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being willing to be wrong
Greta Christina's new piece, "Can Atheism be Proven Wrong?"
There is good stuff to be had in here about what would actually convince most atheists that a religion was presenting a reasonable and worthy picture of the world. There's also a link to this page, which gives a pretty good rundown. Where this really gets interesting is after Greta gets done stating for the millionth time that actually atheists are not dogmatic zealots who take their conclusion as an article of faith (that we do, in fact, have standards of evidence--that no religion has met despite ample opportunity). She takes the, "no religion has actually managed to present a hypothesis supportible by evidence," point one step further by cutting off those last three words.
It's too bad that lots of the so-called "moderate" religious people that I know personally are all so invested in seeming and feeling rational that they can't just admit that they're not religious because they actually believe its claims are true. It would save us all a lot of effort if they did. I'm tired of having religious people try to throw reasoned arguments and evidence at me and then eventually concede--only after we've both wasted a lot of time and effort--that they don't really find those things persuasive either.
I mean, ffs. If it was never about evidence to begin with, if it's all metaphor and "personal revelation," then why do religious people get so upset when somebody points out that their sermons and holy books are full of fairy tales? And why do they let me give them the benefit of the doubt and hope that THIS TIME, THIS ONE TIME maybe they'll present a reasonable case, if they're just going to switch gears later and admit that they lied about their worldview in the hopes of getting me to sit still and stfu while they practice the flimsy reassurances that allow them to sleep at night?
I think that's one major reason why lots of religious people don't like talking to atheists, or even about religion to each other. It's not that we're all hurtful and mean, or that we're all joyless zealots, or even that we're all oversexed radical liberal feminazi pinko commies. It's this: If Pascal's Wager (or insert your fav apologism here) is the only reason you can face your day, you need everybody around you to be reassuring you that it's sound. Every person who shrugs and finds it unconvincing is a reminder that you've built your life on terror of your life, and an unwillingness to live in the real world. That'd suck, and I guess it does make us sort of mean.
Yes, atheists pretty much agree that no existing religion has a shred of decent evidence to support it. That's why we're atheists. If we thought any religion had supported itself with decent evidence, we'd accept that religion. That's not the game. The game isn't, "What religion that currently exists could convince you that it was right?" The game is, "What hypothetical made-up religion could convince you that it was right?"
Or, to put it another way: We're talking counter-factuals. We understand that the universe, as it is now, is overwhelming in its evidence for atheism and materialism, and against any kind of deity or supernatural realm. We get that. We're talking about alternative universes. We're asking, "What would the world look like if there were a god or gods?"
There is good stuff to be had in here about what would actually convince most atheists that a religion was presenting a reasonable and worthy picture of the world. There's also a link to this page, which gives a pretty good rundown. Where this really gets interesting is after Greta gets done stating for the millionth time that actually atheists are not dogmatic zealots who take their conclusion as an article of faith (that we do, in fact, have standards of evidence--that no religion has met despite ample opportunity). She takes the, "no religion has actually managed to present a hypothesis supportible by evidence," point one step further by cutting off those last three words.
Religions haven't just failed to support their assorted hypotheses with good, solid, carefully gathered, rigorously tested evidence. They've failed to come up with hypotheses that are even worth subjecting to testing. They've failed to come up with hypotheses that are worth the paper they're printed on.
Religions are notorious for vague definitions, unfalsifiable hypotheses, slippery arguments, shoddy excuses for why their supporting evidence is so crummy, and the incessant moving of goalposts. Many theologies are logically contradictory on the face of it -- the Trinity, for instance, or an all-powerful/all-knowing/all-good God who nevertheless permits and even creates evil and suffering -- and while entire books are filled with attempts to explain these contradictions, the conclusions always boil down to, "It's a mystery."
And the so-called "sophisticated modern theologies" define God so vaguely you can't reach any conclusions about what he's like, or what he would and wouldn't do, or how a world with him in it would be any different than a world without him. They define God so abstractly that he might as well not exist. (Either that, or they actually do define God as having specific effects on the world, such as interventions in the process of evolution -- effects that we have no reason whatsoever to think are real, and every reason to think are bunk.)
And when I ask religious believers who aren't theologians to define what exactly they believe, they almost evade the question. They point to the existence of "sophisticated modern theology," without actually explaining what any of this theology says, much less why they believe it. They resort to vagueness, equivocation, excuses for why they shouldn't have to answer the question. In some cases, they get outright hostile at my unmitigated temerity to ask.
