I put my faith in God. You put yours in no-God, but it’s still faith.



I love this argument because it goes straight to the bleached-bones, the meatless knuckles, by surrendering rationality at the outset: “So what if I can’t prove God exists, you can’t prove he doesn’t, so at the very worst, we’re equal.” For what nonreligious claim would one offer such an argument? Would one juror say to another, “Look, I can’t prove that the defendant’s guilty, but you can’t prove he’s innocent, so my guilty-vote makes as much sense as your innocent-vote”; or would a doctor say to a patient: “I have no evidence to suggest that you need a liver transplant, but you can’t prove you don’t, so I think we should do it.”

For years, my father believed that God had arranged for him to win the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes, and I couldn’t even disprove that, although I initially thought it would be easy. First, I sat him down and pointed out that the money had never arrived at any of the many times God had said it would, but Dad dodged that little piece of atheistic mumbo-jumbo by saying that God kept changing the date as a test of faith. I then took him to the post office so the postal inspector could verify that ten million other people got the same endless stream of “You have won!” trash that he did. Ah, but throwing reason and evidence at religious faith is like throwing spitballs at a hand grenade. Since I couldn’t prove that Dad hadn’t won, he just kept right on arranging to give his life savings to his church before his winnings arrived, and his preacher didn’t believe me when I told him that Dad hadn’t won squat. When my father finally died without ever appearing on The Tonight Show (a show that he never once stayed up to watch) to claim his winnings, I could at long last cancel his subscriptions to Hot Rod, Working Mother, Martha Stewart Living, and all the other magazines that he had ordered to increase his odds of winning (“God helps those who help themselves”). Of course, if he had won, I'm sure he would have shouted it to the rooftops as proof that God keeps his promises because, although believers poo-poo reason and evidence, they like it very much indeed when they think they've found some.

But what did my father’s belief have to do with believing other things about God, for example, that he was born of a virgin, or is the spiritual equivalent of 3-In-1 Oil? Everything! The evidence for God arranging for my father to win a lottery is the same as the evidence for one-third of God impregnating a young woman with a second-third of God through the agency of a third-third of God. The only difference lies in the fact that millions of people believe in a virgin-impregnating deity (there have been several of them) while few people believe that God’s check is in the mail.

“...blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” –John 20:29

Suppose someone should claim that his god is an invisible troll doll named Gertie that has green hair, lives in a microwave, and makes herself invisible to non-believers? If I express doubt, he might extol the importance of “faith,” and claim that his faith in Gertie is at least as reasonable as my faith in no-Gertie since neither can be proven. If he could then show me 10,000 books about Gertie, 100,000 hymns about Gertie, and one thousand-thousand temples devoted to the worship of Gertie; his belief might appear to have gained credence, yet the verifiable evidence for Gertie’s existence would remain nil. And so it is with all religions. It’s hard to look at an 18,000 member mega church, multiply that number a thousand times over, and pronounce all those people’s beliefs a figment of the imagination, but in the absence of objective evidence, belief in Christ is no more rational than belief in Gertie, Allah, Huitzilopochtli, or any other deity. So, why, then, do most people believe in Christ if they’re Americans; in Allah if they’re Saudis; and in Huitzilopochtli in the case of the ancient Aztecs? Because most people find meaning in the same places that their neighbors find meaning. It’s a characteristic of tribalism, and woe be to those who are seen as disloyal.

Some atheists try to make a stand for reason by saying to theists, “You and I are alike except that I believe in one God less than you do, and, oh, by the way, isn’t it interesting that the God in which you believe just happens to be the same God that you were taught to believe in from your childhood onward, and that you’ve never examined the evidence for the others?” Behind such statements is the recognition that where societal reinforcement doesn’t exist, even believers can see the emptiness of religious faith except in regard to the one religion by which their own belief is societally reinforced. This points to the irrationality of religion in regard to objective truth, although it might be very rational indeed in regard to one’s status in society. After all, atheists are not only devalued in most places, they’re hated. This causes some atheists to keep their atheism a secret, and others to shout it from the rooftops. Despite their occasional excesses, my allegiance is with the rooftop crowd. As a result, I’ve lost more friends and more readers than I can count. One such person recently wrote:

“As an imperfect Christian as I am, you’re an asshole. You are disrespectful and very rude. To me, I won’t pray for you because you deserve to go to hell. You mock God and you mock anyone who is different from you. So a big ‘fuck off’ from this imperfect Christian. Keep spewing off your hatred. I will tell God to keep his gates closed and his harps at silence. You’re the only one who has to face the ‘music.’”

