Defining My Position

I feel that I should explain my position on the existence of God, because in some of the discussions I’ve been involved in, I’ve stated that I’m not an atheist (just a skeptic).  But I’ve also labeled myself an atheist in other instances.  Before I start to sound inconsistent or unsure, I should clarify.

First, there are two main definitions of “atheist” that I use.  The first is what I’ll call a “true atheist.”  This is a person who says, “There is no God; He does not exist.”  A true atheist might even claim that they have proof that God doesn’t exist, or, at the very least, that they are certain He does not.  I tend to think that this is just as much a leap of faith as believing in God.  I don’t think any of us can be certain that God doesn’t exist.

The second definition of an atheist (I’ll call a “soft atheist”) is someone who says, “I have no belief in a god.”  This is fundamentally different from true atheism.  A soft atheist generally holds the position that although we can’t know for certain that God doesn’t exist, there doesn’t yet seem to be any evidence that He does.  A soft atheist is basically saying, “I don’t think there’s any reason to believe in God yet, but I can’t rule out that it’s possible.”

Never in my life have I said, “God doesn’t exist.”  I am a soft atheist.  If I ever refer to myself as an atheist, this is what I mean.  I also use it almost interchangeably with “skeptic.”  I’ve heard Richard Dawkins refer to this position as a “de facto atheist,” or an atheist in practice only.  That is, until I see some evidence for God, I’m going to live my life as if He doesn’t exist.  (Just like until we see some evidence that astrology is real, many of us are going to live our lives as if it isn’t.)

I don’t think this is quite the same as agnosticism.  The way I understand it, I’ve heard two definitions of agnosticism.  The first is that we (any of us) can’t know anything about God.  The second is what someone like Bill Maher says: “I just don’t know and neither do you.”

The first one doesn’t seem logically sound.  After all, if you make the statement that we can’t know anything about God, you’re actually admitting that you do know enough about Him to make such a statement!  The second definition is pretty close to soft atheism, in my view, or Dawkins’ de facto atheism.

I’ve taken this position because, as I said, I haven’t yet seen anything – certainly anything that is the least bit compelling – that would lead me to even entertain the notion that God exists.  In fact, the great majority of commonly accepted instances have turned out to be hoaxes, delusions, personal experiences, or easily explainable phenomena.  I also think that each of the three big logical arguments for the existence of God (the cosmological, the Teleological, and the ontological) is at best flawed (or outright ridiculous, in the case of the ontological).

I’ve also taken this position because I understand the limitations of human experience, bias, and perception.  I think it is incumbent upon us all to be intellectually humble, to treat knowledge as provisional, never as irrefutable (when something is irrefutable, it becomes faith).

Why Convicts Should Lose Jesus

One of the stock answers Christians give when someone asks for evidence of their God goes something like this: “You can’t find evidence of God; you just have to experience it yourself.  You have to look for it and discover what His love feels like personally.”

Carl Sagan gave my favorite response to this.  To paraphrase, he said, “I’m not going to go out and try to prove your belief for you – that’s your responsibility.”

Likewise, I have been accused of “never doing the experiment” myself.  I think this accusation means that I’ve never given faith in Jesus a chance, and that I’ve closed myself off from anything that might “prove” His existence.  It’s kind of funny just how wrong it is.

I was raised in an utterly secular environment; I don’t remember either of my parents ever saying a word about God to me.  About the only childhood experience in this vein was a grandmother who took me and my sister to church a few times.  But most of my family, while certainly not atheist crusaders, had little use for religion.

However, I eventually did.  I was part of a church youth group with a couple kids from my neighborhood.  I walked around knocking on doors handing out pamphlets.  I chose to be baptized.  I believed that Jesus Christ had died for my sins, that He loved me, that the Bible was at least mostly true, and that I’d go to heaven one day if I did right by it and Him.  This active participation in organized religion didn’t last very long, but I held these beliefs for several years.

When I was eighteen and lying on my first bunk in my first prison cell, I was still a believer.  I remember the day distinctly when I felt – I “knew” it with the utmost certainty – that God had put me in prison for a reason.  My faith was completely renewed, I had my old Bible sent in to me, and I decided that was to be my path.

