to were there no god
It is only oneself that is changed by belief. The universe trundles on with complete indifference to us. Prayer has no effect, and the loved ones of theists and atheists alike die in horrendous and pointless ways with complete impartiality. Injustice prevails, deviousness is rewarded and generosity punished. Nature contains, in equal measure, wonder, beauty, cruelty, and ugliness.
4. The indifference of nature is incompatible with a loving and powerful god
The riddle of Epicurus goes "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
Evil, in this case, is of course referring both to man-made evil, natural disasters, and diseases and conditions. Now, we know god must be pretty powerful, because otherwise there wouldn't be much point in appealing to him through prayer etc. But god is also supposed to be loving. No loving human would stand by while natural evils are taking place if they had the power to stop them. That is the very essence of love. But somehow we're supposed to believe god's love is compatible with his doing precisely that.
One argument is that if god intervened it would affect our free will, but I don't see how. Just because a god stops asteroids from hitting the earth or cancer from eating a child's bones, it doesn't mean we don't have free will. Another more esoteric argument is that perhaps the only way the universe can 'work' is if such disasters are allowed; but not only is that ad hoc, it ignores the fact that god is supposed to be able to create matter from nothing. It is hardly conceivable that god can will a universe from the void but cannot do something simple like preventing tonnes of mud from crushing a school. It also contradicts the supposed reports of divine intervention in the past.
Fundamentalists have it much easier than liberal theists. Their god is not just loving, he can be vengeful and jealous, and he reeks his vengeance in a highly indiscriminate manner. It makes perfect sense to Pat Robertson that their god's punishment for America's sins was to fail to prevent the September 11th attacks, regardless of the fact that there were many non-Americans killed, and a huge number of people who would have subscribed to Pat Robertson's values. It makes sense to Hindus that god used the Boxing Day Tsunami in Asia to take vengeance on Muslims, and to Muslims that Allah used it to take vengeance on Hindus and Christians.
But to the liberal, 9/11 and the Asian tsunami were extremely perplexing events. Their bumbling rationalisations bounced from justification to justification, but basically they boiled down to one thing: god works in mysterious ways. God is quite monumentally mysterious, yet these people still claim to know how it wants us to live our lives. The whole thing is unfathomable.
5. The more educated the person about the way science tells us the world works, the less likely they are to believe in god
There is a direct correlation between understanding of the mechanisms of nature, and irreligiosity. There are notable exceptions, but there is no denying the correlation. I am willing to make the conjecture that god is therefore largely an explanation of the unknown to most people, and the more that is known the less god there is.
In surveys, most people say that the reason they believe is not because of design or god-of-the-gaps, but because of the need for purpose and meaning to their existence. This does not detract from the point: this is merely a need. Thinking people recognise that their belief cannot hang entirely on their fears and desires. When the universe is better explained by a godless set of principles, the urge for purpose typically gives way.
I should point out that theistic purpose is inherently shallow; god-given purpose is still unexplained while we do not understand the motivations of god, and it is hardly respectful of my freedom of intellect, or my humanity, to be told that my purpose is defined by another like the communist state deals out job titles to citizens.
6. The only arguments for god worth anything prove nothing but a dead-beat deistic god
All apologetics boils down to arguments for deistic creators. Even if we accept that the universe must have been created, it tells us absolutely nothing. We don't know why the universe was created, or what for; we don't know whether god is still around; we don't know whether it cares what we get up to or not. We certainly know nothing about the afterlife (which does not exist in apologetics and remains eternally a tacked-on product of faith and fear).
That pretty much sums up my main reasons for not believing in gods. I says gods, in the plural, advisedly. I have equal disbelief for the gods of all cultures, past and present. Clarence Darrow said
This chap's response has always been that most people through history have believed in gods. Our response, again, is that the truth isn't in the numbers; that millions also believed the sun went around the earth; that there are well-established, understandable reasons why people invent gods; and that, in any case, people have come up with very different gods through history, which demands explanation whether gods exist or not.
