atheism
What is love to an atheist?
In a similar line to writing about atheist perspectives on death and dying, I want to write some about emotions for an atheist, and specifically love.
Along with the usual “Atheists believe death is the end, so they must be depressed all the time,” I occasionally hear a similar, “Atheists think everything is chemicals, so love is the same as being hungry or tired — meaningless.” Or something similar. I’m not really sure what these kinds of statements are trying to do. My knee-jerk reaction is that they’re aimed at people on-the-fence, making it appear as though being an atheist is a pitiful existence. This may not be a malicious attack, but it seems like the most logical motive. The other explanation I would offer is that it’s justification for a person’s unwillingness to let go of certain beliefs: “If atheists can’t love, then I don’t want to be one.” (Usually this is accompanied by only a vague idea of what they mean by ‘love’, which is then modified as we go along to try to stay out of reach of someone who doesn’t believe in God.)
Lucky for us heathens, it’s not the painful drudgery of an existence that it’s made out to be. Let’s start with the fundamentals. Emotions and feelings are a part of my physical body. I have no reason to believe that there is anything supernatural about them. However, emotions, feelings and the human brain in general are so complex that I make no claims about understanding the actual mechanisms behind them. There is ample evidence, however, that as we learn more about the function of our brain we will learn more about why we feel what we feel. From an objective perspective, social emotions like love are a completely logical development for our species as well. We have evolved to empathize with each other, to form monogamous relationships and desire reciprocity of kind behavior. All of these are extremely benefitial for the species as a whole. Does any of this make the feelings less meaningful to me? Absolutely not.
Here’s what makes love seem less meaningful: when I was young, one of my best friends’ parents told me about how, without God, their marriage would have fallen apart. So, they stayed together because of God? Couples’ counseling by a religious authority very often has this slant – you stay together because it will please God (or anger him if you don’t). So what does this couple do? Are they supposed to look at each other and say, “Oh, well in that case, I guess I do love you! Thanks, God, for letting me know!” In actuality, they didn’t change their feelings for each other at all, but decided that it was more important to live unhappily now rather than displease God. How romantic.
No, I prefer love the way it is: real, physical and powerful. I am very much in love with my fiance. Does it matter that a million years of evolution might have brought us to the point where we experience things this way? Not to me: I enjoy being happy in my life. Maybe a million years of evolution told my body that it will survive the winter easier if I eat fatty foods. That doesn’t mean that I like eating fresh chocolate chip cookies any less, and the happiness I take from this loving relationship doesn’t compare. I’ve never understood why the possibility for a physical explanation is thought to make the feeling any less potent.
I find the Christian way of loving your spouse through God insulting and demeaning. Why are we not capable of understanding love and making our own decisions about our own feelings? Is it supposed to help keep relationships together? Statistics say it doesn’t really do anything. Why then is it so important submit their feelings for God’s approval?
The human side of our emotions makes them beautiful. I know that when my fiance tells me “I love you”, that it’s her saying it. There’s no invisible puppet master as the source of her love for me; it’s completely between us. We can ask, “What do you love about me?” and the answer has nothing to do with some unnecessary third wheel. Everything between us is layed out on the table, and there’s nothing mystical about it. It’s just love.
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Beginning interviews tomorrow
I’ve been a little quiet for a few days on this site, mostly because I’m preparing for interviews. I wrote a post a little while back about wanting to meet with Christians of all types and discuss with them their beliefs and any justifications for those beliefs, responses to common criticisms and arguments, and how their beliefs compare with the official teaching of the church.
As I mentioned, this is a project that is motivated by the increase (it seems) in recent times to having fewer authoritative teachings, and more ‘personal interpretation’. Even with authoritative teachings, there are so many denominations and shades of gray within those denominations that I encounter, “Well that’s not what I believe,” more than getting into a real discussion.
Actually, I’ve already started conducting a few correspondence interviews, and they’re going well. I haven’t decided the format that I want to use for the results of this project yet, though, so I haven’t talked too much about them. Really, I think the most interesting material will come at the end, when I can compare all that I’ve gathered. But since I’m beginning my face-to-face interviews, I want to give any of my readers one more chance to post subjects that they want discussed. I want to try to hit as many of the same topics as I can with all of my interviewees, so I need to get as much as I can before I go into them.