It's too bad that lots of the so-called "moderate" religious people that I know personally are all so invested in seeming and feeling rational that they can't just admit that they're not religious because they actually believe its claims are true. It would save us all a lot of effort if they did. I'm tired of having religious people try to throw reasoned arguments and evidence at me and then eventually concede--only after we've both wasted a lot of time and effort--that they don't really find those things persuasive either.
I mean, ffs. If it was never about evidence to begin with, if it's all metaphor and "personal revelation," then why do religious people get so upset when somebody points out that their sermons and holy books are full of fairy tales? And why do they let me give them the benefit of the doubt and hope that THIS TIME, THIS ONE TIME maybe they'll present a reasonable case, if they're just going to switch gears later and admit that they lied about their worldview in the hopes of getting me to sit still and stfu while they practice the flimsy reassurances that allow them to sleep at night?
I think that's one major reason why lots of religious people don't like talking to atheists, or even about religion to each other. It's not that we're all hurtful and mean, or that we're all joyless zealots, or even that we're all oversexed radical liberal feminazi pinko commies. It's this: If Pascal's Wager (or insert your fav apologism here) is the only reason you can face your day, you need everybody around you to be reassuring you that it's sound. Every person who shrugs and finds it unconvincing is a reminder that you've built your life on terror of your life, and an unwillingness to live in the real world. That'd suck, and I guess it does make us sort of mean.
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I think it's a feature, not a bug, and hopefully if everyone could accept that part, then we wouldn't have those kinds of frustrating discussions you mentioned.
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Now I'm not really sure what exactly religious dogma and faith can answer better. People talk about community-building, or morality, or human feeling. Thing is... I don't trust those claims either, if they're not subject to some standard of proof.
Religion can't survive if it tags along in science's shadow, always a step behind trying to rationalize whatever new explanation or finding's come up now. But even religious people don't seem to want to reduce it to a lot of myth and allegory. Even the least literalist of religious people still seem to have something in there that they need to be really really actually true.
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Is that what it's called?
Sweet, I'm so getting in on that action.
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So is atheism the next evolutionary step insofar as belief goes? Maybe yes, maybe no. There are reports of both atheists and agnostics dating as far back as any other religion we know of. I guess time will tell.
But the best change as far as I can see is that those who believe differently or don't believe at all don't need to go to the same lengths to hide it. For instance, if you tell someone you're an atheist, you'll get dragged into another long debate about the subject. If you did it, say, during the Dark Ages? WITCH! BURN HER!
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I'm not sure aethism is an evolutionary step any more than religion is or isn't. Both simply are for me, though I understand the appeal of the existence a higher power and life beyond death.
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This is explicitly why my previous two relationships (not Elysa - still with her) failed: they admitted that they couldn't stand the thought of me not believing what they do. Even though I wouldn't necessarily come out and disagree with or contradict them very often, the mere fact that I wouldn't agree with them and affirm whatever they said was something they couldn't deal with.
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Very well put. Love it.
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But the conversation always seems to go the same way: people start talking about "religion" when they actually mean "the forms of religion I am most familiar with" which actually means "Western monotheism" and expect me to defend that when I have no interest in doing so because I don't agree with those worldviews. Atheists have a tendency to hold views of religion which I consider incorrect and when I say I don't plan to prove their wrong assumptions, tell me that because I'm not "proving" ideas I never espoused that means Religion is Wrong. You can't solve the problem of evil with science, either.
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Not necessarily fear of death. Sometimes it's fear of becoming somebody with no purpose, no reason to do things or carry on. I exchanged messages via Facebook with a contributer to a religious-studies website just a few days ago who fell into this category.
Sometimes it's fear of losing a community, or fear of losing one's job. I've met some clergy that seem to fall into this latter category, and it's probably one of those that I empathize with most. It would suck to have one's livelihood based on never re-evaluating a certain opinion.
At this point I've just had so many conversations with theists in which I sat down hoping to hear their evidence and/or reasoning and finding out at the end of it that those things never mattered as much as an emotional attachment to a certain idea. If you are the one out of a proverbial hundred who actually has something other than wishful thinking or fear at the bottom of it, then I apologize for making an inference from the 99 other times I've had this conversation.
