Tag Archives: atheism

On Nonbelief

I must admit that I find arguments for and against belief/God/religion fascinating — much in the same way as one may find a genetic mutation fascinating. Why? Mostly, it’s because many of the arguments completely miss the mark. This is because both groups of arguments generally disregard definitions and limits of disciplines (namely, religion and the empirical sciences). Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion is a clear example of this as his argument relies on making empirical sciences the basis for theology as well as that other discipline he seems to ignore (religious studies). While I accept the fact that empirical sciences can and should make contributions to these other disciplines (and, more generally, to the humanities) — and vice versa (something with which I think Dawkins may be uneasy); this does not mean that the latter (humanities) can be reduced to the former (empirical sciences). Social constructs are generally not things that matter to a ‘scientist’ (or, more specifically, a chemist, physicist, biologist, etc), which is fine because no discipline serves as the queen of the university (unlike in the past).

At a friend’s request, I read a short article by John Loftus critiquing religious belief. In my reading of it, I found it follows the above difficulty. I will bring this out by a short, perhaps inadequate, response to that article. His main point, which he himself provides explicitly, is to show that ‘Christian faith should be rejected by modern, civilized, educated, and scientifically literate persons’. However, I will argue that (1) he completely fails to make this argument and (2) the argument he does make ends up being contradictory.

Loftus finds evidence for his thesis in the fact that even ‘Christian professors have probably had some doubts’. Questioning belief is not evidence of moving towards disbelief. Rather, it is just as plausible that one could be refining one’s own belief, contemplating arguments against one’s belief from a rational, logical perspective. In other words, there is a gap between saying ‘someone has doubts’ and saying ‘one no longer believes’; and Loftus fails to connect the two. Furthermore, he follows this observation with a second: religious pluralism. He points out (quite rightly) that the geopolitical associations of religion heavily influence one’s religious faith. For Loftus, this means one must ‘test [one's] religious beliefs as an outsider’. Apparently, that means without actually taking that line of questioning seriously, lest one begins to doubt. As a result, I find his ‘sociological reasons’ quite lacking; at best, this section of his argument can be used to critique any given choice of religious belief but not religious belief itself (i.e. to criticise specific belief in Christianity/Islam/Buddhism.etc but not the prized general belief of religion itself).

Loftus’s next argument turns more directly philosophical. It seems that his point is that proofs for God are inconclusive (no argument there), then follows an tangent on these proofs for the existence of God. So what if proofs for the existence of God are inconclusive? Has Loftus not heard of Gödel’s incompleteness theorem? Or better yet, why does Loftus so quickly dismiss absurdity as a viable option, particularly since he paints religious belief as absurd? This is because Loftus confuses sense with logic. Perhaps a quick reading of any of the various post-structuralists would show that the sense of an argument needn’t conform to propositional logic. This is largely because, I suggest, humans are illogical and contradictory. In short, criticising the form of an argument does not make a critique of the content of an argument. I’m not saying the form is irrelevant, but rather it isn’t always the bulk of an argument, particularly in this case.

When Loftus speaks of scientific reasons he is no longer a Christian, he mentions naturalism, opting for empirically observable and verifiable events. He uses this straightforward (and useful) approach against theists such as Plantinga (who argues that Christians should start with a set of beliefs before pursuing scientific analysis). Loftus also uses naturalism against theistic belief because modern science has provided us with effective applications of knowledge (e.g. medicine) that make obsolete religious acts which were once used in lieu of rational, natural explanations. However, he fails to argue that theism requires this kind of superstitious belief, something that would make his argument much more forceful. Rather, we must accept his premise without argument despite evidence to the contrary (e.g. anthropologists like de Chardin). This reliance on naturalism becomes a contradiction when Loftus suggests that the one thing that would make him believe is the supernatural bit excluded from naturalism: revelation of the ‘mysteries’ of God.

Loftus continues his tirade against theistic belief by turning to ‘Biblical reasons’. The fact that the Biblical text is riddled with discrepancies, errors, and often bigoted and violent concepts is enough for Loftus. However, I disagree on the basis that such evidence can only be condemning if one takes a particular kind of inerrantist approach to the Biblical text. In other words, Loftus chooses to ignore the contexts in which the various books that compose the Bible were written. That’s simply not an argument for or against anything. It would be no different than an argument for the eradication of all guns because they’re linked with murders. In other words, it is an argument that uses the effects of particular (mis)uses of a tool as sufficient reason to ban the tool completely.