I’m already planning the standard stuff. We’ll talk about creation, creationism, intelligent design, evolution, literal interpretation of the bible, homosexuality, gay marriage, prayer, the nature of God, arguments and proofs for and against God, the god of the old and new testaments, evangelism, morality, Jesus, miracles, resurrection, gnostic gospels, canonical gospels, the trinity, separation of church and state… just to name a few. Hopefully I’ll have time to really get into this in the hour or two that I have with them.
But what’s most important is what you all encounter as well. The point of my project is that we may all have some issues or arguments with some Christian teachings, but the followers are so scattered that it’s difficult to actually discuss it, nail it down and deal with it. I want to try to eliminate the argument that you may be opposed to one person’s understanding of Christianity, but that’s just because you haven’t encountered this one before. You’re welcome to hold whatever beliefs you have, but if you say that you’re a Lutheran, or a Protestant, or a Mormon, or a Catholic, that has certain implications. I want to know what those are, and know what each of them has to say about the important issues of our time.
So, before I go tomorrow, here’s a final call: if you were going to do this yourself, what would you want to know? What questions have never been answered to your satisfaction? It’s easy for me to ask the questions I want to know about, but yours are just as important. Leave a comment, or send it through the ‘Contact’ page.
I’m not afraid to die
Though the actual dying part may not be very fun. I’ll admit that I don’t have much fondness thinking about the process of dying. From what I know about my body, it will probably let me know how much it doesn’t want to die. Heck, when I stub my toe on the couch leg it reminds me for 10 minutes how dumb I was to let that happen. Imagine what it will have to say about the prospect of dying forever.
But being dead? I honestly don’t dread it. This isn’t that unique to me; many atheists have mentioned before the idea that being dead will feel the same as before you were born: nothing. Not a lonely nothing, because you aren’t around to know that you feel nothing. But this also isn’t always a common feeling among atheists, especially those who have come to atheism recently. It’s a common concern for them, because they spent their life with the idea that dying would actually be a good thing, that they would be heading off to eternal bliss (though they still probably weren’t that eager to get there for some reason…). Everyone is different, but maybe by sharing how I feel on the subject I will help someone else.
First of all, let’s get one thing out of the way. Being true and being nice are two very different things. It would be very nice if heaven existed, and our souls would shoot out of our noses and off into paradise when we die (or however it would happen). This has absolutely no bearing on whether or not it is true. So the first step is to just accept that not liking the idea doesn’t mean a thing. If you’re going to be comfortable with dying into nothingness, you probably shouldn’t leave some lingering hope that it won’t really be the end. It is, deal with it.
Now, I happen to like living, breathing, experiencing, learning, laughing, loving and just all-around existing. But this doesn’t have to be true either. Life could suck. You could hate every minute of your existence. Again, this doesn’t have any bearing on what’s true. But, I maintain that you will be happier in either case if you accept that death is really the end. If you hate your life and see no reason to be happy, it’s that much easier to look for a religious pacifier, thinking, “How grand it will be when this painful existence is over, and I begin my eternity of happiness!” But wanting it doesn’t make it so, and instead of doing something about your situation now, you close up and wait for death to set you free. I think of death and think of the end, and it reminds me of all the things I want to do and to experience before that happens. So what might make you happy today? Have you always wanted to adopt a dog from a shelter before it gets killed? Go do it! Maybe you would love to spend a week in Tuscany in the summer. Pinch some pennies until you can make it happen! Maybe all you want to do is try to eat a whole can of cinnamon rolls at once. If that’s your thing, go make it happen.
The great part about knowing that death is the end is that you know you can’t regret things after you die. This isn’t an excuse to run out and rob a bank or anything like that, but it is a motivation to find out what you want and make it happen. Stop dreaming of the chocolate milkshake waterfall that you look forward to in heaven and find happiness here.