However, this whole argument is fraught with the danger of antiprocess. Yes, our arguments are fair, but I must remain aware that I use the argument ad populem on occasion myself, not to prove anything, but to make a point. In particular, when arguing for evolution (goodness knows why I ever have to do that in this modern world, but backwards thinking is scarily prevalent), I sometimes ask what the creationist thinks must be going on in the scientific world that almost every scientist in the world believes evolution to be a fact. Presumably it must either be a massive conspiracy, or all those scientists are incredibly stupid yet have somehow still made it to the lofty heights of academia. But this really is an argument from numbers. I suppose it is possible, if absurdly far-fetched, that god's intervention in the evolutionary process is too intermingled with ordinary 'micro'-evolution to be detectable.
The theist in question has a point, that the prevalence of belief in gods does demand an explanation from the atheists as to why they reject the popular view. I should say that the majority of European atheists are not strongly exposed to theistic culture and the typical reaction is one of indifference to religious belief rather than outright rejection. But for people like me, where are we coming from?
The real answer to this question should be that there is no evidence for gods and therefore no belief in gods. Why would you believe in something you see no evidence for? But this is unsatisfactory as an answer to the typical theist, and also it is not really the true answer in my case. My main reasons for not believing are categorised below. Note that most of these are not disproofs or necessarily logical arguments, they are merely my reasons. The rationalisations have, in many cases, come first, but my mind is somewhat unsatisfied with a list of atheistic rebuttals as a way of establishing its world view, hence these rather more emotive appeals to common sense.
1. The god idea is absurd
Imagine for a second, if you can, that there are no gods. Now reflect on religion: the prayers, the ritual, the faith healing, the tribalism, the conferment of moral leadership on men in funny dresses. All revolving around a complete fantasy. The whole thing is completely ridiculous, almost comical if it weren't so horrifically wasteful and pursued with such gravitas. It is only when you are convinced there is no god that this realisation can become a reason in and of itself: the god concept is self-evidently absurd.
People brought up in non-theistic environment have no problem seeing god for what it is. They have no problem telling you they don't believe in god because the whole idea is no different from any other fantasy. The rest of us must struggle with our in-built conditioning, the social prejudice that sets god aside from other fantastical ideas. In the odd moment of clarity, I found that my brain would process the god idea objectively, and, for a moment, forget to recognise it as special and partition it into whatever protected area of my mind it has for god. And I would almost laugh at the comically infantile nature of the god idea, much as a Western Christian might laugh at the Hindu elephant-god Ganesh or multi-armed Vishnu. Soon, this became the most important reason for my disbelief.
It's nigh on impossible to convey this silliness to anyone living in a god-prevalent culture. Essentially, god is like a child's imaginary friend. This sort of floaty ever-presence, giving us comfort in times of trouble like a baby's blankie. Allowing us to imagine loved ones who have died, frolicking happily for eternity in a land of candyfloss and gummi bears.
This is to say nothing of the utterly absurd theological concepts in religious doctrine. Like the Christian idea of salvation, with god unable just to forgive people and instead having to go through a tortuously round-about process of having himself brutally murdered - that somehow resolving a dilemma of his own creation. The Hindu (and sometimes Buddhist) idea of reincarnation with bad people being reincarnated as dung beetles and the indetectable cosmic essence of Karma permeating the universe and flitting around passing judgement. The Islamic notion that their religion is one of peace when the founder was a confessed conquering imperialist and the strongest adherents keep killing people. The creation of the entire universe in six days. Dinosaurs on the Ark. The idea of 'love' so ineffable it resembles human love only in that it uses the same word. The idea of love being completely sufficient as an inherent purpose to existence. The constant, unending rationalisations of natural disasters; god was angry, god cannot intervene, man brings it upon himself (yeah, man brought down a mudslide to kill 200 children), god works in mysterious ways.
It's sad. But it's also silly. Very very silly.
2. The diversity of religions
This used to be my number one until it was knocked off top spot recently. No matter which way you swing it, there is no consistent concept of god in religion. They all agree that gods exist, but they don't agree what they are, what they're like, what they did, and what they do. Every single religious argument is refuted by another religion. Every argument against another religion refutes your own. People from other religions have ancient texts, ranges of stories, arrays of supposed evidence, and quite equal levels of conviction, personal experience, and revelation.
