atheism
Is Evolution Untouchable?
I’ve noticed the complaint from a few different sources lately that evolution is simply ‘untouchable’. It usually is attacking atheists for clinging to evolution so devoutly, claiming that anyone with a religious background is simply unable to even question the theory. Is there some truth to that claim? Trying to think about it objectively… well, maybe so. But it’s not what they would have you believe.
Let’s examine the situation a little more deeply. Question: What is the real connection with evolution to any kind of disagreement on theology? Answer: Absolutely nothing. Unfortunately, evolution has been dragged into this fight presumably without first consulting it. There is nothing about atheism that connects with evolution any more than atheism connects with gravity or knot theory. But evolution had the misfortune to have some implications that certain religious groups couldn’t reconcile with their long held myths, so it has been branded a religious debate. Let’s not pretend that this is a completely one-sided fault either. While there may have been some Christian science watchdogs analyzing the theory of evolution and its implications from the start, there probably was an equivalent force on the other side, waiting for the opportunity to say “Hey! Look, you guys are wrong, and we have proof!” The debate is what it is today, and it’s short-sighted to claim that it was one side’s fault over the others.
But is it really untouchable? I don’t think that it’s completely out of line to say that this debate has become so polarized, that some people are so incredibly invested in one side or the other, that they may ignore any criticism from the outset. Honestly, I’ve spent enough time on the internet to know that these people are around for just about every debate you might have. It’s only because of the enormous fame of this one that these people have actually gotten real publicity. But I think that the real problem comes from a confusion of terminology that plagues evolution already. People who don’t understand the terms that scientists use will snicker at the “theory of evolution”, when it’s actually quite a solid idea. The terminology that gets lost here, though, is what people mean when they say “Evolution”. Richard Dawkins is often misinterpreted when he says that there is no doubt in his mind about evolution. “Oh REALLY?” his opponents say. “You must have some strong FAITH in that THEORY!” Or something like that. But it’s all rubbish. There is evolution the theory and evolution the fact, and it’s important to understand the distinction.
When Dawkins says that evolution is a fact, he’s stating something that we can be almost 100% certain of – creatures evolve. It has been seen; it’s a known effect. The overarching principles, the explanation of the effect, the reasons, that’s the theory. Suppose that someone said that gravity was a fact, and he was dead certain about that. Any qualms with that? Nope, he’s perfectly justified in saying that because we see the effect. Things fall down; masses are pulled together. We see it. It happens. Fact. Why does it happen? How does it happen? Can we quantify it? Those are questions for the theory. The Law of gravity is, essentially, wrong. Newton described things quite well, but he was ultimately wrong. So our theory changed, but the fact is still true. The one we have now seems pretty good, but who knows? It could change again, but I still will see things falling no matter what our best understanding is of the reasons.
I think that very few real thinkers would actually claim that we have an exact scientific theory with no holes or open questions, which will be solid forever, about evolution. What they get defensive about is that people are trying to force the idea out of consideration all together. “Look at this problem with evolution…” is ultimately followed by “Life doesn’t evolve”, which is the mistake. It would have seemed incredibly silly for Einstein to say “I see problems with the Law of Gravity… Gravity must not exist!” But it happens every day for evolution. Science progresses by observing and theorizing, then repeating, over and over and over. Claiming that problems with our theory discount the observation is backwards – so don’t do it.
Yes, evolution is somewhat untouchable – evolution the fact. We’ll be refining evolution the theory for a long time to come.
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Ray Comfort’s Introduction (Released Version)
A while ago, I mentioned how Ray Comfort was redoing his introduction for the “special” release of (On) The Origin of Species. At the time, he hadn’t put it up, but it is out now (and interestingly, so is the rest of the book, though it says only the introduction). Check it out for yourself.
So I finally got to reading it. Did he do what he said? Is it more even-handed and honest about its intentions? Let’s take a stroll through the introduction together, and I’ll just throw out my thoughts as they come up, ok?