It’s not a depressing thought that there is no heaven; it’s liberating. You get to live now, so what experiences are good enough for your life? Let’s make it happen!
Dawkins on his new book
Yes, Richard Dawkins can be somewhat harsh at times, especially if you don’t happen to agree with what he’s saying. I agree that he can come off abrasive and needlessly condescending at times. But other times he’s given a worse reputation than he deserves, most likely by his opponents in the hopes that a mark against his character will make him less credible. He has written a great article that is well worth the read. In it he describes a little about his new book, “The Greatest Show on Earth”. It’s supposed to be completely about the evidence for evolution. He claims to have taken off his ‘antireligious’ hat for this one, and focuses only on the issues plaguing evolution today. When I get a chance to read it, I hope that’s true. Unfortunately, I think too many people may be turned off by their feelings on his past work.
For example, I remember reading some “shocking” headline that Dawkins thinks people who don’t believe in evolution should be put on the same level as holocaust deniers! He explains the position much more reasonably than this statement would have you believe. The holocaust is still an almost taboo subject in that trying to equate anything with it makes some people think you’re trying to downplay the atrocity, as though nothing could be as terrible as the holocaust so you must think it’s only as bad as this other thing you mentioned. But I think Dawkins’ example is quite apt. It’s a very real example of people denying something from history, of which there is plenty of evidence. It’s the denial he’s focusing on, and sweeping evidence under the rug is the crime of these people.
One passage really speaks to me, though, more than the rest:
Influential philosophers tell us we can’t prove anything in science.
Mathematicians can prove things – according to one strict view, they are the only people who can – but the best that scientists can do is fail to disprove things while pointing out how hard they tried. Even the undisputed theory that the Moon is smaller than the Sun cannot, to the satisfaction of a certain kind of philosopher, be proved in the way that, for example, the Pythagorean Theorem can be proved. But massive accretions of evidence support it so strongly that to deny it the status of “fact” seems ridiculous to all but pedants.
He’s exactly right about science. It never, ever claims absolute proof. This is not a problem at all, but people can try to use it as a defense of some absurd claims. He mentions how people misuse the term “theory of evolution”. I remember one year in our college newspaper, there was a guest commentary that had the laughable line, “We shouldn’t take evolution very seriously, as it’s just a theory. It’s not like it’s been proved and made a Law, like gravity.” It’s misuse of terms like this that cause people to lose the real ideas, but people have no problem arguing with them without actually understanding what they’re saying.
(It happens in all kinds of specialized fields. For instance, in mathematics “general” and “specific” hold slightly more nuanced meanings. In common language, you might say that something is true “in general”, but there are specific cases that do not fit the rule. Rather, for a mathematician, it’s easy to prove that specific cases obey a rule, but to prove the general case means to show that all cases follow that rule.)
And I’d like to make one more comment about mountains of evidence versus provable fact. For me, and I suspect for a lot of atheists, this is exactly the feeling about belief in gods. Very few claim any kind of definitive proof against gods in general, but it’s like not having strict proof that the moon is smaller than the sun. I will admit that it is not exactly the same in the sense that making this analogy more equal would require people claiming that the moon is larger than the sun, and then disbelieving that claim. But the point is that, to the atheist, the subject is on exactly the same level. I have no problem saying, “There is no God,” just as I have no problem saying, “The world is spherical” (yes, I know is actually kind of squashed into an ellipsoid). That’s where the evidence has led me, and it’s usable as a fact until there’s reason otherwise.
I’ll leave you with two great quotes. They remind me why I love science: we’re always learning more, expanding our understanding. You can look for flaws in our current theories, but the point is to make the theory smarter, not ascribe ignorance to evidence of God.
When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.
–Isaac Asimov
It makes us both wrong; it doesn’t make us equally wrong. You were at least *6* wronger.
–Dr. House
The Case for Christ
I recently watched “The Case for Christ”, and as you might expect, it got me thinking. If you’re not familiar with it, it was first a book and then a movie about an atheist who decides that he’s going to ‘objectively’ research Jesus and see what he comes up with. After a couple of years of investigation he finds himself compelled by the evidence and is now a true believer. Touching.