Such attacks actually encourage my outspokenness by reinforcing my perception of religion as a Hyde-obscuring Jekyll that I have a moral obligation to oppose. I can only be thankful that I don’t live in one of the many countries in which I would be killed for my atheism, because I don’t know how I would respond, atheism being that important to me. Penn Gillette wrote the following in a compendium entitled This I Believe:

“Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy—you can’t prove a negative, so there’s no work to do... But, this ‘This I Believe’ thing seems to demand something more personal, some leap of faith that helps one see life’s big picture, some rules to live by. So, I’m saying, ‘This I believe: I believe there is no God.’ Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life.

He expressed my position perfectly. By making religion the default position—“the wide gate and the broad road”—while subjecting atheists to obloquy, society forces atheists to be ever aware of their identity and to reflect upon their own road more deeply. Why, then, do any of them remain silent? I’m sure I don’t know.

27 comments:

Elephant's Child said...

I am grateful that my parents left believing in God, or not, up to me. I knew that my mother wasn't happy with my decision that I didn't - but she didn't try and change it. And discovering that my father wanted a mostly Jewish funeral came as a shock.
The quote in your penultimate paragraph is certainly true of me (thank you). I believe that this life is all I am going to get, and that it is up to me to live it as best I can. And yes, that means some rules to live by. And a work in progress.

Teresa said...

If you do not believe, why do you even care that others do? Just wondering? I am sure you have your reasons for not believing, and I think all of us have had doubts more than once in our lives. Faith is not something you can conjure up...it just is and you just know. Getting what you want (like winning the lottery) is not really relevant, but how you respond even when you don't win. Faith makes it all ok...win or lose...it is the journey that matters, and knowing God is there with you. "You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you." Win, lose, whatever may be...it is in believing that lights the way.

Snowbrush said...

"I am grateful that my parents left believing in God, or not, up to me."

That would have been unthinkable to my parents. Like Ernest in "The Way of all Flesh," I grew up in a believing environment and was in my late-twenties before I laid eyes on my first open atheist, and that person was myself.

"If you do not believe, why do you even care that others do?"

Because of the evil they do--the narrowness, the cruelty, the bigotry, the illogic, the oppression, the determined ignorance, the hatred of people like myself, the fact that my tax dollars go to support their "houses of worship." Obviously, not all believers are all of these things, but then not all Nazis ran the death camps; some only stood by in silence.

stephen Hayes said...

You know about Gertie? I didn't think you were supposed to know about her. She sleeps in my microwave.

rhymeswithplague said...

Oh, so now I'm not only narrow, I'm cruel, bigoted, illogical, oppressive, determinedly ignorant, hate people like you...oh, wait, you said we're not all like that, we're more like Nazis who stand by in silence while others run the death camps.

Your cup runneth over with love, Snow.

And you completely missed that quote from Jesus. It's not about our tribalistic society pointing people toward the wide gate and the broad way. Not at all. It's just the other way round. Jesus said (though not in English), "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." (Matthew 7:13-14)

Doesn't bode well for megachurches, does it?

I do hope that you get a good night's sleep an that tomorrow you get up on the other side of the bed.

Joe Pereira said...

Snow, I am grateful you write as you do, because it is exactly how I feel.I can't express my views as eloquently as you do, but I shout from the rooftops, as you know, for I can't stand by and do nothing in the face of injustice. However, after reading the comment you left in my last post (thank you) I removed some of the more disturbing photos, just in case some insane believer (and there are so many)takes offence of my attacks on ancient mythology. Great post Snow

lotta joy said...

Teresa has her faith to accomplish a winning attitude even in the face of failure: "Faith makes it all ok...win or lose...it is the journey that matters, and knowing God is there with you. "You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you." Win, lose, whatever may be...