<stream of thought>
Starting with a (brief) biography of Darwin. Ok, not much to say about that, if it’s factual. Not really relevant to the validity of the theory, but interesting to know I suppose.
Seems very interested in 1) Not getting good grades 2) marrying his cousin
P4: Second time he refers to Cambridge as “Christ’s College”
P5: And we start the discussion of Darwin’s religious views. Come on. What does that have to do with evolution? This is exactly the problem all over this debate. Religion has absolutely NOTHING to do with science. Evaluate a theory for its own merits. Portraying Darwin as a godless heathen to make him seem less credible, or to make it seem like a religious debate is wrong.
P9: The DNA code… So, did Comfort read this book before adding an introduction?
As you can see, random letters rarely produce words that make sense. But in time, mindless chance formed them into the order of meaningful words with spaces between them. Periods, commas, capitals, italics, quotes, paragraphs, margins, etc., also came into being in the correct placements. The sentences then grouped themselves to relate to each other, giving them coherence. Page numbers fell in sequence at the right places, and headers, footers, and footnotes appeared from nowhere on the pages, matching the portions of text to which they related.
This is nothing like evolution, and pretending so is either blatantly misleading, or it shows a complete lack of understanding. Here’s a better example, easy to visualize. Take 100 dice and throw them on the table. What are the odds you get all 6’s? Pretty slim. Do it again? Still pretty slim. How many times do we have to do this to get all 6’s? A huge number (think almost 100 digits). Now, play this game: take one die and roll it until you get a 6. Set that one aside. Take another and roll it until you get a six. Set it aside too. Continue to do this until you have 100 sixes. How long would that take? A while, but not really, compared to the first. It isn’t magic ink falling from the sky into perfectly formed words in one shot.
P11: DNA similarities -
To the question of whether sharing 96 percent of our genetic make-up with chimps makes us 96 percent chimp, Steven Jones, a renowned British geneticist, humorously commented, “We also share about 50% of our DNA with bananas and that doesn’t make us half bananas …”
Well of course not. Who said it did? I have two parents – am I half of each of them? I have 4 grandparents, am I 25% of each of them too? So I’m 200% of a human already, how far back do I go and still say I’m xx% of that? When you say that DNA is similar, it’s an observation. He’s trying to use that as evidence for a “common creator”, but at the same time acting like it’s ridiculous to consider. Pick one, man.
p15:
The creatures that Gingerich was looking at were simply different animals with similar hearing ability, and his conclusion was merely unscientific speculation.
Oh the irony of “unscientific speculation” in this context! Still, discussing “transitional forms” and lack of a “missing link” is interesting. Sure, on some level we will always wish for more fossils than we have. But what if we found some sort of transitional form between two species? Actually now there are 2 gaps to fill! Now we need to find two transitional forms to convince him! In all seriousness, evolution doesn’t happen linearly or on an even time scale. Changes in environment cause the need for a species to evolve, which happens in spurts and jumps. The fossil record is not going to be quite the pretty picture that Comfort seems to demand.
P 20:
Admittedly, this puts a tremendous responsibility on mutations to accidentally create complex new body parts, and on natural selection to recognize the benefit these new parts will eventually convey and make sure the creatures with those new parts survive.
Is Comfort admitting this? That doesn’t count as “admitting”, since you’re arguing against it. And really, he’s talking about irreducible complexity. I’ve said my piece on ID before.
P 23:
Therefore, mutations are not logical adaptations that make a creature better suited for its environment. They are completely random—the result of mindless, undirected chance.
Yes! Precisely! But I don’t think that means what you think it means. They are mindless and undirected, but that doesn’t mean that some of them don’t happen to be beneficial. The unhelpful ones don’t have any reason to propagate, and the helpful ones do. Mindless, undirected, but when viewed over a large population and large timescale – evolutionary.
P 26: Evolution’s difficult questions.