Now, I’ll admit that I did not invest the time to read the book, and only have experience with the >2 hours of movie that explains his journey. That said, it’s amazing the number of biased or otherwise improper research techniques he employs in the short amount of time he had to work with. It’s also amazing how he could ask a few good questions, and then abandon the reasonable thought that brought him to those questions. As an example, and probably the one that bothers me the most, he trots out many different ‘authority’ figures for whatever he’s researching throughout the movie. Not once did a person’s background not look something like this:
I. B. Right – Professor of Divination, Nutjob Bible ‘College’
It was a sea of people who have dedicated their lives to the study of Jesus, but not an objective study. There may be hints of real research in these places, but overall they are colleges founded with the answer already in mind. They undoubtedly have school charters that mention the first rule of following God. This is not objective research.
Another example: math blasphemy. I don’t recall the group of researchers he mentions, but he smugly quotes a probability that makes me almost want to cry. They somehow tried to calculate the probability that one man could fulfill all of the prophecies that Jesus would have to (and did, apaprently) in order to be the messiah, and this number was some fantastically small probability (1:10^30, or something). What? How do you pretend to make a calculation like that? Are we saying that a man living a random life doing random things would only fulfill all of those things? Are we including “rise from the dead” as one of them, and how exactly do you get a probability for being able to do that? The biggest problem I have is that in this case Jesus knew exactly what would be expected of him if he was to be the messiah. He undoubtedly spent his childhood learning all of the scriptures and their predictions, just like all other boys. But the difference is that he had his mother telling him from the start, “You are the son of god.” So it’s not a random life that happens to fulfull a bunch of predictions. It’s a guy living his life thinking about them all the time, and finding ways to make it happen. My guess is that if you’re trying to do this stuff, the odds get quite a bit smaller.
Lastly, I have a big problem with all the gospels that didn’t make the cut. It’s especially bad in The Case for Christ, because he uses one argument to try to get me to accept the 4 official gospels, and the opposite argument to get me to reject the rest. A not-insignificant amount of time is devoted to reminding us how accurate these 4 gospels really can be even though they were written decades after Jesus actually lived. We’re told to understand that oral tradition was a huge part of life back then, and people devoted their lives to memorizing the exact words and getting it right. Also, it was a huge community of people memorizing the same stuff, so it would be a “self-correcting process”, since your friends would let you know if you screwed something up (really? How sure are we about that?). So, what if I accept this argument? Well, then I might feel the same way about those dozens of gospels that weren’t included. What’s the problem there? Not 5 minutes later, he asks the same question and answers it by saying how old that writing is, even as old as a couple of hundred years! Wait, I thought being old wasn’t a problem? I don’t think they were in some sort of ‘information age’ by the second or third century yet.
As you may have gathered, I was not convinced. Really, it didn’t change my mind about anything except journalists (what he claims for a day job). I hope they don’t all report like this, but how would you know if they did? Even-handed reporting is not a trivial task, but this is just ridiculous.
More (dis)Proof of God
Being somewhat of a math-head, I tend to like proofs. When done well, they’re inescapable. However, philosophical proofs almost invariably leave me unsatisfied (yes, on both sides of the God-debate). But I still like pointing out where they are lacking, because it keeps people from touting them as actual proof. It’s almost funny when a theist comes with the idea that atheists just want logical proof or evidence, and they must not have heard this perfect argument yet. It’s not that we haven’t heard it; it’s that it isn’t nearly as convincing as you think. So, cue phase two of my commentary on the usual suspects in the ‘Proof for God’.