The argument continues with a sceptical approach to history. Loftus’s scepticism is an epistemological one in which he demands absolute certainty. However, Loftus fails to recognise that empirical science suffers the same issue. Science is based purely on observed reality without any a priori postulates. We may not be able to have absolute certainty who killed Jon Bene Ramsey, how Stonehenge was erected, or when Christ was born. However, we also cannot have absolute certainty that the world in which we live and experience is real either. It’s the classic brain-in-a-vat scenario and Loftus’s response to that must also be the response to historical certainty. If one wishes to be sceptical by requiring absolute certainty, then such scepticism cannot be applied selectively.

The second part of Loftus’s criticism from history has more substance and is perhaps the most compelling argument against Christianity (and it could be extended to all religious belief if one wishes to dig into history). Why believe in God (or a particular religion) if there is evil (or the religion has a history of doing very bad things)? In fact, why support a political entity (e.g. country, party, etc) which has had a seedy history? The proper response, however, is not to abstain from religion or politics (or citizenship) but to determine if the bad history of them is integral to their identity or if it was a period of wrong movement. In other words, does the atrocities committed in the name of Christianity during the Crusades, Inquisitions, etc accurately represent Christianity or were the atrocities done by people misguided by other ideologies. For example, Loftus cites slavery in the US South as a case. What Loftus does not mention, however, is the Christian abolition movement, William Wilberforce and others in the UK, etc. In other words, he treats Christian thought as a singular entity despite the plurality of beliefs that has existed since its beginning.

Loftus’s final argument is a revision of the previous, turning explicitly to the problem of evil. It’s a question that has plagued religious thought for millenia, and it still doesn’t have a good answer. Yet the problem does not go away because God is taken away from the question. Evil still exists, we just don’t have a God to blame it on. In other words, the problem of evil cannot be seen as the basis to reject religion or theism, but as a problem that exists despite those. This is followed by one-liners that form the actual case against his belief in Christianity, but these are presented as simple facts rather than arguments.

In summary, Loftus wants to appear as being reasonable and logical for rejecting Christianity despite a collection of arguments that are not connected to the root issue. He asks for certainty, something that is generally taken as reasonable, but taken as an absolute requirement that cannot be met. In fact, not even empirical science can meet that requirement as all scientific theories, observations, and facts are subject to additional observations. The epistemological issue becomes confused as an ontological one. Rather than delving into arguments about the merits of Christianity (or even religion in general), Loftus presents issues that are secondary. In the end, his criticism of Christianity is that it doesn’t make sense (whoever said it was is selling something) and his criticism of God is that God doesn’t appear like aliens in film and television do when they announce their existence (i.e. by coming down from the heavens and saying ‘we come in peace’). He asks for evidence that prove beyond any doubt while either ignoring or forgetting that nothing is certain (besides death and taxes) when questioned enough. In short, the only truly reasonable/logical position would be complete agnosticism on the matter, leaving things open for further observations. Yet this is not what Loftus chooses, and it shows in his arguments.

Atheigulous

I recently watched Bill Maher’s documentary Religulous. I had been interested in it for a while because I have a good deal of respect for Maher and both of his TV series (Politically Incorrect and Real Time). In one aspect, this show did a great analysis of the fundamentalist variety of religion. However, Maher also extends this analysis to all varieties of religion; and this argument follows the same reasoning that he criticises.

I take the main focus of the film to be that religious faith and objective science is incompatible. In fact, religious faith is now an absurdity in these modern times. Maher travels quite a bit throughout the US, Europe, and Israel interviewing people who would generally be classified as fundamentalists in their approaches to theology. At one point, he is interviewing Ken Ham (of Answers in Genesis and its Creation Museum fame). He takes Ham to task in resolving huge differences between scientific evidence and the “common sense” literal reading of creation espoused by young Earth creationism. From my perspective, Ham’s creationism here has already lost its sense of direction by adopting the language and system of scienctific observation that negates the teleological goal of creationism. In oversimplified terms, Ham’s creation science is much like trying to raise freshwater fish in salt water; the freshwater fish behave at the cellular/organic level differently than saltwater fish. The language and goals of the creation story in Genesis, much like the stories of Christ in the Gospels, are not meant to adhere to modern-day scientific (or biographical) literature. In this respect, Maher is spot on with his critique of faith. If one holds religious faith to be coterminal with empirical science, faith will always lose because it centers on phenomena that exceed the bounds empirical science has made for itself.