I’m a little tired of this. Does anyone actually claim that evolution is perfect and ties up everything in a perfect package? I doubt it. That’s not how science works. The real error is to say “Evolution isn’t perfect, ergo – GOD”. Science works on improving theories and finding better and better explanations (a little evolutionary, no?). So, yes we should ask the tough questions, but not having an answer for them (yet) isn’t checkmate – it’s how we make the theory better.
P 27: Which came first blood or heart?
Oh Good! This one again. Here’s the answer. Also, quit using irreducible complexity as a scientific rebuttal. There’s no prediction of the theory, it just says “is this one irreducibly complex? No. Ok what about this one? No. Ok what about…” How long do we have to play that game to satisfy you?
P 30:
However, if an organ were no longer needed, it could at best be considered devolution. This is consistent with the Law of Entropy—that all things deteriorate over time. What evolution requires, however, is not the loss but the addition of information, where an organism increases in complexity. “Vestigial organs” therefore do not serve as evidence for evolution.
Oops, nope. Let’s remember to keep our vocabulary correct. Evolution is the name of the theory and refers only to change. There is no ultimate goal of evolution, and no such thing as devolution. A species could perfectly well evolve to adapt to a certain change, and evolve back if a new change spurred it. There is no “perfect species” that we’re all progressing toward, and evolution doesn’t say that. It merely makes us fit together. If you can’t live in your “niche” then you either evolve or die.
Plus – Entropy? Really? That’s not exactly what entropy is about. By your logic, we shouldn’t be able to build a car, because that’s not deteriorating those specific atoms, which violates thermodynamics.
P 31: Darwin’s unsavory views, Atheism, Christianity
I knew it… <sigh>. Here’s a fun list of topics we get to enjoy: social darwinism, Darwin’s racism, atheists agree he was a racist, disdain for women, Hitler (!), lots of Hitler, Darwinism = Atheism = do-whatever-you-want-no-morals-ism, nothing created everything, theist scientists from history, lots and lots of “let me save you from Hell”, analyzing other religions as answers to Christianity’s questions?, go love Jesus, go love Jesus, come on just be a Christian!
An atheist wrote and said, “What do Darwin’s personal views on race have to do with our modern understanding of evolution? Nothing. Absolutely nothing, Ray. Even a fool knows this.” Indeed, Darwin’s racism has nothing to do with the credibility of the theory of evolution. It should stand or fall on its own merits. However, the theory itself teaches that all men are not created equal. Darwinian evolution doesn’t say that human beings are made in the image of God and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. It rather states that they are mere animals, some closer to apes than others, and it therefore opens wide the door to racism.
He was so close to an intelligent thought I got chills, but then another flatline. No, the theory says nothing about rights, a God or anything like that (including some people being closer to apes than others, which is a blatant lie). There are many ways we can derive morals and rights, which have nothing to do with being told how to live by a God. It doesn’t open the door to racism, but what if it did? I don’t advocate racism in any way, but the social implications of a theory don’t make it wrong. What if I had some crazy way to connect gravity with killing babies. Does that mean that you’re going to stop believing in gravity because you think killing babies is wrong? Evolution stands or falls by itself, and clouding the issue with this is incredibly misleading, dishonest, and sad.
</stream of thought>
Well, I have to say that whether or not he actually changed the introduction to be more fair like he said he would, it’s exactly what I expected. There are blatant lies, misleading facts and irrelevant crap all over the place. It’s a shame that he did it, but What do we do about it? Exactly what I’m doing. Share your thoughts. Expose the crap that doesn’t belong in this discussion. As he notes just before the actual text:
Someone once graciously said, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” However, it seems that some contemporary atheists don’t share such honorable convictions. When they learned about this publication they threatened lawsuits, book burnings, and even censorship in vowing to tear the Introduction out of the book.
And for once, he’s entirely right. This is exactly the wrong reaction. If ideas are good, they will be judged as good. It’s not up to us to keep ideas from anyone, only to combat the bad ones with even more good. Instead of burning them or tearing out the pages, why not get out a red pen and mark the crap out of it, go back to the street and hand it out to someone new?