Last time, I discussed the ‘prime mover‘ argument, specifically the formulation put forth by Aquinas, since his annoys me more than most (it’s the way he asserts the Christian god at the end that does it, I think). But I got an interesting comment that reminds me why mathematical proofs are so satisfying to me. The commenter mentioned the idea, “What’s infinity times zero?” So what does math have to say about this? My response was this:
Strictly math-speaking, you simply cannot do that operation because infinity is not a number. It’s tantamount to saying “what is zero times chair?” Infinity is a tricky thing to get a hold of anyway. For example, there are an infinite number of integers. This is a class of infinity called “countably infinite”. But there’s another class called “uncountably infinite”, for example the real numbers. Take my set of numbers here (1.2, 1.22, 1.222, 1.2222, …) You can see how I’m constructing them. I could continue this series forever, always increasing and never reach 1.3. You could not assign an integer in a 1:1 fashion to the real numbers. So is uncountably infinite greater than countably infinite? They’re both infinity…
But it’s even more fun, because I can illustrate a good (dis)proof and play with infinity at the same time. I’m disproving this claim “Infinity is a number”, and using the common understanding of a number as an element of an ordered set that behaves under the usual arithmetic (+-*/). Also, I’m using the understanding that <inf> + x = <inf> (ie, adding anything to infinity is still infinity).
So, if <inf> is a number that behaves like a number,
<inf>/<inf> = 1
(<inf>/<inf>) + <inf> = 1 + <inf>
(<inf>/<inf>) + <inf> = <inf>
<inf> / <inf> = 0
1 = 0
See how satisfying that is? I made a claim, if infinity is a number, then the following must be true… 1=0. One very much does not equal zero, so our premise is false. Now let’s take a look at another proof for God. It’s the standard Ontological Argument (meaning a priori, quite a claim), put forth (I believe originally) by St. Anselm. It roughly follows this path:
- God, by definition is the greatest being imaginable. You cannot imagine anything greater.
- A being that exists is greater than a being that does not exist
- Therefore, God must exist
Now see how unstatisfying that is? It kind of ties in with another of Aquinas’ proofs (number 4) . His follows this logic:
- Things that exist have certain qualities to greater or lesser degrees
- greater and lesser are relative terms, which relate to the maximum
- Something must have the maximum possible of every quality
- That’s God.
One criticism of this I’ve read is that he says nothing that proves that one single object must have the maximum possible of all qualities, but I think this is too easily dismissed. Let’s just add a step, 2.5 that says “One quality you can have is having qualities”.
There, fixed, right? No, they’re both still very flawed. In the first proof, we make no distinction between imagining something and existence when it is actually a very deep divide. How about this?
- I can imagine no greater proof than the proof against God’s existence.
- A real proof is greater than an imaginary proof.
- Lucky me, it’s real and I’m almost done writing it.
- Therefore, no God.
It’s exactly the same as our infinity proof. I said “If your proof is true, then so is mine, so God exists and God does not exist.” A logical contradiction, therefore our assumptions were wrong. The proof cannot be valid.
The problem that arises from Aquinas’ proof is that he does not prove that because we can determine relative relationships between qualities two things possess, we know that something must have to have the extreme of this quality. He says ‘maximum’ and uses it as ‘infinite’. In his text, he uses concepts like goodness, truth, and nobility. But we are not required to believe in an infinitely good being. His proof merely says that for us to use goodness in a relative way, there must be a ‘most good’ and a ‘least good’. We can conceive of infinite goodness, but it is not required to relate the relative goodness between two real objects. We need only something with some amount of goodness as a reference point, and say that there exists something with more good than anything else that exists (but that my not be infinite goodness).
Again this will tie into our discussion of infinity (see what I did there). There are numbers that are greater and lesser than others. For instance 2 < 3. 15,204 > -10. We know their relative “greatness”, and we can conceive of the idea that there is a “greatest”. We call this concept infinity. But infinity is not a number, and the fact that we can use the idea of a “greatest number” does not mean that there is one. In fact, I can prove there is not.
For an arbitrarily large number x,
x < x+1
But since x is arbitrarily large, there can be no largest number.
Now if they would just actually define “God” we could find a similar argument and be done with it….
In the Atheist Closet
I’m sure many people have heard about Hemant’s recent issues with the Illinois Family Institute. The latetest update to this story can be found here. And I completely applaud his ability to juggle a professional life and an atheist-blogging life with such confidence.