It didn’t last long.  My first question was about the “reason” I was in prison.  I know why I’m here, and God certainly had nothing to do with it.  I’m here because I decided to rob a man and he died.  This was completely my choice and my responsibility.  And if God had truly put me here for a reason, that doesn’t say much about God.  After all, a man was killed in the process.  How could I be so arrogant to think that my life and purpose meant more than his?  What kind of God would allow an innocent person to die, simply so He could put me where I was “meant” to be?

I started to think that I couldn’t possibly “know” that God had put me in prison for a reason, anyway.  I started to think that it was almost certainly my mind’s way of dealing with the situation, of finding purpose and reason – and perhaps even a shameful denial of responsibility – for a stupid kid who had no idea who he was.  I had just destroyed someone else’s life and my own: it makes a great deal of sense that I would want to believe that it didn’t happen in vain, that I had some greater purpose.

That was the beginning of my questions, my rejection of revealed knowledge, and my path to accepting reason.  It also led to my moral evolution.  Yes, I am going so far as to say that rejecting Christianity made me a better man.  If nothing else, it made me understand that being a moral person means a great deal more than obedience.

Mr. Incredible and God, Part VI

In one of my attempts to convince Mr. Incredible that I’m perfectly willing to hear any evidence he might present that points to the existence of God, I told hm that I wasn’t an atheist, just a skeptic.

His response was, “And you think you’re going to win.  You make God laugh.”

(And this is the type of discourse I find myself responding to.  Yes, I’m ashamed.  I admit to some amount of boredom as an excuse.)

First of all, Mr. Incredible, I’m not trying to “win” anything.  I want the truth, and I have no problem admitting that I don’t know everything and that our knowledge gained through science is provisional.

Secondly, about me making God laugh.  To quote John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, “That’s a bold statement.”  First you read my mind, now you’re claiming to know God’s mind?  Okay, maybe you just meant that as a colloquial statement, but Mr. Incredible, be careful.  That sounds extremely arrogant, to make a statement like that.  Can you really know so much about God to say that He would laugh at me (for whatever reason)?  Don’t you think God would be upset that you’re making such an assumption?  What if you’re wrong?

And honestly, why would God laugh at me?  All I’m doing is asking tough questions.  I doubt His existence, sure, but He’s never given me any reason not to.  He proved His existence repeatedly in the Old Testament – why not to any of us in the modern era?  If your God is real, did He not grant me the gift of my mind and the ability to use reason?  Wouldn’t He want me to be critical?  Wouldn’t it be insulting to Him if people just believed for no reason other than because they were raised that way?  Wouldn’t He rather have discerning followers than blind sycophants?

Suppose – as has been the case with many people, including many scientists – that my search for truth and goal to educate myself leads me to eventually accept God’s presence?  Wouldn’t that be a good thing?

Besides, God is supposed to be our loving father.  Why would He laugh at me?  Admittedly, I am certainly weak and pathetic compared to a supposed omnipotent being, but why laughter, why mockery?  Isn’t that rather petty and silly?  Shouldn’t He want me to one day see the light?  Shouldn’t the benevolent God that so many Christians have described to me love me and sincerely want me to change?

And what about this: What if I never see the light?  According to you, if I’m unrepentant, I’ll eventually be sent DOWN THERE, right?  Would God still be laughing then?  Maybe He’d be right and maybe I’d even get what I deserved, but would it make Him a great benevolent being, if He laughed about it?

Mr. Incredible and God, Part V

Another challenge in Mr. Incredible’s position that God is immune to all the normal rules of “proof” that us crude scientific thinkers are bound by was this: “Prove that you exist.  I would love to hear you try.”

No problem.  First, I’ll prove it logically.  Here goes: I exist.

The fact that I’ve said “I” means that I’m acknowledging a sense of self.  I couldn’t use that personal pronoun without confirming that I, indeed, exist to be able to claim that I exist.  Think about the converse: If I say “I don’t exist” (as some confused post-relativists and goth teenagers like to claim), I make a fool out of myself.  You can’t deny that you exist without affirming it, because you have to say “I” before you can claim some nonsense about not existing!

Now as to my empirical existence in the real world.  How about this experiment: Someone asks me to prove that I exist, and in response, I punch them in the nose.  Then I say, “Okay, prove that your nose isn’t bleeding.”  Or how about this:  Someone asks me to prove that I exist, so I go out and contract the rabies virus, then see if the challenger will let me drool on them.  If I don’t exist, they wouldn’t be in any danger, right?