Having an all powerful god by my side, to help me through all the pratfalls and pitfalls of life, is another reason I have no trust or faith in an all powerful god. Especially one who lets me down so regularly that I must make excuses for him - even to the extent of praising him for all the failures.

Democrats praise Obama. Republicans praise the fight to uphold america. When both are the reason for its demise.

I accidentally fell into a snake pit of religious/political zealot bloggers who mention death to those on the other side, daily.

I tip toed away when I realized that if they knew I was not religious (as they proudly proclaimed for themselves), I'd then be labeled as the cause of all things wrong with the world, more so than any political party.

lotta joy said...

Joe Pereira: I wish I could write, speak, and think as eloquently as Snow. This is why I come here. He can say what I can't, and say it with intelligence - unlike most religious zealots who could club a baby seal to death with just their words and aggressive defense of a loving god.

They must believe they're making god proud of them by being constantly vigilant and violently reactive against all who don't believe as they do.

Snowbrush said...

"You know about Gertie?"

Except that I wasn't sure about how to spell her name. I'm glad to see that I got it right.

"I'm cruel, bigoted, illogical, oppressive, determinedly ignorant, hate people like you...oh, wait, you said we're not all like that, we're more like Nazis who stand by in silence while others run the death camps."

I don't think all that highly of atheists either. As I see it, we're a fucked species, and I hate us all, as a species. However, what I meant about religion was that, as religious people see it, religion itself is never the problem. For example, I continue to hear that, "Islam is a religion of peace." Yeah, sure it is. Everyday, Sunnis kill Shias, Shias kill Sunnis, and, on many days, both of them kill Jews, Christians, and atheists, and this has been going on, more or less, for over a thousand years, yet Islam remains--in the minds of its followers a "Religion of Peace. Christianity is the same way. After 2,000 years of persecuting Jews, for example, because of one verse in the Book of John, Christianity persists in seeing itself as a "Religion of Love." Not to non-Christians, it ain't, and not to Christians of sects other than one's own, it ain't. The best that I can do is to try to keep believers as people separate from their beliefs, because they--like atheists and everyone else--do contain a lot of good, but I don't see that good as being because of their religion, but despite their religion. As for you personally, you can take almost sole credit for me moderating my views as much as I do, although I did say more than I probably should in that response to Teresa. What was going for me was that I had just written a post (I say "just," but I probably put 25 hours into it) in which I had tried to address--to some degree--the very question she raised, yet she still raised it, and I was left to wonder if I failed that miserably or if she simply didn't read it all, or at least take it all in.

"And you completely missed that quote from Jesus."

I knew what Jesus was talking about, but I chose to turn the Scripture on its head, which I think was appropriate given that what was heretical and hated in his day--Christianity--is mainstream and adored in ours (though not with much depth, as I think we can agree), whereas atheism (much more than any form of belief--was the narrow way then and is the narrow way now. Especially in the part of America in which you live, Christianity IS the status quo.

"I removed some of the more disturbing photos"

I rather liked the way you let 'er rip, Joe. Your post was as eloquent as it was passionate, and you drove home your point compellingly. I was really thrilled by what you wrote because it was so clear to me that you get it.

Snowbrush said...

"I tip toed away when I realized that if they knew I was not religious...I'd then be labeled as the cause of all things wrong with the world..."

I've often felt that it was all your fault--the homosexuality, the abortions, the Supreme Court "kicking prayer out of our schools," Obama being elected, the Republicans losing control of the House, science being taught as truth to impressionable children, all this plus the droughts, floods, hurricanes, cold waves, heat waves, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis. You have all this power, yet you can't afford the best in medical care; go figure.

ellen abbott said...

I have two friends who are religious or of the faith. Both are stricken with debilitating physical ailments. Both praise the god who afflicted them. They know it's part of gods plan for them. This, I do not get.

And what kind of a god needs to continually test the faith of its adherents? No god that I am interested in serving.

Snowbrush said...

"Both praise the god who afflicted them. They know it's part of gods plan for them. This, I do not get."

Romans 8:28 is probably a big hit with them ("And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose"), but, like you, I don't get it. After all, God, being omnipotent, could bring the same amount of good into their lives without them suffering, so why allow them to suffer?

CreekHiker / HollysFolly said...

Snow, all I know is... My aethiest friends talk about God twentyfold more than my Christain friends...

