Belief Relief

 

“Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by a difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought to be deprecated.” George Washington, 1792.

To the dismay of many religious and political leaders, increasing numbers of Americans, especially Christians, are becoming unchurched. Which is ironic: it’s the actions of those worried leaders, their attacks on people who don’t believe or love like them, forcing their zealotry into legislation, that younger generations find off-putting. Plus the hypocrisy, as political proclaimers of Christian faith, and their voters, treat people in need in the most un-Christlike ways.

Children born into religion follow suit. Eventually, some will raise questions; for example, given the misery so evident everywhere, the Biblical descriptions of God. Of course, opinions about the literal truth of the Book vary from absolute to not at all.

At birth, we’re atheist. Humans aren’t born believing, any more than they’re born racist. They have to be taught. Awareness of mortality preceded religion and still does. “Am I going to die,” children ask before wondering about gods. “What happens when we die?” The answers they receive depend on accidents of where, when, and to whom they’re born.

To relieve that existential angst, immutable – if untestable -- credenda are a human longing. And, since no truths are manifest, the need produces them. “If you’re good, you go to heaven. If you’re bad, hell.” “We’re reincarnated till we get it right.” “We were, and rejoin star dust.” “We get our own planet.” “Your thetan forgets your past life and starts you over.” “We live on in the hearts of those who cherish our memory.” “We needn’t fear death, because we experienced it before we were born, and it’s that to which we return.” Each offers comfort to some.

Polytheism was a logical first invention: forest gods, specialist gods, enough to explain the fearsome: volcanoes, earthquakes, thunder and lightning, disease. Good things, too: love, food, intoxicants. No god fully in control, lesser ones tormenting each other and us, creating havoc because they can. But, at the end, a promise of life beyond death.

To many millions, that celestial chaos comports better with life’s vicissitudes than one all-powerful, all-knowing, loving god who allows, or causes, boundless pain and suffering, even in innocent children; born in sin, eons removed from a disobedient apple-eater, doomed unless forgiven. Meting out, to the unforgiven, eternal roasting on the coals of hellfire seems unloving, too. Not everyone agrees.

For every person accepting religious doctrine with unquestioning certitude, there’s a billion others who believe completely differently and with equal certainty. Since they can’t all be correct, absent objective criteria of rightness, there’s little reason to assume all but one are wrong.

The same applies to holy books and texts, multiply translated and revised; one at the behest of a seventeenth-century king; others appearing only a few decades past. Contradicting each other, unquestioningly accepted, summarily dismissed. Which speaks less of truth or falsehood than of the inescapable urge, across all cultures, to make peace with life and death. That’s the origin and purpose of every religion. For most people, their choice satisfies. Which is good.

Nobel-Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman said, “I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.” Me, too. But I don’t consider it superior to certainty: it’s a state of mind. My skepticism, however, harms no one, except, some insist, me; whereas, as America moves ever closer to punitive, far-right (un)Christian theocracy, its lawmakers and judges are intentionally harming different-believers.

Ron “Full armor of God” DeSantis got stick-it-to-the-libs laughs for treating desperate asylum-seekers, including children, told they were following the rules, in the most dehumanizing, unchristian way imaginable. Tucker Carlson was tickled red. He, DeSantis, and the MAGAwful who loved it, make one wish hell is real. And, for the stuck-it-to libs who gathered, lovingly, to provide, heaven.

The point isn’t whose religion is right or wrong, for, in this life, we’ll never know. In our corner of a vast, unknowable universe, we Earthlings have produced widely divergent responses to mortality; each of which, objectively, has as much claim on truth as any other. Therefore, one ought to be humble about one’s personal choice, accepting that others settled upon theirs for reasons that deserve the same respect as yours. Which means public policy should be kept separate from all religions: yours, mine, theirs. THAT is the point.

Those who need to legislate their beliefs into secular law must be so insecure in their truth that knowing others disagree frightens them unto death. Pour souls: they have it backwards.

Labels

Recently I had an email conversation with a reader about religion, in which I explained why my view of the world, of morality, of spirituality, doesn't require the idea of gods. As it happens, over on Pharyngula, there has begun a series of postings from readers about why they are atheists. I just read one that expresses a lot of what I said (and some things I'd not say) more eloquently than I did. Here's the essence:

The world as explained by science is so beautiful it makes me weep. Literally. When I think about these tiny jiggling particles that constitute everything, when I gaze into the sky and see the vastness of the Cosmos, when I sit in my chair, smoke a pipe and consider life on Earth and try to wrap my head around the unimaginably complex processes that allowed me to form as a human being and now ponder life itself, when I try to imagine and appreciate how much we have accomplished, when I see the shrouded realm of what we do not yet know my eyes brim with tears of emotion, my heart leaps with expectation and wonder. ... It is marvellous. It is profound.

[...]