On the other hand, Maher’s critique is the the “atheist version” of the very thing he critiques. In one segment, he is asking a few Muslims (including an imam) about the Qur’an. His questions fall along the lines of “the Qur’an says to kill infidels, is this true?” Every Muslim asked answers the question along the lines of “that is not how we interpret that text because it was linked to a particular historical context that no longer exists.” Maher pushes his point by denying the possibility of interpretation, setting himself up as the more accurate interpreter than the believers who study the text! This is the same thing that he critiques people such as Ken Ham (and others). In other words, Maher wants religious/theological hermeneutics to be a closed event ripped from any context and made into an absolute ideological framework in order to reject religion. He then rationalises his work by claiming its standpoint of doubt is the best position.

Ironically, it is here that Maher again falls prey to the very thing he criticises. If doubt is the best place to stand, he hasn’t doubted enough! The “true” sceptic is the one that doubts everything, not just what one is prejudiced against. Maher emphasis empirical science as the strongest evidence for his position, yet he never doubts the framework of assumptions that undergird the empirical sciences. He never suggests that empirical evidence itself may be already tainted by a predisposition to certain beliefs (namely, that an external world exists and is discernable). Obviously, then, Maher should insist that some kind of belief is “acceptable” without entering into fundamentalism or scepticism. It seems, then, that the rational position is somewhere between the fundamentalism he decries while using and the scepticism he touts while evading.

One last thing of interesting note is that Maher suggests in his film that science has discovered a gene that is linked to belief in God. Ironically, the original researcher said that it was linked to spirituality and “feeling God’s presense” and not to simple belief in God. Further, these findings were never published in peer-reviewed literature. Even more striking is that this gene can also be associated with the feeling of beloning to a political party. In other words, it isn’t a very strong theory and it doesn’t suggest that belief in God is a genetic trait. Perhaps if Maher had utilised more of his “scepticism,” he would have noticed that.

On suicide

As I lie awake late one night recently, I was thinking about some scenes in the finale of Battlestar Galactica.  If you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want to know what happens (Darth Vader is Luke’s father), then don’t read this (yet).

A quick summary of the series: humans are nearly eradicated by Cylons (robots created by those humans a while back) and are chased by them for most of ther series.  Some Cylons rebel against the rest and join forces with the humans.  Oh and many of the Cylons are indistunguishable from humans.  Come to find out some Cylons from a long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away as well) came in and stopped the “first war” between them and, in exchange, helped the Cylons perfect their human look-a-like models.  Now, fast forward to the end of the series during the final confrontation between the human side and Cylon side. The Final Five Cylons that came into the fray and crafted the armistice are siding with the humans (and, in fact, did not know they were Cylons until late in the game).  The humans have destroyed the central system that allows the Cylons to live forever (basically, the persona data gets downloaded into a new body of the same model when the old one dies/is killed).  The Final Five offer a new armistice: give the Cylons the information needed to recreate what was destroyed and both sides go their separate ways believing/hoping in faith that the other is trying to hunt them down (again).  The humans agree to this as well as the Cylon “leader”, Number 1 (this being his model number).  For the Final Five to get the information, they need to interface together in order to piece together the data that each has.  Of course, when this happens, the dark past of one of them enrages another and results in one of the Final Five being killed immediately and the information lost forever.  Throughout the confrontation, the Cylons have the military advantage (the battle being on their home turf with plenty more operational weaponry and numbers than the humans.  However, at this point in the finale, #1, who is fully aware of this situation, commits suicide; he moves the handgun in his hand to his mouth and pulls the trigger.

What is it that made #1 do this when the Cylons could have easily destroyed these humans (as well as the last bit of worthwhile weaponry the humans had)?  Sure, because of the numbers in that specific situation, #1′s chances of surviving the fight was minimal, but suicide?  I think the issue came down to that of hope.  Throughout the series, #1 claimed to be an atheist (whereas the rest of the Cylons were monotheists), however I think his suicide contradicts these claims. He wasn’t placed in a difficult position, nor was he forced into the compromise. He willingly accepted it because it offered him a hope of a life after death, in effect a religious hope. He quickly grabbed hold of this hope for purely selfish reasons: so that he could live another day. The very moment that hope was postponed (after all, the Cylons would have eventually recreated the missing pieces), he panics–something out of character. Instead of reasoning this as a poor choice from the writers, I will assume it was intentional and not as a way of quickly ending the series.

This panic, then, reveals #1′s true nature as a believer. He had always wanted to believe, but was afraid of what that might entail. In this sense, #1′s suicide isn’t a random act, but one of total desperation for the very belief he truly cherished.  The hope he briefly saw was the removal of his mask of unbelief. When that faltered, suicide was the only option he saw that would remove the mask because he would rather have died a believer than to live either as a believer of lies or as a false non-believer. It is within this irony that #1 reveals that his guise as a preacher was the best guise of all as it was the real him masking an illusion of an atheist.