Snowbrush said...

"My aethiest friends talk about God twentyfold more than my Christain friends..."

Believers often assume that religion shouldn't be of interest to atheists, but belief is hardly a hobby--like stamp collecting say--in which those who aren't involved are unaffected and therefore have no reason to be interested. Also, a lot of people become atheists because their early interest in religion went deeper than that of their companions, and they therefore spent more time examining its basis. I know that this was true for me. When I was a boy in church, and later in theology classes in college, I was often surprised by how little curiosity my friends showed and how few questions they asked, yet many of them went on to become ministers. You might recall a PEW study from a couple of years back that showed atheists' knowledge of religion to be far greater than that of believers. It's quite startling really that those who spend hours each week in church know so little, but the focus of churches is obviously upon things other than scholarship due to the fact that the general interest-level (regarding religion) of those who go to church so scant. I would still say that my own interest in religion is quite a bit greater than that of most believers. These are my thoughts about your observation, but I would love to hears yours.

kylie said...

y' know, snowy, i have read your blog for a long time now, i have agreed that religious faith is impossible to rationalise, i have agreed that people of faith cant rationally answer rational questions about it, i have agreed about the wrong done in the name of God .....
but now i am getting tired of coming here and reading your stuff. i wouldnt try to convert you or pray for you or otherwise disrespect your beliefs but it's pretty damned hard to be faced with an attack on something that is fundamental to my own self every single time i come here.

i'll be back, i cant help myself but i thought you should know that you its really alienating even though i like and respect you.

Snowbrush said...

"its really alienating even though i like and respect you."

Yes, I can see that it would be, (although it's not about atheism "every single time," or at least not every single post), but what to do about it? If I were being paid for writing about particular subjects, that's what I would write about it (if I accepted the money), but as it is, I just write about whatever comes to mind, and since religion/atheism is something that I feel strongly about, it's natural for me to write about it. My post before last was about flying, and people seemed to like it, so I thought that, well, I could write about two more posts about flying, and they would go over a lot better than yet another post about atheism, but, I don't feel that I have a message to convey about flying, so writing about flying is of less interest to me. At the same time, the kind of religious people whom I would like to reach are not the ones who would read this blog (at least not for long), so I risk alienating those who would like to be supportive but without anything positive coming from my efforts. It's a puzzler, and I don't have a good answer for it. By the way, I emailed you yesterday with a link that I thought you might want to look at regarding doulas in America, but I forgot that my address for you is no longer current, so I was going to put the link on your blog, but since you're here, I'll put it on my blog:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/10/can-doulas-make-a-difference.html

Anyway, I do understand your point, and I am sympathetic, but I don't know what to do about it that would work for us for both. If you have anymore thoughts, I would love for you to share them.

Linda said...

The "E" is stuck on this laptop, so forgive spelling that I do not see and correct.

I grew up with a mother who was a believer and a father who was not. I went to Bible College and heard how little those people believed. I questioned and was invited to shut up.

I married a minister and was subjected to cruelty daily all because he would drag out Jesus and how he was the minister. I watched this man cheat on tests of writing memorized verses. He molested my daughter.

I divorced him and fought as he destroyed my life and the lives of our children. He will not give up after over 30 years. And, I am subjected to religiosity every time I interact with anyone in this town.

No, God did not let this man have his way to make me a better person! No, praying will not make things come true. God? He is not going to restore what he has allowed to be destroyed. Foolish people try to talk me into prayer. I may break down and pray in front of them for them to go away.

Your posts and answers are very well crafted.

kylie said...

well i apologise for the "every single time" line, saying stuff like that means i fail communication 101.

Charles Gramlich said...

It seems to me an athiest, being very careful with their language, might say, "I assume there is no god," rather than "I believe there is no god."

For example, I just assume there is no tooth fairy, because it never enters my mind that there 'might' be. However, I "don't believe" that Bigfoot exists, but I'm not absolutely 100 percent convinced of that and do give it thought at times.

Snowbrush said...

"I may break down and pray in front of them for them to go away."