Something We Can All Agree On
(The pedant in me really wants to re-title this “Something on which we can all agree”, but I’m fighting the urge…)
I usually stop by XKCD on update days (MWF) just because it’s my kind of humor, a little nerdy, sometimes topical, sometimes reminiscent. But today’s was less funny, and more meaningful.
And this calls to mind an issue that I think the secular and non-secular worlds can agree on. You have no reason not to be an organ donor. To me, death is death. The end is the end, and I will be none the wiser when it happens. This is a perfect reason to allow my body to be used for organ donation, or be given to science if organ donation isn’t feasible. In any case, I’ll be done with this body, so someone else should benefit as much as we know how.
For the religious person, I’d wager that most could agree on this as well once they get down to thinking about it, for reasons put succinctly in this comic (though maybe the blood transfusion thing would make Jehovah’s witnesses give some pause). Regardless of whether or not you believe in a soul, if you think it through, your body should have no ties to that soul. If you lost any specific part of your body, but were still able to live, did you lose some of your soul? Of course not. So why stay attached to this configuration of atoms (which we know it is) after you die? Either you think you’ll be tied to it and stuck lying in the ground forever (in which case you may as well donate and see the world after you die!), or you think you’ll be free of it. Why can’t someone else live with your help?
It’s not a complex issue. People live because of organ donors, and it costs you nothing. So go do it, if you haven’t already.
Conversion out of Atheism
It seems to be a popular idea among some strong atheists that de-converting from theism is common, but the reverse is hardly ever true. Interestingly, I don’t notice the opposite from the other side of the argument. Many theists are indeed very aware that they lose people (right or wrong) to atheism. But I also have a hard time accepting that it doesn’t happen; I think it’s more a matter of outspokenness. In the atheist community, it’s almost taken as a badge of honor. “I was once a Christian, but through my own super reasoning skills I overcame the beliefs and dug out of the oppressive brainwashing…” But is there a corresponding mark of pride for leaving atheism? Actually, I think that there’s enough of a taboo about atheism in Christian circles that it may even be held back. Whereas a Christian-turned-atheist would be proud of (to them) throwing off the shackles that their parents put on them from birth, the reverse doesn’t seem as gleaming. Sure, we hear about the prodigal son, and how great it was that he came back… But all he got was a nice party. Remaining steadfast in your beliefs is portrayed in a much fairer light.
In hearing about leaving atheism for Christianity (or whatever other religion) you also have to watch out for the inevitable “No true Scotsman” retorts from atheists who don’t think that out. Phrases come out like, “Well, he may say that he was an atheist, but he must not have truly understood what that means.” First, let’s leave the logical fallacies to others. What do you mean by “atheist”? Is that exactly the same thing I mean? What about that atheist that lives down the street? There isn’t a dogma to point to that says, “An atheist is A, B and C.” Sure, we could try to pick out the common points, or define it with a dictionary, but it reminds me of Plato’s forms. What is the form of a human? Well, it may not have arms, because we still call people without arms human. Or legs, or hair, or ears, or the left half of your brain, or the right half…. Why pigeon-hole atheists in order to say that the conversion didn’t mean anything? Frankly it shouldn’t really matter anyway. Being a convert (or de-convert) only would help convince someone else in the sense that you would have some idea of what they may believe. It’s not convincing in and of itself.
Maybe I’m biased too, because I think I’m right (don’t we all) so it might seem silly to go away from atheism to me. But really, that’s no sillier to me than converting from one religion to another. Maybe if you stay in the Judeo-Christian family you can claim some semblance to consistency. Maybe. But it still seems like you’d be going from one set of unsubstantiated beliefs to another (contradictory, I might add) set. Really, it seems almost laughable that you can recognize one religion as false without looking as scrutinizingly at the next one. Once you’ve realized that it’s up to you to accept or reject a belief system, how do you validate the next one? In the simplest terms, being an atheist could mean just that you accept that no belief system holds any more weight than any other.