I am still interested in learning how religious viewpoints look when they're based on evidence and reasoning, but I've gotten so tired of being disappointed by shitty reasoning and appeals to emotion that I don't look as hard for that anymore. I'm tired of digging down through assertions and debate points and rebuttals and counterpoints that all look new and different and hopeful and finding the same irrational core: "I like this idea and I can't let it go or question it too hard."
It's not your job to educate me if you think I'm wrong, but I can tell you at this point that if you're right and you do have something to say about this topic that I have never heard before, you really would be fixing to say something that I have never heard before, and I've looked. I looked back when I was a theist Wiccan, and I didn't even find it then.
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I do what I do because it makes my life better...materially, concretely, measurably better. I am a healthier person as a result. Rather like the reasons I get exercise and eat right. You could look at the latter especially and conclude that I stay on my diet because I'm afraid of becoming a diabetic. I can't necessarily refute that; all I can say is that 1) reasonable fear does not make me a weak or irrational person and 2) defying my fear and being free of my "crutch" of healthy eating would be a really unbelievably stupid reason for me to quit.
But I have said all this before.
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You do bring up a good point. It's the pragmatic point that is probably the best of the reasons that I was presented when I was having doubts and asking questions that I wasn't supposed to ask. It's the idea that religious ideas often have a really good impact on people's lives. Hell, I still think in terms of the symbolism of the wheel of the year, because it did me so much good when I was practicing and just because I don't think it's all literally happening somewhere doesn't mean that benefit is negated for me.
A religious teaching can make people happier. It can help people be emotionally healthier--which I can certainly say that my Wiccan practice has done for me--and it can even by some definitions make them better people.
These things are not the same as proof of its actual empirical realness, though. Celebrating Lammas helps me deal with the problems I have with giving, and receiving. I don't have to actually believe it's happening to get those benefits, because the fact that I'm benefiting didn't prove anything to me other than that it's a really powerful and productive metaphor.
So yeah, I get that religion can be a positive inclusion in people's lives. I wouldn't still be practicing one if that were not the case. However, a teaching can be useful without being a literal reflection of reality.
There are a lot of religious people out there who don't need the teachings of their religion to be literally true. By some counts I'm one of them, and by others I suppose I'm not. However, I've had way too many people who claim not to be literalists still seem to have some ideas that still have to be literally true. One example would be Christians who can take Revelation as a metaphor, but don't believe the same can be done with the resurrection of Christ. Another would be Pagans who reject Christian-style literalism but still need to believe that asking the gods for things will help them come.
So yeah, the usefulness of religious teachings is something that I actually won't dispute, though I can see why that'd come as a surprise. It's belief in the literal truth of those teachings if they're not supported by empirical fact that I think is a bad idea, and which I've seen tends to be based on some poor reasoning and emotional attachment.
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It might help also to realize that I'm a poet, and that metaphors to me are not lesser forms of truth. Really, all of the language you use is an approximation and a metaphor. Including mathematics. It is only a description of reality, not reality itself.
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A tradition can have a lot of metaphorical truth in it. In fact, any story that's worth a damn at all will have a lot of truth in it (which might explain why I've been so happy in a tradition that calls itself Storyteller Wicca).
However! This truth is not the same sort of truth that I'm talking about when I talk about dropped objects falling toward the Earth or treating cancer. Fiction can be "true" in a lot of ways, but that doesn't make the events it describes a historical account. Stephen King's Carrie is a story that rang true for me as a kid in a lot of ways, and it's a story that actually did me good to read. Doesn't mean it happened, and as a result I can say that it's a powerful and useful and even necessary piece of my life without getting all pissy and shitty because somebody pointed out that it was stocked in the fiction section.
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I read Rosemary R. Reuther, and decided that I agreed with her that the myth of original matriarchy is a total invention based on crap scholarship by a hack who seemed to think that inventing a glorious history for womankind would give womankind a glorious future. I thought, "This is a ridiculous origin story myth like all the other religions have, and Wicca's isn't true, either." But then I thought, "I don't care. This is still the symbolic framework I want."
I started going to Indianapolis Pagan Pride Day. I found a Wiccan circle. They're my circle. I think that each and every one of them who thinks that something supernatural is happening there is wrong, but I didn't start on this path needing to believe any of it was accurate. I just needed it to be profound and guiding and meaningful and helpful, and it can be all of those things without any of its myths or magic actually occurring.