There are also moral reasons for my disbelief. I have a firm conviction that only the morality that emerges from a deep intrinsic need to do good is worthwhile. The opposed, religious morality of punishment and reward I find unwholesome, dishonest and infantile. I do not consider people who behave acceptably because they fear eternal punishment moral...

(The paragraph I deleted above is not one I'd have written. And I don't smoke a pipe.)

Here's a confession: I find myself resisting describing myself as an atheist, and I wonder why that is. Since I can't claim certainty, I suppose I could use the rubbery rubric of agnosticism. But right or wrong, I can't believe there are gods (and there have been times when I'd have liked to). So why the reticence? Maybe it's fear of reprisal; it is, after all, an untidy time for people like me, whose offense is only looking at the world with clear eyes, neither willing nor able to go beyond reality and the observable; the constitutional inability to make a leap of faith, even as our country seems unstoppably heading toward theocracy. But I think it's something different.

As I've thought about it, it seems that atheism ought to be the default assumption, for anyone. Certain things ought to go without saying. One should not have to describe oneself, for example, as a mathist. Or a gravitist. (Yes, I realize the analogy is sort of a semantic contradiction, but you get the picture.) I believe the grass grows; I believe in chlorophyll. I (sort of) understand radioactive decay, and I understand (to a degree) its relation to measuring the age of the earth. I know (mostly) why planes fly and I don't need to claim an angel holds them up; I don't think the earth rides on the back of a turtle, and it seems reasonable that anyone would assume that about me. Nor does the fact that I don't know everything lead me to fill in the blanks with imaginary answers. I can wait. Belief in the demonstrable ought to be the default baseline for anyone, and it shouldn't need a particular label.

Okay, maybe "realist."

Or "normal."

It's when you begin to come up with magical explanations (ones, I must point out, that other believers in other magic will decry ferociously and consider false magic, capital blasphemy, compared to their version of it, with no sense of irony whatever), that it seems labels should be applied. I think of those judges who sentence people to wearing a sign after they stole something. People who didn't steal anything don't need a sign saying so. Not believing in gods oughtn't need particularizing any more than breathing does. I do breathe; I admit it. But it'd be strange to identify me as a breather, wouldn't it?

A world-view ought to start with reality. Reality is enough. Reality is, for one thing, real. Realists shouldn't need to explain it, or to have (loaded) labels applied. Nor, for that matter, should they feel the need to brag about it, or get in the faces of others. Why should the world need a movement that announces its commitment to reality?

Except for the fact that any realist can't help being shocked, worried, and appalled at the direction we're headed in the US, as magical thinking has become the basis for a major political party; as intelligence, the quest for knowledge, are considered elitist and abhorrent, actively and proudly mocked and scorned. In that party, belief in god seems to have become synonymous with rejection of science, with denialism, with economic amnesia. It needn't be thus; it wasn't always so. But those who wonder why there are suddenly a few highly outspoken and, as some have called them, "militant" atheists out there need only look at today's Republican party, its teabaggers, its "values voters" for the answer. Scary, hateful, regressive, aggressively and proudly ill-informed people.

There's where labels belong, seems to me.

What's In A Name?

In a recent email, a person I know referred to me as an atheist. "I know you are an atheist," she wrote. "But..." For some reason I found the term jarring. It's not that I deny the characterization; it's that using the word like that makes it sound like a choice or something. Or the equivalent, on some level, of a religion. As if in the cafeteria of belief systems, I put a plateful of atheist on my tray, you picked up a little Christian, and the guy over there grabbed a cup 'o Buddha.

I can't say why I chafe at the label. Nowadays there seems to be a movement loosely (or not) referred to as "the new atheism," characterized by people aggressively arguing their case: Hitchens, Dawkins, Myers, Harris. I like reading them, I find myself mostly in agreement. But, for me anyway, it's not about a movement or feeling part of some sort of group. Atheist. Like a Shriner. It's simply that, having thought about it a lot, the idea of a creator -- especially one described (however inconsistently) in the big books, like the Bible (new and old models), the Koran, the Book of Mormon -- makes no sense to me. In a matter as large as that, the quest for meaning, it ought to be a leap of reason, not faith. (As I've said, I can dig what little I understand of Buddhism in many ways; but not the reincarnation stuff. I find the chaos of polytheism, like Hinduism or ancient Greeks or animists, more consistent with what we observe of life, were it ruled by superpeople; but I'm not buying them, either.)

It's a conclusion, not a category.

Call it skepticism, realism, a mind-set, the result of a process. It's not a club I joined, a group with which I identify any more than I'd consider myself a mathist, a photosynthetist. A cyclist (Krebs, that is). Those are things I know to be discoverable and true. The other -- religion -- is something I feel I know to be untrue. Or, at minimum, unproven, unprovable, unsupportable. So internally inconsistent as to be unacceptable. So I reject it like I reject young-earthism or that the sun revolves around that ancient earth. I can't help it, I didn't choose it. It's like solving an equation. You have to show your work. Like kittens, we're born with our eyes shut. Like most people, I was born into a family of believers (to some extent.) I went to Sunday School.