A funny end to a sad comment, which made me think of three things. One is that, years after I knew him, I became penpals with my former best-friend turned clergyman's ex-wife (who died during hernia surgery while in her early fifties), and she wrote much as you do about her husband's cruelty in the name of God. Secondly, you might enjoy Samuel Butler's fictionalized autobiography, "The Way of All Flesh," which is about growing up in a clergyman's household and later becoming a clergyman oneself. I'm about to finish my second reading this year of the nearly 500 page book. Third, do you know of the FFRF? Their magazine comes out once a month in something close to newspaper size, and every month, they devote two of those large pages--in small print, no less--to crimes (almost always felonies) of the clergy. It would be bad enough if they were crimes of some other profession, but the sheer number and frequent malevolence of crimes committed by people who are professionally dedicated to spreading love is, for lack of a better word, appalling. It's hard to read them and not suspect a link between being a clergyperson and criminal activity. I'm not saying that such a link exists, but I would love to see the subject investigated.

"i apologise for the "every single time" line, saying stuff like that means i fail communication 101."

I take it that you interpreted what I said about that "every single time" to mean that I discounted your feelings, but I didn't mean to do that. I can well understand why you would feel as you do, and it grieves me. I do think that I mostly stay within bounds with my posts because I am committed to having my points make sense rather than turn my posts into diatribes. In the comments section to this post, I expressed some feelings more strongly than I would have done I put the amount of time into comments that I put into my posts themselves, and for that I apologize.

"I just assume there is no tooth fairy, because it never enters my mind that there 'might' be. However, I "don't believe" that Bigfoot exists, but I'm not absolutely 100 percent convinced of that and do give it thought at times."

I don't think that the words themselves would suggest a distinction that would be apparent to others. It simply seems to me that you're an atheist (as it were) about the first and an agnostic about the second. Maybe you're aware that agnostics are the Rodney Dangerfields of atheistic circles, whereas agnostics tend to dismiss atheists as being dogmatists. Agnostics withhold judgment of the basis of the evidence for God being inconclusive, to which atheists reply: "What evidence?" I might ask the same about Bigfoot. I'm aware of a fuzzy and distant photo that shows what looks like a gorilla--or else a person in a gorilla suit--running into the woods, and I'm aware of a cast or two of what are claimed to be tracks, but that--and testimonials--are all the evidence I'm aware of.

Myrna R. said...

You make excellent points Snow. We can always find fanatics about all kinds of things. Thus, that cruel "christian" comment you received.
Sometimes, I'm not sure what I believe any more. Exploration becomes confusing and the word "God" has different meanings to different people religious or not.
There's too much I don't know and what I believe may become irrelevant when it faces ultimate truth. I don't feel a need to disprove or prove anything. But I sure enjoy reading your posts.

Snowbrush said...

"...what I believe may become irrelevant when it faces ultimate truth."

Some people (including you, perhaps) use "ultimate truth" as another name for God because it implies the existence of one big Truth (as did Einstein's belief in a unifying theory) rather than a diversity of smaller truths, but I think that it's an ungrounded assumption.

"There's too much I don't know..."

Yet, as I see it, we need "working truths" by which to live, truth being like politics (and many if not most other things) in that to attempt to not take a stand is to nonetheless take a stand. For example, you take a stand if you vote, but you also take a stand if you don't vote. The same is true of choosing a career.

"We can always find fanatics about all kinds of things."

Once someone is convinced they've found the truth, it's easy to close oneself off to new ways of looking at something, and I don't want to do that, but at the same time, life calls for issues to be resolved, and I never hear anything new in regard to theism. Someone sent me a link the other day that supposedly contained "a compelling new proof," but it sounded like the very old cosmological argument to me, which the dictionary defines as: "an argument for the existence of God that claims that all things in nature depend on something else for their existence, and that the whole cosmos must therefore itself depend on a being that exists independently or necessarily).

possum said...