The truth is, many atheists don’t feel they can do so. I’ve read some non-atheist (don’t really know the word to use without singling out some group) writers almost mocking atheists that complain about this, like they’re making moutains out of molehills. We make parallels between being an “out” atheist and being gay. I don’t feel like it makes light of the situation either has to deal with, and personally I prefer to not broadcast myself the way that some, like Hemant, can. I have very real concerns about being open and out about my beliefs.
Primarily, I think what keeps atheists “in the closet” is the politics involved in their job. Professionally, I avoid the topics at all costs, not because I think that they’re unimportant, but because I know absolutely that my job would be affected. Both now and previously, I have had managers that were plainly religious, and spoke some of these beliefs to me. I know some of their contemporaries (that don’t need to worry about being liked) who have had conversations about it, and if they disagree it can become quite heated. So, I feel that I would have a lot to lose if it was common knowledge that I didn’t believe what they did. Like it or not, office politics is a powerful thing. Do you think if a promotion came up and it were between me and a Christian who were otherwise nearly equally qualified that my manager would push harder for the Christian? There’s still a stigma around atheism that plays us as immoral or value-less.
And maybe it wouldn’t affect anything. Hemant has very understanding employers, and of course the official policy of any employer I’ve had would be that it doesn’t matter. But how would you ever know? If my manager just didn’t think I was right for something in his gut, there’s no way to determine what swayed his decision. Or perhaps I don’t get the chance to get in good with my boss because he doesn’t want to have a friendly relationship with an atheist. Most of the time, that’s probably not the case, but the issue for me is that it’s just not worth the risk. I don’t lie, and if asked directly I would be honest. But I’ll keep them separate for as long as I can. Groups like the IFI give Christianity a bad name, and until more people see why, we won’t see people being honest with each other. Is this their tactic, to bully people into anonymity and submission? Maybe not officially, but it seems to be what they do.
And they call us “immoral”.
Failure of the Aquinas Proofs of God
Despite 12 years of Catholic school, the first time I really encountered Aquinas was in a Western Civilization course in college. I remembered reading his “proofs” of the existence of God and wondering if this was really a proof to anyone. As it turns out, his logic is trotted out all the time, and I’ve always found it thoroughly unconvincing. So I’d like to take some time to explain why. For some quick background, you can read up on them here. They’re in Article III.
There are 5 of these proofs, but I really will only spend any time on 2 of them. The last 3 are, even under his own admission, more convoluted and, to me, even harder to follow than the first (which I’m rejecting anyway). You will recognize the arguments in these proofs by the very common “first cause” argument. Really, I’m throwing the two together, because they’re pretty much the same. He simply uses motion specifically in the first, and more general cause/effect in the second. A brief summary of the argument is this: Things are currently in motion. For something to be in motion, it must be moved by something. That something must, in turn, be moved by something. This logic must continue until you reach a first mover, something that moves things, but is not moved itself. In more general terms, for something to be in effect, it must have a cause. There cannot be an infinite regression of causes, for that would mean there’s no first cause, therefore, there must be a first cause that is uncaused, with the kicker, “– and this all men know as God”.
Well, first of all all men do not know this as God. That’s quite a leap to make, even assuming I accept your logic before, which I don’t. So I understand what he’s thinking here. Let’s picture a ball in space moving along. For this ball to be moving, something else had to run into it to cause it to move. But that ball was moving already. In order for that to happen, something had to run into that ball, and so on. But this view of the natural world is outdated. Our understanding of the forces at work makes this not nearly as convincing as it was when he wrote it. For example, let’s consider gravity. Two objects, some distance apart, need no prior motion in order to fall together. Gravity acts upon them simply because they exist and nothing more. If the universe consisted of a bunch of static objects, the simple fact that gravity attracts all matter would cause them to move, and once the chain is started, we have no more need for the idea of God as the first cause.