There's no point in denying -- while claiming no part of a movement -- that I've written much here about my views of religion, pointing out obvious inconsistencies inherent in the idea of miracles, prayer, an all-knowing all-powerful loving god. But, I think, I do it in a political context and, to a large extent, as an academic exercise. I say what makes sense to me, and what doesn't. Less an attempt to change minds, it's -- as we observe the Beckopalinization of our politics -- a cry for reason before it's too late: if you're going to believe stuff that has no coherence, fine; just recognize it for what it is. I write as a plea not to destroy our country with your beliefs. Keep them in your heart and home, where they belong. Consider that your religion has no more validity than that of someone else; they reject yours for the same reason you reject theirs. Live and let live. Solutions to our vast problems will come -- if they still can -- from hard work and cold reason, not untestable beliefs.

I'd not feel the need to show you mine, if you didn't constantly show me yours, and try to make it the law of the land. (And I don't mean you. I mean "you.")

Where this little tract seems to be heading is along a tightwire: because I guess I'm saying that my skepticism -- my "atheism," if that's the word -- is different from (and, yes, since I'm arguing for what's factual, more defensible than) your religion. My process of getting there is not really comparable to your getting to where you are. It is, in fact entirely different. That's, I think, why the term is discordant to me. It's the result of a process, of evaluation, of searching for truth and meaning while staying in contact with fact. I'll give you that I am an atheist in the same way that we are both round-earthers. I'm not an atheist in the same way you are a Christian, or a Muslim, or Hindu. On a certain level, I don't think the two are comparable; not in the same arena, maybe not the same conversation. It's like comparing being a vegetarian to being a swimmer.

I'm not anything. I'm just a guy who thinks in a certain way.

Does that make sense? (Of course if it did, we'd not be having the conversation in the first place.)

Joy

I post the above because it so perfectly addresses some oft-heard tropes, without actually addressing them: if you don't believe in god, you must not be able to love life. If you don't believe in god, you must be an evil person with no moral grounding, no ability to experience transcendent joy, to live softly in this world.

And as long as we're on that subject, Sam Harris has a new book coming out, in which he argues that science has -- and ought to have -- much to say about morality. Here's a paragraph from a brief essay that summarizes his point.

As I argue in my new book, The Moral Landscape, questions about values—about meaning, morality, and life’s larger purpose—are really questions about the well-being of conscious creatures. Throughout the book I make reference to a hypothetical space that I call “the moral landscape”—a space of real and potential outcomes whose peaks correspond to the heights of potential well-being and whose valleys represent the deepest possible suffering. Different ways of thinking and behaving—different cultural practices, ethical codes, modes of government, etc.—will translate into movements across this landscape and, therefore, into different degrees of human flourishing. I’m not suggesting that we will necessarily discover one right answer to every moral question, or a single best way for human beings to live. Some questions may admit of many answers, each more or less equivalent. However, the existence of multiple peaks on the moral landscape does not make them any less real or worthy of discovery. Nor would it make the difference between being on a peak and being stuck deep in a valley any less clear or consequential.

Makes sense to me.

Take A Gander At The Goose

In the teapot of my state's capitol there brews a tempest. Among the seasonal holiday displays in the capitol building, which include a Christmas tree, a Nativity scene, a Menorah, there is for the first time an atheist entry. With the passing of each hour, the outrage grows. Posted by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the sign has been stolen, found, and replaced at least once.

"It's offensive to my beliefs!!" say the offended. "Freedom of speech is one thing," says another, "but when it insults my religion, that crosses a line." (That one was on a TV news report.) "What is troubling is that by placing such a tablet on government property Washington state is contradicting the roots of the nation’s founding," says this guy.

I'm trying not to laugh.

In response to the insistence of religionists that Nativity scenes be allowed on public property, the courts have been very clear: government entities that choose to do so must make space equally available to other views. Bill O'Reilly's feigned (and altogether fatuous [see, he's the leader of the pack railing against the term "holiday" in place of "Christmas"]) outrage notwithstanding, the state of Washington and its governor are doing nothing but following the law. It's not enough for you to have your Christmas celebrated all over the nation in homes, churches, shops and malls? Fine. You wanna agitate to have it at your capitol, too? Okay. But then you have to accept the entirely democratic and constitutional consequence: other voices may be heard as well. Even offensive ones.

I find the shocked responses highly ironic: welcome to my world. As a non-Christian, I've always been mildly to moderately annoyed at these annual rites of rigidity. I love the decorated houses, the simple and elaborate displays everywhere. It's all but impossible for me to understand how the religious fail to see how insisting that their side gets onto the courthouse lawn is annoying to and/or disrespectful of and/or actually threatening to those of differing beliefs.