Ah, the joy of labels. Living here in the Bible belt where one’s church identity more or less identifies one’s place in society, one’s IQ, one’s probable income, and the acceptance of new comers to this peninsula, it helps to have that identity. Being a Buddhist or Unitarian saves one a lot of grief from the Christians who have to judge you by a church affiliation, since few of them realize it is just another way of saying you are probably an atheist. An example of the ignorance here – my principal at my school did not know who the Dalai Lama was when we had to give our little juvenile report on “what I did over my summer vacation,” and I reported I had spent a week studying with the Dalai Lama. The only teacher (listening or) impressed enough to speak of it later was a former nun – go figure!
My Christian friends who know I am NOT a Christian often challenge me with – “well who made this flower? Who created the birds, the butterflies?” But they have no answer for me when I ask who created God? I agree I believe in a Higher Power than myself, and even a lower Power. When they ask what “He” looks like, I tell them I am not evolved enough to give them a visual image, some powers don’t have a physical appearance. That bothers them until I tell them I can show them my “lower” power. I then pick up something not breakable and hand it to them and ask them to just open their hands and let it drop. My lower power, of course is gravity, and while it can’t be seen, its power can be experienced at least here on earth. That usually befuddles them enough that they leave me alone for a while. And just think! Now they have even made a movie about it! LOL!!!!!
My other answer is that I do not believe in an anthropomorphic god and those smart enough to know what that means try to tell me the God made us in HIS image, it says so in the Bible. But it is a waste of time to explain that I do not believe in the Bible, either, I just usually ask them to look that passage up and note that it says … created man in OUR image, and ask who the others were. Then I either change the subject (since it is really pointless anyway) or just get busy with whatever it is that I am doing and hope they will take the hint.
I often liken the idea and truth of the bible and trinity story with the “truth” we were taught as little kids about Santa Claus and just accept the fact that there are those who need to continue to believe, need the security of that belief, or are simply not wired to even question what they were told to believe. As Teresa says, “it just is and you just know”… for those of us who do not believe as so many others, it is because we just know. So it is a stalemate. One difference is, atheists don’t declare war on believers.

A Plain Observer said...

I've said this before and every time I read a post that attempts to prove the non existence of a God I will say it again. Why do atheists spend so much time trying to disprove the existence of a God they are so sure doesn't exist? I find that a waste of time.

Snowbrush said...

"I'm sorry to say that when I hear so many politicians, (especially American) using words like 'God is on our side...' or anything with the G-word used it scares me sick."

Yes, having God on one's side means that nothing that anyone else might say or do matters in the least.

"My Christian friends who know I am NOT a Christian often challenge me with – “well who made this flower? Who created the birds, the butterflies?” But they have no answer for me when I ask who created God?"

God's exempt, don't they know? The argument goes as follows: Everything that was created must have a creator that was himself not created. "But," a skeptic might ask, "why does the arguer assume a creation?" The believer would answer: "I assume a creation because everything we see around us is simply too marvelous to exist without a creative intelligence behind it." "Ah," the skeptic would respond, "But, being infinitely more marvelous than its creation, why wouldn't the creator also require a creator?" The believer would reply, "Because if the creator required a creator, then the creator of the creator would likewise require a creator, and so on forever. An infinite regress being impossible, God himself couldn't have been created."

"I've said this before and every time I read a post that attempts to prove the non existence of a God I will say it again. Why do atheists spend so much time trying to disprove the existence of a God they are so sure doesn't exist?"

Just as you've asked it many times, I've answered it many times, but surely my answers are not so subtle or mysterious that you yourself could not come up with them if you made a serious attempt to put yourself in my place. Just as believers can't seem to imagine why atheists think as they do; atheists find it mysterious that they can represent a believer's position as well or better as the believer, yet the believer can't represent the atheist's position at all. Having not considered the atheist position, how can they be so sure it is wrong?

klahanie said...

Greetings,

I shall leave a mercifully brief comment. Besides, you try typing with paws. Try typing with mittens on to get an idea of what it's like for me.

My human has told me he cannot be bothered with all this god crap. And yes, "god" without a capital letter. No decent god would, for instance, kill hundreds of thousands of innocent humans in a tsunami, just for laughs, would it?

How can anybody worship such rubbish is beyond my human's comprehension.

So much for a short comment. I would add that the mighty creature, "Sasquatch" does exist. My human noted a couple of them at Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia.

Pawsitive wishes,

Penny the Jack Russell dog and modest internet superstar!

kj said...

i need time to read all this. the time is not now.

i will say i think most about god or God when you write of that one way or another. i believe in something but i'm not sure i care what.

i'll be back to take my time.

love
kj