The argument I anticipate at this point is that we haven’t explained where all this stuff came from. Sure, if it popped into existence all still, we can deduce that it would move, but what does it mean to pop into existence? First of all, I think it’s harder to imagine non-existence than people give credit to. What would it mean for nothing to exist? Not that there is a big empty universe (Really, not that. Quantum physics has some great results about how empty space really isn’t empty at all). The empty space wouldn’t exist. Time wouldn’t exist. What does that actually mean? I challenge you to explain it. If there were no existence at all, we couldn’t ask the question “What if nothing existed?” So why is it so hard to accept an infinite past? To claim that God created everything out of nothing is really just claiming that there is some other plane of existence that we don’t comprehend. It actually solves nothing, because we would just redefine “existence” to that new thing we discovered, and ask the same question.
The other real problem with these kinds of questions is the extremely unintuitive nature of time. Time and space are completely interwoven. We talk about the theory of the big bang, and how everything was scrunched down so small and exploded. But to talk like this conversationally is a little misleading. The fantastic density at this moment just “before” the big bang would have rendered time and space completely meaningless. They would both have been stretched and warped more than any black hole in existence now. And the way that such high gravitational force warps space and time, nothing can escape. This means that absolutely all information is lost once it falls into this gravitational well. Everything. We can’t “look deeper” and glean information from before the big bang.
And here’s my point. What does “infinitely old” really mean when old is just a time-relative term, and time is so dubious? It’s not the flat line extending infinitely into the past and future that it seems to us in our day to day lives. There was no “moment of creation”, because moments can’t mean anything without existence. We don’t have the tools to comprehend all of the universe, but that’s ok. We make progress all the time. Nothing yet has said that we can’t understand, just that we don’t yet. God isn’t necessary, just convenient. Give us some time: we’ve had a good history of figuring things out.
Follow up to atheist morals
I just read a painful post about A Christian Analysis of Atheism. I don’t know what I might have expected with a title like that, but the ideas in this misguided commentary make me cringe. I’m embarrassed for both of us. You because you don’t understand a lot of things, and me because we aren’t explaining it well (apparently).
This reminded me of a recent post I made about atheists and morals. This is, apparently, what some Christians think of when they hear the term “atheist”:
According to Chuck Colson in Against The Night: Living In The New Dark Ages, in the arena where relativism reigns supreme in opposition to the law of God, there is no legitimate ground in which one can exclude the arguments and proposals of Nazis, serial killers, and pedophiles (47). From today’s headlines, the nation is coming to realize in the most brutal of ways that these ideas do not confine themselves to academic journals or newspaper opinion pages. And in the case of school shootings such as Columbine High, this radical antipathy towards God can in fact turn deadly.
If the lawlessness of atheism can wreak havoc upon individual lives, just imagine its affects (sic) magnified across entire societies. The major dictatorships of the twentieth century testify to this blood-soaked historical truth. Founded upon assorted atheistic ideologies, these totalitarian regimes promised secular heavens on earth but instead dragged their nations down to the very borders of hell.
Unfettered by eternal external standards, those holding the reins of power in such societies had nothing to hamper the implementation of their most extreme policy whims, not even the value of innocent human lives.
Oh no. Really? The “lawlessness of atheism”? I get so tired of this argument. There is no lawlessness necessitated by atheism. Read that past post of mine for more of that. Atrocities have been committed in the name of many things, including CHRISTIANITY. Some people may try to blame the religion for them, but in general, I do not. It’s the people using what they can to rationalize what they want, nothing more. Blaming atheism for the Columbine shooting? I seem to remember that they picked that day to coincide with Hitler’s birthday (and lest we forget, he made numerous mentions of his Christian beliefs and motivations). So just drop it! Atheism is not about abandoning morality because you don’t have to answer to anyone. Would Mr. Meekins go on a shooting rampage if he wasn’t worried that he would be punished by an invisible man in the sky? Let’s hope not.
But my main point is this: Atheism is not inconsistent with morality, and it’s completely orthogonal. The discussion of belief in a god has nothing to do with if we lose our morality or not. It’s a complete non sequitur. Saying, “Christianity must be true, otherwise people will kill each other” is not arguing any point of truth about Christianity, it’s appealing to the emotions of listeners who don’t really want to die.
And I’m not done with this commentary. He wants to bring up science, so I’m happy to oblige.