This is absurd.  It’s simply a hope that someone won’t be able to come up with an adequate answer, and the challenger can then smile and wave his finger and say, “See?  It’s just like God.  You can’t prove He exists, but we just know He’s real anyway.”

The thing is, I can prove that I exist, and it doesn’t require any faith, any revealed knowledge, or any leap to “just knowing” something.  I have a physical existence that can be measured against an objective background.  Gravity, for instance.  Because I have mass, I exert a relatively small amount of gravitational attraction on everything else in the universe with mass.  This influence can be discerned precisely – with astounding accuracy – simply by calculating my mass and plugging it into the inverse square law.

And guess what?  My mass is the same no matter who measures it, no matter if they use the standard system, the metric system, or some alien system from Mars.  No matter where I go in the universe, no matter who’s observing me, no matter what I believe or what anyone else believes, it doesn’t change my mass.  (Of course, the body is in a constant state of flux, so I lose and gain mass continuously like everyone else due to perspiration, cellular change, eating, etc.)  This is called objective reality.

As usual, people who retreat behind the wall of “My deity can’t be proven by science and therefore you just have to accept that He’s real without any evidence” can’t seem to accept the notion of an objective reality.  It’s like they revel in the idea that their subjective thoughts should count as some sort of evidence.  And why shouldn’t they revel?  No one can prove them wrong, so they’re sitting pretty.  They’re position is unassailable.  Well, at least according to them.

Mr. Incredible and God, Part IV

In Mr. Incredible’s presentation of the “fact” that the rules of evidence don’t apply to his belief that God is real (but they do apply to all of my positions, unsurprisingly), I was given several challenges.  Prove that love is real, I was dared.  Prove that something is beautiful.  Prove with logic that the Fifth Symphony is sheer beauty.  Describe scientifically the fragrance of violets.  (The idea being that I can’t, and that God is like these things.)

As usual, creationists like Mr. Incredible confuse their perceptions with objective reality.  Prove that a symphony – or anything else – is beautiful.  Okay, first you have to define what “beautiful” means, Mr. Incredible.  It’s not objective, so that’s a problem.  If you had asked me to prove that something weighs about 150 pounds on the normal gravity of earth, as measured by an ordinary American bathroom scale, that would be easy, because that’s something we can objectively observe.  No matter who’s doing the weighing – me, you, a Tibetan monk, or an alien from Andromeda – the result would be the same.

But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, to use an appropriate cliche.  I can’t prove that something is beautiful because “beautiful” is simply a term Homo sapiens use to describe something they find pleasing to the senses.  I’m sure guinea pigs find their high-pitched squeals agreeable, but to many of us, they’re grating.  We can’t even agree on a particular singing voice of our fellow humans as beautiful.  I’m sorry, but the Fifth Symphony, a sunset, the Sistine Chapel, and Angelina Jolie are not objectively beautiful.  It’s simply that in a log of people’s subjective opinions, they are.

The same goes for the smell of violets.  Science is quite capable of describing the biological mechanisms that cause a violet to emit odor-causing particles.  As far as anything more … some people describe the fragrance of a violet as “wistful” and “haunting.”  Science can’t do that because, again, this is just the opinion of some random people.  Not everyone likes the smell of violets.  It would be as futile as asking me to describe scientifically why I might enjoy one TV show over another. 

I hate to crudely break down something like love (being a rationalist doesn’t make me heartless, you know), but in this case, it’s more of the same.  You’d have to define what love is before proving that it’s real.  Many people have very different ideas about what constitutes love.  Many people also have very different ideas about what constitutes loving behavior.  Many people also claim to love people and pretty clearly do not (as evidenced by repeated harmful actions or abuse).  Even if it were possible for every human being on the planet to all agree on an indisputable definition of love, this is still a subjective opinion.  It says nothing about objective reality.

Now, in the case of love, this doesn’t matter.  It’s as real to me as it is to many others.  The fact that I call it subjective opinion doesn’t change the reality that I love my mother, for example, nor does it lessen the strength of that love.  But when we’re talking about applying a subjective opinion to objective reality – like the charge of an electron, say – it does matter.  Because the charge of an electron is always negative.  The electron doesn’t care what you name it, how you describe its charge, or whether you look at it or refuse to admit it exists.  It has a quality that we describe as a negative charge no matter what.  If it doesn’t, it’s not an electron.