In God We Rust
How poetic! I couldn’t have said it better. The “In — We Trust” campaign was one-upped by the US mint. Check out a description here. The Kansas quarter was minted with an imperfection, reading “In God We rust”.
Obviously, it’s a mistake, but of all the imperfections that we might see, I happen to like this one the best. It’s an apt analogy to consider closed-minded religious beliefs as the vehicle of our “rust”, our mental and social stagnation. The linked site says that these imperfections usually only fetch a few dollars at most. But I’m predicting that there are plenty of atheists out there who have had their qualms with the motto on our money that we’ll see these actually become somewhat of a hot commodity. I’m actually wondering how I might get my hands on one…
Soul Ponderings
So I took a little time off of writing, and it was nice. I actually expected to come back with lots of things to talk about, but it was less crazy than I expected. I had a little vacation to visit some family, and between the very liberal and very conservative members present, I expected more of a clash. Way to go everyone for keeping it friendly.
Still, there were a couple of interesting topics brought up that got me thinking. They have to do with the idea of a soul, and how to reconcile that with various situations. Personally, I have trouble with the word “soul” because it’s so inimately tied to religious connotations. On top of that, people generally describe a soul as “non-physical”, which leads me to ask what that actually means, usually to unsatisfying answers. Anyway, the topics that really made this conversation interesting to me were these: What would be the implications of being able to transfer consciousness between people/bodies? What are the implications of a soul in evolutionary terms?
First scenario – If you believe in a soul, do you think that it might be possible (in theory) to move consciousness from one body to another. To put it another way, if we had the ability to exactly reproduce the electrical workings of your brain in another body (or even some mechanical replica), would that still be you? Is there something beyond this that makes you, you? It’s an interesting possibility. For people who think that there is a non-physical soul that is really “you”, how would this get transferred, or would it? If it did not, what happened to it? If it did, are there some rules involved in how much of your brain activity needs to be transferred before the soul makes the jump too? What about if we just copied your consciousness over, and now there are two places your soul needs to be associated with? For those that think that you couldn’t transfer a soul this way, I want to know why. What is it about this body that ties it to my soul? If I lose some part of my physical body, I assume that I retain my soul. Then what’s the tie to my physical body? And if we can reproduce my consciousness, did we implicitly reproduce my soul somehow? If we copy my consciousness into a mechanical replica, do you have the same moral obligations to it that you do to me? What a metaphysical can of worms this is.
Second scenario – Does evolution lead to rejecting the idea of a soul? Most soul-advocates would agree that animals do not have one (except sometimes the family dog, which we’d like to see again in the afterlife). Many of them also want to be science-savvy and open-minded about evolution, but I have to ask, are the two compatible? To accept evolution is to accept that we share a common ancestor with creatures that have no soul. So then, somewhere along the way some creature must have had no soul, but given birth to one that did have a soul. Is this what we’re really saying? Where did that soul come from? At which point in the evolutionary line did we become just-human-enough to deserve a soul? Did that child have the same moral responsibility to its mother that we grant to fully human parents and children, or was its mother just an animal?
I don’t have good answers for most of this stuff, but it sure is mind-bending to think about and discuss. If you have good answers for what I see as logical problems with a soul here, let me know. I’m very interested.
Oh No! Fake Shroud of Turin?!
The skeptic’s world is all a-buzz about this latest “finding” about how the Shroud of Turin may not be such a divine miracle after all. Seriously, just about everyone is reporting on this story. So, I just have to ask, who cares?