The Laws of Thermodynamics declare that, left to themselves, systems degrade to the maximum level of entropy; or in laymen’s terms, things wear out. Employing this principle, one is forced to conclude that, if the universe is an infinitely-old closed system those like Sagan claim it to be, then the universe would have already wound down in eons past. Therefore, the universe must have had a beginning. And since something finite cannot come from nothing, the hypothesis of a divine creator provides the most plausible alternative.
Now, my thermodynamics is a little rusty, but if I remember from college, thermodynamics deals very heavily in probabilities. That is to say, all of the molecules of air in this room could rush to one corner all of a sudden, but that isn’t very likely. The laws of thermodynamics make predictions based on the fact that, over time, things tend to follow certain rules, because the probabilities of them not doing so are so small. But IF the universe is an infinitely-old closed system, you would need zero probability for an event before you could say it won’t ever happen. Don’t underestimate infinity, it’s quite a long time. I’m not claiming that this is true, but consider the possibility. Some 13.5 billion years ago was the last time that all the matter in the universe happened to get to a state that it was crunched down together so tightly and exploded. Can you say with certainty that this hasn’t happened before, or will again? In another 20 billion years? 20 billion billion? (20 billion billion)^(20 billion billion)?
One more comment on the cosmological argument in general, while we’re talking science and math. The argument is more or less a failure of semantics. We start with a premise: everything in motion has a cause. So, that cause must then have a cause, and so forth until we get to a “First Cause”, which must be God. There is a fallacy here that is less than obvious: you can’t use a timeline argument to discuss something that is not temporal. Give it some time to roll around in your brain. If you want to ask “What happened before time began?” you have already used language to make any answer meaningless. What does “before time began” mean? You’re asking what temporal relation something had when there was no measure of time at all. Time is a tricky thing to think about, but watch out for this mistake. “Before time” is meaningless.
It’s too bad so many people misunderstand these things. But I’ll keep doing my part, one post at a time.
My biggest issues with Christianity (vol 1)
I’ve had an idea rolling around in my head for a while now, and I’ve decided to make it happen. A while ago, I realized that I was getting tired of the same old arguments, from both sides. The problem is that atheists and theists (to somewhat over simplify the two sides) go back and forth with the same old reasoning and never get anywhere. And the problem, I think, is that out here on the internet, there’s no authority. So when some anonymous theist says something like, “Christians believe that Jesus rode dinosaurs to get around,” and I point out the stupidity there, another may just come up and say “No we don’t. Here’s what we really believe.” And the cycle continues.
We all know the basics of Christianity, but there are so many controversial points with a countless number of arguments that we just get lost in semantics most of the time. This is literal, that is not. This is part of my core belief, that is not. This part of the bible is dubious, that part is the word of god. It’s enough to make your head spin. With the accessability of the internet growing every day, the number of Christian “denominations” is growing to meet the number of people who have an opinion.
So I got tired of it. In the interest of information gathering and sharing, I am setting out on a project. I’ve done my research, compiled a list of the most hotly debated topics that we deal with, and I’m going to find out what the authorities think. I’m requesting that local church leaders find an hour or so to sit down with me and discuss these things, not because I want to try to argue them into submission, but because it’s important to know what they actually teach. I don’t care what the crackpot on the street says about the rapture coming in 17 days. Christian denominations have assemblies of large numbers of theologians that determine exactly what their church teaches. I want to know what that really is. What are these people hearing in the sermons every week?
Let me stress again that this is not a confrontational “interview”. I’m a sucker for a good debate, so I will probably bring up some of my personal questions regarding some of these issues, but in no way do I intend to make it combatative. It is simply that I know very well what kinds of questions a lot of people already have, and I want to discuss them with someone who is well versed in the official teachings of his/her church.
In this light, I’d like anyone who would like to leave a comment regarding any issue you want me to bring up. I have already hit the big obvious ones, so you don’t need to worry about those. But if there is something that you’ve never gotten an adequate answer on, let me know. I will do the research as much as I can, and then raise it to the church leaders.
Stay posted for updates. I think this will be a very interesting and enlightening project.