The same goes for God.  He either exists or He doesn’t. Maybe there’s evidence for His existence, maybe there’s not.  But one thing is for certain:  The way you or I or anyone feels about God doesn’t change the nature of His existence or non-existence.

Mr. Incredible and God, Part III

After four times of asking Mr. Incredible for any evidence whatsoever that points toward God’s existence, I was again told that “I have persuaded myself that no such evidence exists.”  Apparently Mr. Incredible is a psychic, because this particular position of mine was buried so deep in my mind that I never even knew I held it!

This is getting tiresome, Mr. Incredible.  What if you kept asking me for proof of evolution, and I kept responding with, “There’s tons of evidence, but I’m not going to tell you, because you wouldn’t believe it.”  give me a break here.  I’m leaning more and more toward the notion that you keep evading the challenge because you aren’t capable of providing any evidence other than your personal opinion.

But okay, to cut Mr. Incredible some slack, he sort of answered me by quoting someone who held a predictable position.  If I’m understanding it correctly, it is this:  There are some things that can’t be measured logically or scientifically, things that can’t be measured in a test tube.  God is apparently one of these things.  To quote:  “There are certain things that must be approached in faith, things that are matters of perception, not of proof.”

So instead of providing evidence, Mr. Incredible tells me that his position doesn’t have to rely on evidence.  You want a special exception for your belief.  For everything else you demand evidence.  If a scientist tells you about evolution, or quantum theory, or Big Band, you say, “Prove it.”  But when it comes to your creation story, you say, “I don’t have to prove anything, because my belief can’t be proven in any way you could possibly test.”  It sounds like hypocrisy to me.

Using this rationale, we can aslo postulate the existence of the Omnipotent Purple Platypus of Pluto.  He can’t be measured with science.  Only through our faith in His love can we know He’s real.

Or, I will sue the philosopher Daniel Dennett’s example:  Mr. Incredible, my position is that God is a ham sandwich.  Ridiculous, you say?  Provide the reasoning for such an absurd statement, you say?  Well, just like you, I don’t have to.  My faith is all that matters.  My opinion.  If you get to turn off the rules of logic and reason, then so can I.  And if we can all do that, then anything goes and anyone can claim anything.

Mr. Incredible also again told me that I shouldn’t ignore the testimony of witnesses who have “done the experiment” and found it to be true.  What “experiment” have they done?  Prayed and felt God’s presence?  Looked for coincidences and supernatural signs?  Hold up… I thought God couldn’t be measured by science?  All these people couldn’t have conducted any such experiment, because you can’t prove or disprove God with science, right?  Or was theirs a special faith-based experiment?

So far Mr. Incredible, you’ve dodged the question several times, you’ve said that the normal rules of reason and evidence don’t apply to your belief, and you’ve said – I think – that God is real because a lot of people say so.  Not to be a wise-ass, but forgive me if I’m not overwhelmed by these revelations.

Mr. Incredible and God, Part II

Another thing Mr. Incredible constantly accuses me of is putting myself above God, of judging God.  I have to say, you got me dead to rights there, Mr. Incredible.  I absolutely judge God.  I think of it as a moral imperative for every human being to make value judgements about morality.

Before I go further, I should reiterate some things about myself.  (I’ve dealt with this issue at exhausting length in other posts, so I’ll be brief.)  I’m a convicted murderer.  When I was eighteen years old, I committed a robbery and a man was accidentally killed.  I make no excuses for what I did, I take full responsibility, I deserve to be punished, and I will certainly never – ever – forgive myself.

This isn’t about me, but I just want to get it across (as I have several times before), that just because I make moral judgements doesn’t mean I put myself above anyone.  I won’t ever be as good or moral a person as everyone out there who didn’t commit murder.  That is a fact that I accept and even embrace.

Regardless, it was twelve years ago, and I’m a different person now.  At the very least, I know much better.  I know why my crime was wrong.  If today, I make a statement like “Murder is wrong and anyone who commits it is an immoral individual,” it is not hypocritical or self-contradictory, because I fully accept that what I did was wrong and that I’m an immoral individual.  I don’t think this precludes me from making moral judgements about it – in fact, to consider myself “rehabilitated,” I must make such judgements.

I think that abdicating moral responsibility to an authority – any authority; yes, even God – is a cowardly person.  It’s no different from a Might Makes Right philosophy.  If, on the other hand, you’re abdicating moral responsibility to God because you think He’s good and perfect and moral, that’s a different story.  That’s not cowardly at all; you’re making a judgement about what is moral, and deciding to worship God on that basis.  I applaud that position.