There are 2 reasons for making such a big deal out of this. Either they’re trying to “prove” that Christianity is a false religion, or they’re trying to kick up controversy. It’s fairly obvious that whatever the goal was, the second one is really all that’s going to happen. Let’s look at this from a Christian point of view. What does the research say? Mostly it says that he came up with a way to put a similar image on a similar type of cloth with means that they might have had some time in the past. So what! You’ve got to be kidding me. We have (according to statistics that Richard Dawkins quoted, and I haven’t researched) just under 50% of the people in this country blatantly admitting to the belief that all the scientific evidence for evolution is crap! In the face of such an enormous amount of evidence for our planet being billions of years old, they believe that it’s more like 10,000! Now, let me ask again, what were you thinking you would do with science to show these people that the shroud is a fake? It’s already been dated to the 13th or 14th century, and that didn’t mean a thing to the ‘true believers’.
Don’t get the wrong idea – I understand completely that it might be nice for you to just systematically disprove every last little piece of divinity that these people cling to. But it just isn’t going to happen this way. Seriously, it’s more like a neat thing to wonder about for most Christians, rather than a place to base your beliefs. People like to claim to have a piece of the ‘true cross’, or put a bone from a saint in their church. How many people in the country have a baseball that was signed by their favorite player. Yeah, it would suck to find out that the ball was a fake, but does that make you think any less of the player? I really don’t think it’s any different for Christians, even in the event that you could definitively prove that it wasn’t divine (which I doubt you could, for them).
I wouldn’t really have a problem with someone sitting in their basement and tinkering with this idea in their free time, but what we actually have is funded research in the quest to disprove the shroud. From one report:
Garlaschelli received funding for his work by an Italian association of atheists and agnostics but said it had no effect on his results.
Well, good that it didn’t affect him, but that’s not the point. This is what this Italian association of atheists and agnostics chooses to spend money on? I don’t know the situation in Italy nearly as well as I do here, though I’d like to (actually, I feel the same way about their wine…). But I really must protest to any significant use of funds for such a purpose. It doesn’t get us anywhere, but it makes the A&A community look like we’re actively working against religion. A campaign of hate is pointless. Let’s see that funding going to getting better science and reasoning courses in schools, or exposing domestic abuse condoned by certain religions. The Shroud of Turin? Come on, it’s a trinket. There are much more pressing issues facing our world today.
The Problem with Science
No, I don’t hate science. It’s wonderful. Sorry if the title was misleading. I guess the problem isn’t with science, exactly. It’s with people’s application of science. Maybe it’s shortsighted of me to say this, but it seems like human knowledge is getting to be so vast in this “information age” that no one person can possibly hope to have a deep understanding in all the important subjects. I know that as our culture develops, our children are learning more and more, earlier and earlier, but this can’t go on forever. Sure, we can picture 1000 years from now having (relative to us) super-intelligent children who have an intuition for calculus at age 3. But I think that it’s obvious to most that our knowledge is growing faster than any evolutionary mechanism is keeping up with. At some point (which may already be here), there is a very real limit to how much one person can master. Will you be a Jack of all Trades, but a Master of None? Will you pick a path, stick with it, and have some authority on the subject?
Map of science
This is incredibly important to our society in the here and now, however. The latest buzz in the United States seems to be about the rise of the “nones”, those suave, smart (and might I say, good-looking?) people who claim no religion. The conflict between theists and anti-theists and/or atheists is growing extremely rapidly, probably because of the incredible communication power of the internet. Here’s how these two things are so intimately linked: the conflict of religion and science (Yes, there is one. Maybe not on every issue or with every person, but there is. Deal with it.) is being brought on just about every front. We have the creation debate which touches biology, evolutionary biology, geology, paleontology, cosmology, physics, particle physics, astronomy and dozens of sub-topics of those. We have debates about scriptural accuracy touching history, archaeology, anthropology, literature and dozens of foreign languages. We have moral debates and afterlife debates, proofs and disproofs of supernatural beings, and arguments about the meaning of life which touch all the spread out fingers of philosophy.