I've gotten the impression since that this makes me sort of a weird beast, but
By that I mean... I like religious practice, but religious beliefs are problematic for me in a lot of ways. I found a religion that's bound more by common practice than common belief though. Means that I can go to rituals and have a Hellenist on one side, me as an atheist in the middle, and a Kemetic on the other, and as long as we all find meaning in doing this particular thing at this particular time, we've all got a reason to be there.
Maybe that's splitting hairs. Maybe splitting that particular hair in that particular place is not a useful thing to add to the discussion, and I guess if that's true than I can avoid bringing it up. But that's where I fall. Religious practice = potentially awesome. Easily awesome, in fact. Religious beliefs = potentially and easily ill-advised and generally based on shitty reasoning anyway.
It's sort of like how I differentiate now between Buddhism and dharma practice. Dharma practice is something anybody can do who sees worth in the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. Buddhism is generally a belief system that requires a lot of faith in stuff extraneous to the 4NT and 8FP. It's possible to have dharma practice without those things, and that's sort of what I do with Wicca.
I'm rambling now, I think, because I'm not sure if I'm making any sense. Hopefully I at least came near enough to the mark somewhere in there that you have some idea what I'm getting at.
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Actually, she's wrong about that. Cultural evolution, including the idea that matriarchy was the oldest form of kinship and social organization, was accepted anthropological theory when modern Wicca was getting started (and Gardner was receiving his education). It was later rejected, but that doesn't mean it wasn't widely accepted by scientists at one time. Wiccans definitely held on to the idea long after it lost currency elsewhere (one of the dangers of working science into your religion, actually), but they did not just make it up out of whole cloth or adopt it purely because of a feminist agenda.
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It wasn't until I realized that the myth of original matriarchy was just a myth that I realized what I really wanted from Wicca, and that I did in fact actually want it. I didn't see value in it because the neat stories were or needed to be true. I saw stuff in there worth doing, regardless of whether the stories were actual history.
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However, they do get a lot of attention when atheists are talking about religion, mainly because they're the ones who are doing the most oppressing of everybody... including us, and including Pagans.
If you would feel more included were I to talk about the problems I have with the Wiccan traditions I've come into contact with (such as with the Wiccan circle I've been part of for the past few years), I can do that. However, there are a couple of reasons I don't drag that particular group out and flog them on my various blogs. The first is that they're seriously not as heinous as the monotheist traditions that piss me off more, and they're not even as heinous as a lot of other Pagan traditions and communities. It's why when I talk about Christianity being homophobic I talk more about the RCC than the United Methodists. It's not that they don't both count as Christians, it's that the RCC provides the most numerous and clear-cut examples of common ways that the nasty stuff plays out.
So actually, in fact, I do have a problem with a lot of Pagan traditions. I'm not neglecting to mention them because I've never encountered them, and I'm not neglecting to mention them because they have never done anything worthy of mention. It's that there are so many worse traditions that so much better exemplify the problems I'm talking about. If I were talking about pseudoscience and quack medicine, I'd leave the Christians alone and start talking about Pagans, but that's more my partners pet issue than my own.
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So yes, that example is not really addressing the particular kinds of deity that Pagans revere/interact with. I will say that the Achilles heel of the Pagan traditions I've interacted with is less their notion of deity than the whole idea of magic, and that would indeed have to be addressed separately.
However, just because the most obvious and gratuitous offenders are the dominating monotheisms and their apologists doesn't mean that nobody is familiar with Paganism or that nobody has managed to find any flaws with Pagan teachings. I know that with me personally... I do have problems, and questions that nobody has been able to answer (and I have asked people who, after damn near a lifetime of practicing and leading and teaching, should have at least been able to tell me how they answered them for themselves). However, my energy is better spent trying to chip away at the people who are not just wrong, but who have the will and the power to make my life shittier for saying so.
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But being useful doesn't mean something must be happening there which isn't verifiable and requires wishful thinking to believe. I read tarot cards (both for myself and others) because I think it's a fantastic meditative tool that gets me to think of things and about things in ways I don't tend to do without it. There's a difference between doing this, and actively trying to petition the Great Will of the Universe for answers, isn't there? It's meditation as opposed to divination, and while I'll never dispute the usefulness and reality of the former, the latter just doesn't seem to sit on very strong evidence.