Regardless, even those who abdicate all moral authority still make judgements of their own.  Consider this, Mr. Incredible: Could God make the rape of little girls a moral act?  And if He did, would you still worship Him?

I know the question is inflammatory, but it cuts to the heart of the matter.  Most Christians respond by saying “God would never do something so horrible.”  That’s good, but why then is it horrible to rape little girls.  To claim so (and most of us certainly do, I hope!) means that you’re making a moral judgement of your own.  Obviously then, “God” and “morality” are two different things.

Now, as far as why I personally don’t think Abraham’s God is a good moral authority, it is this:  I’ve read the Old Testament.  If half of the atrocious acts He committed are true, my position is that it’s downright immoral to worship Him.  Murdering King David’s son for David’s crime, murdering the babies of Egypt, sanctioning rape (Judges 21 and Deuteronomy 22.28 are a couple examples), murdering the whole world in a Great Flood – these are not what I consider moral acts.  I don’t much care that it was God who committed them.  I don’t much care when someone tells me, “He’s God, He knows what’s best, it’s all a part of His plan.”  Again, I find such an attitude absolutely dripping with cowardice.  I’ve even heard Christians tell me, “Most of those people who God killed in the Flood are going to get a resurrection.”  Absolutely stunning.  Okay fine, God is omnipotent.  But omnipotence gives you the strength to murder, not the moral right.

Maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe if God is real, He didn’t really do those things and they were just stories made up by ignorant tribesmen.  This is merely my argument condemning the acts in the Old Testament.

Mr. Incredible and God

Lately I’ve been bombarded by a Mr. Incredible.  He’s parsing my posts sentence by sentence and leaving comments on nearly every one.  Most of them are faith-based assertions without any argument or evidence to back them up.  For instance, he responds to my critiques of monotheism with statements like, “That’s unrighteous thinking,” or “That’s what the Devil told Eve.”

Not only that, but I have to search through literally pages of comments, most of which are entirely judgmental and extraneous.  I can’t possibly respond to that much material without writing a book.  So let’s take this one step at a time, Mr. Incredible, and deal with one issue.

Three times before (this will be number four) I’ve asked you to provide any evidence – anything at all – that points toward the existence of Abraham’s God and that the Bible is His word.  So far, every single time you’ve responded with, “There is evidence, you’ve just precluded yourself from hearing it.”  How do you know this?  Are you a mind-reader?

It’s not true.  I’m not an atheist.  Never in my life have I said, “God doesn’t exist.”  I think that position is as much a leap of faith as saying He does.  I’ve questioned His existence, I’ve challenged others to convince me, and I’ve even ridiculed what I see as irrational arguments for His existence.  But I am not so arrogant to believe that I have all the answers.  I try to think like a scientist, which means I treat knowledge as provisional. If new evidence presents itself, I will have no choice but to take it into account – regardless of whether I like it or not.

In one of your last comments, you gave me the closest answer so far to my question.  This is a direct quote: “Great multitudes of millions upon multitudes and multitudes of millions upon multitudes and multitudes of millions upon multitudes and multitudes of millions upon multitudes and millions of multitudes throughout history have testified and do testify, after having done the experiment, that He is real and that the Bible is His Word.”

I’m having a hard time separating this statement from, “God is real because a lot of people think He is.”  that’s what you seem to be saying, but if I’m wrong, please let me know how.  What “experiment” have all these people done?  Maybe I have your position wrong, but the fact that millions of people have an opinion about God is not indicative of anything.  Millions of people also believe in astrology, a 9/11 conspiracy, and the Area 51 alien landing.  As Bertrand Russell said, “The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.”

I don’t mean to be insulting or confrontational, but this is not evidence; this is anti-intellectual nonsense.  I would think that even most Christians would agree.  And repeating “multitudes” and “millions” several times does not lend any weight to your statement.

Again, my mind is not made up.  Admittedly, I think that most of the arguments that I’ve heard so far are weak, but I’m open to hear anything from anyone.  I’m interested in the truth, not defending a preset position.  I definitely want to know if there really is an anthropocentric god and an afterlife.  So please, don’t answer my honest inquiries for evidence by telling me that I’ve precluded myself from believing any such evidence.  To me, that sounds like you’re just dodging the challenge.  I’m still waiting.