Now, one infers from those pained responses, at least a few people understand. Or would, if they had any sense of empathy. Or irony.

Which, clearly, they don't.

On Religion (One)

Why is it that, if we humans need to believe in deities, we also need to be told what to believe? What connects the internal, the personal need, to the external, the -- for lack of a better term -- social need? The mob mentality. If that connection could be severed, I might feel better about all the religion that's out there.

People -- reportedly created by a perfect god -- are shockingly imperfect. Speaking physically, it couldn't be more obvious: cancer, arthritis, birth defects, halitosis. Morally: hateful, vengeful, selfish, dishonest. Psychically: fearful, wildly varying in intelligence, weak-willed, needy, easily deceived, quickly roused to mob rule. With all our failings, compounded by enough self-awareness to be scared stiff of death and dying, it's not hard to understand the comforting role played by confidence that there's a greater meaning, an end beyond the end. And yet what's out there is the grandest of breakfast buffets: take your choice, fill your plate, come back for seconds if the first didn't fill you up. There's something about it that puts the lie to itself. If scrambled eggs were the perfect meal, there'd be no need for the pastry table.

So here we are: a species in need of solace. And it's obvious that there's not a single source of it; in fact, there are so many religions, and so many variations within those religions, so many churches and subsets and preachers of their own minds, that for all intents and purposes we're making it up as we go along. Infinitely customizable, individually internalized, why is it, then, that people are so easily convinced that their beliefs are in some way truer than those of the person next door? Why the need, moreover, to impose them on that neighbor?

Which gets back to the original question. The ultimate purpose of belief, as I see it anyway, is to assuage the fear of death, to confirm meaning where there might be none. What could be more personal or individual? Whence, then, the leap to the general: the good book, the sermon, the joining of forces, the mob? The accepting as literal truth, words written, re-written, translated, updated, modified; having selected one among countless many religions and beliefs, wherefore the need to go beyond personal rejection of the others, to banishing them? To destroying them. To imposing on them one's own. Why the inability to say, This works for me, that works for you, peace be upon us all?

Answer: none of it really works. If belief fully satisfied the soul, there'd be no need to denigrate another's. There'd be no need to join up with thousands of others, marching, chanting, threatening. If personal belief, alone, were enough to give comfort, the beliefs (or non-beliefs) of others would be of no consequence. There wouldn't be religious wars, there wouldn't be megachurches, there wouldn't be a Prop 8. For that matter, there wouldn't be Nazi rallies, gangs, or crowds with torches. Or burning crosses. But that's not the way it is. For some reason, we puny humans need constant validation of our beliefs; we need to surround ourselves with amens and we need to drown out the doubt that arises from seeing others believing differently. In our essence, something is greatly amiss.

Which is to say the obvious: if there were one true religion, it would have resolved the doubts of everyone. If a belief were transcendently right there'd be no others. (It's a truism in surgery -- about which I know a few things -- that if there are several different operations to solve a particular problem -- example: chronic pancreatitis -- the perfect one hasn't been found.) Logically, the only reasonable assumption is that everyone who thinks their religion is true, is wrong, if for no other reason than that there are billions of people -- nearly everyone, when you get down to the minute particulars -- who believe something very different. With just as much certainty. Billions. They can't all be right. In fact, if there is a cosmic truth, by simple arithmetic you can point to any individual believer and be sure he or she is most certainly wrong about it. That includes me. And you.

I plan to write more about this. The fact that I'm no theological expert makes my thoughts particularly worthy, because since there's no true religion, there can be no true experts. The world needs a little input from that perspective. The emperors have no clothes, and you can never have enough people saying so.

Before I go on, I want to clarify something, because I have valued friends who are believers: I respect religion as it applies to individuals. To the extent that it provides guidance and comfort and internal peace, given our obvious human frailties and shortcomings, I see the value, the appeal of religion. Most people couldn't get along without it in some form. For reasons I'll try to explain, I wish that were not the case. But I'm a realist. So for now, I'd settle for the elimination of organized religion, with its need to impose itself on everyone else. If people could find personal solace in their beliefs, and were comfortable enough in them to rise above the need to see them reflected everywhere they look, the future would look way better. Dayenu, is what I'd say.

And finally, why now? Prop 8. Mormon support for Prop 8. Sarah Palin. Priests refusing communion to Obama supporters. Obama is the antichrist. Burning black churches after the election. This. Intelligent design. Young earth creationists. 9/11. The Middle East. Our failing education. By much evidence, organized religion is an increasing threat to our future as it tries to substitute belief for reason, to deny human rights, and as it forces itself onto the body politic, narrow-minded and certain of its rectitude.