So are we to understand that this debate that is so easily characterized is so easily soluble? No, what it tends to come down to in individual debate is you and your opponent searching for the particular subject in which you each have an advantage of knowledge or experience. Then, you can rest in that comfortable space saying “They may have answers for somethings, but not this one, which proves my point.” If this scenario doesn’t play out, the usual alternative is an appeal to authority (yes it’s a fallacy, yes everyone does it once in a while). It seems reasonable to say that we can’t possibly know everything, so building on someone else’s conclusions makes sense. But it doesn’t play out this way. Theists get slammed for “not thinking for themselves,” and atheists get it back even worse since that’s supposed to be a tenet of the “atheist philosophy”.
What’s the solution? I don’t know. The sum of human knowledge is too vast and is growing all the time. An individual simply can’t keep up. That doesn’t mean that I plan on never drawing another conclusion again. It’s better to be as informed as possible and decide what that means than to be in a state of perpetual inaction and un-decidedness. But I do it knowing full well that the debate will almost certainly never be closed. Blogs full of ranting and railing against the other side for “ignoring the facts” and being ignorant (or stupid, as the blogger decides) are pointless and add to the noise that detracts from real discussion. It’s almost a certainty: the debate will go on. Fight for what’s right, but do it for yourself first. That’s the only person you’ve got a shot at convincing.
I’m looking forward to Christmas
It’s coming up you know! And I for one am already getting excited. The first little treat that comes my way – I can hardly stand the wait – is egg nog! Mmm… it’s so deliciously bad for me, but I just can’t resist. And as the snow starts setting in for winter, it gets so cozy inside. Something about the winter just makes you want to eat fresh cookies and sit under a big blanket watching the snow fall. Then you have those crisp mornings when the new snow came the night before, and the whole world seems to be pristine and untouched – the snow dampens the sound and makes it feel so still, so serene.
And as it gets closer to December 25th, the decorations start coming out and the city lights up with festive colors and lights. It’s hard to beat a night with your loved ones, driving around with hot chocolate and snacks, looking at lights and decorations and savoring the time together. It builds up to Christmas day, and for me that’s a wonderful family and friends celebration. We give out gifts; we drink, eat and laugh. The stress of the rest of the year doesn’t matter for a day. I look forward to seeing people I don’t see often enough, sharing gifts and seeing their reaction to what I pick out for them. I will forget about health food for a day and eat whatever tastes good. I’ll drink some great wine, maybe take a nap by a crackling fire, and for a day I get to really relax. “Christ”mas or not, I can’t wait for this season to come.
Sometimes when people shed a religion, they’re eager to also cast off any ties to it. It may be a symbolic act for them, rejecting the practices all together. That’s fine, if it’s meaningful for you, but I have no problem keeping some holiday traditions. I don’t feel like it’s anything hypocritical, and doesn’t mean anything about my belief system. Deep down, I know that I enjoy lots of the aspects of Christmas (which has grown very far from celebrating the birth of Jesus, much to the chagrin of many Christians), and I know that a day (or season) of celebration is a great way to recharge for the coming year, and reflect on the past one. I don’t go to church; I don’t put an angel on the top of my tree. But it’s also not necessary to hoist a copy of Origin of Species up there just to make a stand. The holiday, for me, has nothing to do with religion or a belief system, and forcing that upon it is just plain silly. If I wanted to make a stand, I’d make up some other holiday and celebrate that – but then it wouldn’t be celebrating a holiday, it would be making a show of my beliefs.
In fact, I think the secular celebration of Christmas is a great thing. Some holidays commemorate special events, and some are purely religious. But there’s nothing wrong with celebration for its own sake. I don’t have to deprive myself of things that I truly enjoy to be comfortable with my beliefs. Come on, it’s Christmas… just have a good time!
War of the fundamentals
I’m sure it comes as no surprise that there is a huge fight on both sides of the theism debate to characterize each other as “fundamentalists”. Indeed, some on the Christian side occasionally take pride in such a term (I have yet to see quite the same from non-theistic proponents, though their fervor can be hard to match as well). And then still more fight the term on principle, maybe because they think that it’s getting a poor reputation, surely yet another tactic in this battle. So how do we sort out the madness? How do you actually say that someone is wrong and you are right – definitively? Well, it’s not the saying that’s hard. Everyone already does that, but how do you make it a good argument?