There is no reconciling religions with each other without throwing out absolutely everything but the concept of intelligent creation - not even heaven is universal or even similar when present. And intelligent creation is irrelevant on its own, it tells us nothing about how to live and how we die.
3. The universe works precisely as we would expect it to were there no god
It is only oneself that is changed by belief. The universe trundles on with complete indifference to us. Prayer has no effect, and the loved ones of theists and atheists alike die in horrendous and pointless ways with complete impartiality. Injustice prevails, deviousness is rewarded and generosity punished. Nature contains, in equal measure, wonder, beauty, cruelty, and ugliness.
4. The indifference of nature is incompatible with a loving and powerful god
The riddle of Epicurus goes "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
Evil, in this case, is of course referring both to man-made evil, natural disasters, and diseases and conditions. Now, we know god must be pretty powerful, because otherwise there wouldn't be much point in appealing to him through prayer etc. But god is also supposed to be loving. No loving human would stand by while natural evils are taking place if they had the power to stop them. That is the very essence of love. But somehow we're supposed to believe god's love is compatible with his doing precisely that.
One argument is that if god intervened it would affect our free will, but I don't see how. Just because a god stops asteroids from hitting the earth or cancer from eating a child's bones, it doesn't mean we don't have free will. Another more esoteric argument is that perhaps the only way the universe can 'work' is if such disasters are allowed; but not only is that ad hoc, it ignores the fact that god is supposed to be able to create matter from nothing. It is hardly conceivable that god can will a universe from the void but cannot do something simple like preventing tonnes of mud from crushing a school. It also contradicts the supposed reports of divine intervention in the past.
Fundamentalists have it much easier than liberal theists. Their god is not just loving, he can be vengeful and jealous, and he reeks his vengeance in a highly indiscriminate manner. It makes perfect sense to Pat Robertson that their god's punishment for America's sins was to fail to prevent the September 11th attacks, regardless of the fact that there were many non-Americans killed, and a huge number of people who would have subscribed to Pat Robertson's values. It makes sense to Hindus that god used the Boxing Day Tsunami in Asia to take vengeance on Muslims, and to Muslims that Allah used it to take vengeance on Hindus and Christians.
But to the liberal, 9/11 and the Asian tsunami were extremely perplexing events. Their bumbling rationalisations bounced from justification to justification, but basically they boiled down to one thing: god works in mysterious ways. God is quite monumentally mysterious, yet these people still claim to know how it wants us to live our lives. The whole thing is unfathomable.
5. The more educated the person about the way science tells us the world works, the less likely they are to believe in god
There is a direct correlation between understanding of the mechanisms of nature, and irreligiosity. There are notable exceptions, but there is no denying the correlation. I am willing to make the conjecture that god is therefore largely an explanation of the unknown to most people, and the more that is known the less god there is.
In surveys, most people say that the reason they believe is not because of design or god-of-the-gaps, but because of the need for purpose and meaning to their existence. This does not detract from the point: this is merely a need. Thinking people recognise that their belief cannot hang entirely on their fears and desires. When the universe is better explained by a godless set of principles, the urge for purpose typically gives way.
I should point out that theistic purpose is inherently shallow; god-given purpose is still unexplained while we do not understand the motivations of god, and it is hardly respectful of my freedom of intellect, or my humanity, to be told that my purpose is defined by another like the communist state deals out job titles to citizens.
6. The only arguments for god worth anything prove nothing but a dead-beat deistic god
All apologetics boils down to arguments for deistic creators. Even if we accept that the universe must have been created, it tells us absolutely nothing. We don't know why the universe was created, or what for; we don't know whether god is still around; we don't know whether it cares what we get up to or not. We certainly know nothing about the afterlife (which does not exist in apologetics and remains eternally a tacked-on product of faith and fear).
That pretty much sums up my main reasons for not believing in gods. I says gods, in the plural, advisedly. I have equal disbelief for the gods of all cultures, past and present. Clarence Darrow said
"I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose."Ultimately, that's the nub of it. No god strikes me as any more special or worthy than any other supernatural, mythical, or fantastical concept, volume of believers notwithstanding.
posted by extabgrad at 10:22 AM
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