Obviously, I’ve already got a side on this issue, and I think you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who did not. And I think it benefits both sides to consider from the point of view of the other. In my research and conversations with Christians, one thing that really sticks with me is the argument I sometimes hear about evangelism, converting unbelievers. Think of it this way: If you believed, really, truly believed, what they say that they do – that all of humanity was in danger of eternal hell, that there was only one way out, that they alone could guide you into salvation – what kind of person could not be adamant, even pushy about it?
Unfortunately, I think that they use this argument selectively. I generally find it hard to believe that most Christians actually believe to the level necessitated by this argument. If they really, truly believed, what would that imply? Should you go to a doctor? If you happen to die because you didn’t go to a doctor, is that a sin for not trying to preserve life, or are you in God’s hands at that point? Do you wear a seatbelt? I mean, if you’re saved right now, and you happen to get into a car accident, wouldn’t it actually be better to just jump to eternal bliss right now? If you really believed, wouldn’t you sell all of your possessions and follow Jesus with as little as you need? The implications for this kind of belief are many, and I don’t usually see it.
On the other side of the coin, what about the anti-theists which is a big difference, though not mutually incompatible, with atheism? If you really see religion as an evil in the world – teaching children that blind belief is more virtuous than common sense, that it adds guiltless justification for atrocities which far outweigh any redeeming benefits – that you would fight tooth and nail to get it out of here? There are proponents on both sides, and getting inside their heads sometimes sorts out the confusion a little bit. To honestly hold such a world-view and not be almost confrontational about it would be hypocritical. So who is right?
It’s not so obvious how you might show that you are correct. The real problem is a difference of basic principles. Anti-theists tend to hold reason and evidence as of utmost importance (I happen to do this too), and theists usually have “divine inspiration” on their side. And while some of them may claim that it’s a very logical and provable proposition to believe in God, I’ve yet to see anyone actually defend that well. In all of my experience, when we push down to it, they always admit that there is a leap of faith, however small in their eyes, required to get where they are. And who am I to say that this is wrong?
But the key difference I see is that in most things, they want to rely on reason and evidence as well. Intelligent governance depends on sound ideas, and a common position that I see a lot on both sides is that a theocracy mangles both the government and the religion horribly. This is something that I think the FFRF works for, quite nobly. And I see such ’separation of church and state’ as the only possible way of coexistence (and even then it’s a stretch). There are specious arguments against this too, such as a recent commentary out of Memphis which says,
Every “freethinker” in the world screams for tolerance… They are an example of the adage that if you tell a lie — such as the myth of “separation of church and state” — often enough, it becomes accepted as truth.
That phrase does not appear in our country’s founding documents. The First Amendment guarantees that one particular religion or denomination would not be forced upon the country, that no one would be allowed to infringe upon our rights to exercise and express our religious beliefs. It was, quite clearly, freedom for religion, not from religion.
I disagree completely with this interpretation, because it rests on the fundamental assumption that everyone has a religion. It’s the letter of the law, not the spirit. It also opens the door for someone to get fed up and say, “Fine! Call atheism a religion and lets enjoy the freedom that entails.” This is extremely harmful in the long run, and defeats the whole purpose. We’d open the floodgates of, “See! You have just as much faith as me!”, undermining the whole idea of rational belief in atheism. And I’ve said this before: even if that’s exactly what the law meant, that doesn’t mean it’s right. If that’s what it means, then we need to work to change it.
There’s no simple solution for the war of fundamentalists, because to truly believe what each one says they do, you simply must act the way they do. But if we keep it out of our government, then neither side steps on the other’s toes. We can have our debates and our fights and disagreements, but they don’t have to destroy the way everyone caught in the crossfire lives their lives. I think to both sides, this had better be an acceptable goal, since they both claim to care about us so much.
