Most Christians have abandoned the nonsense of Adam and Eve and have embraced evolution as the explanation for the origin of life on Earth. Apart from table-thumping creationists and a Presidential candidate or two, most Christians accept a 4 billion year-old Earth and a 14 billion year-old Universe.However, even these partially rehabilitated Christians still tend to cling hopefully to one “last gasp” argument for the existence of god. The argument goes like this. Science can trace the evolution of life back to a certain point in the past, but cannot answer how the very first living organism arose on Earth. Therefore, god did it. Likewise, science can trace the Universe back to the Big Bang, but cannot say what came “before” the Big Bang, nor how or why there was a Big Bang. Therefore god did it.
“God”, of course, in both cases, being the Christian god. An argument from a Hindu, “therefore Vishnu did it” would be, well, silly. Apart from the above provincialism, the fundamental flaw in the argument is readily apparent. It assumes that, because we don’t yet have an alternative answer, god must be the right answer. “I don’t know” equals god. God is unquestioningly accepted as the “go to guy” unless and until the contrary be proved.
I could just as readily say, because we don’t know, it was Vishnu, Zeus, Allah or Porky Pig that created the Universe. Or perhaps I could be honest and say that we simply do not yet know and just stop there. We do not yet have a complete picture of the origin of life, nor of the Universe itself, but that sure as hell does not mean a god did it, much less the Christian god. Indeed, nothing we have discovered so far gives any indication whatsoever of divine intervention. Certainly what we have found makes a complete mockery of the Biblical account of creation and, if anything, should caution us against making unfounded claims of divine architecture.
More fundamentally, equating god with “I don’t know” gets one nowhere. All it does is put a halo on a question mark. As one (unnamed) blogger, quoted by Dawkins in “The God Delusion”, eloquently put it:
“Why is God considered an explanation for anything. It is not - it’s a failure to explain, a shrug of the shoulders, an “I dunno” dressed up in spirituality and ritual. If someone credits something to God, generally what it means is they haven’t a clue, so they’re attributing it to an unreachable, unknowable sky-fairy.”
We don’t know exactly how the first organism arose on Earth nor exactly how the Big Bang originated. We have some very compelling theories based on years of scientific research, but, come end of the day, we simply do not yet know. However, attributing the origins of life on Earth to a good spirit simply because we have no alternative explanation is no more convincing than attributing a mental illness we do not yet understand to an evil spirit - a practice once widely accepted.
I recently caught up with an old friend of mine. She is actually an ex-girlfriend, and the reason I live in America. If there is one thing about Jacqueline that cannot be denied, it is that she is smart. Very smart, and a good businesswoman, too. Good enough to have worked her way up in her company, founded her own company, survived potentially devastating litigation from her former employer, and become a millionaire in her 20s.
As with any successful business person, she is smart enough to be skeptical of unsubstantiated claims. If I tried to sell her a stock, or tried to convince her to invest in my business or to buy land from me, she would naturally want to know why. She would want to see numbers, and the logic and common sense behind my claims. I would have to present a business case and the supporting information underlying my assumptions.
Now imagine if I said to her, “I don’t have a business case. In fact, I have no explanation at all as to why you should invest in my business. I don’t know, so I just want you to assume it is a good investment and give me the check.” I know what she would say and I wouldn’t blame her. She would say the same thing she would if her doctor told her to take an untested and potentially dangerous pill simply because he prayed that it would be safe, or if she were asked to board a plane with her young son, based on the aircraft mechanic’s hope, wish or prayer that all was fine with the un-inspected faulty tail flap.
But, when it comes to god, all bets are off – or on. Raise the above argument for god, or any argument for that matter that results in god existing, and for some reason, her inner skeptic shuts down. She accepts the reasoning, wholeheartedly and uncritically. In fact, the above “god by default” argument it is the very argument she made to me recently. In all other aspects of her life, she requires reason and common sense, but when it comes to religion, she gives it a complete free pass. No analysis is performed, no skepticism is applied. God made the World 6,000 years ago because that’s what she was taught as a child. Full stop. She wholesale rejects any scientific or logical argument that does not conform to the primary color simplicity of her inculcated Sunday school stories.
The only interesting question to me here is why? She has certainly moved on from rainbows and crayons in the field of art, and Dick and Jane in the field of literature. However, on the big questions, her view is totally stymied and retarded. She sits frozen in a permanent fifth grade, unchallenged by osmosis and evolution. She is in Harvard Business School and her local middle school at the self same time.
She is also far from alone. I know so many otherwise smart, critical people, who would never be as voluntarily retarded and as readily hoodwinked in any other aspect of their life as they are by religion. An old saying goes, “The first priest was the first fraud to meet the first fool.” Perhaps a more accurate truism is "The first fool was the first genius who listened to the first priest."
Take politics. The US political landscape is populated by many smart people. Irrespective of what one may think of a given politician’s morals or stance on a given issue, in order to succeed in the rough and tumble world of US politics, one must be smart, skeptical and have the ability to read people and spot nonsense.
Politicians like Newt Gingrich, Jimmy Carter and Pat Buchanan are smart, articulate men. Smart enough to lead the US Congress, run for President, and, in Carter’s case, succeed in doing so. I doubt that any of these men would be easily fooled on most matters. Yet they are ardent god nuts, even creationists. I strongly doubt this is just them pandering to the Republican Right, the way McCain (a closet atheist, I suspect – god bless him) had to during the 2008 Presidential campaign. Obviously, in Carter's case, this cannot explain it. I believe these otherwise bright, articulate men have a true, meekly accepting, uncritical, belief in the Christian god as the creator of the Universe. Their inner skeptic has been totally neutered.
Indeed, as an Australian moving to America, one of the most advanced nations on Earth, I was truly amazed at how dogmatic religious views were still so pervasive in the middle and South of the country. It was like walking into NASA and finding their most gifted aerospace engineers huddled excitedly over the astrology column in the National Enquirer.
Once again, what drives it? What turns an otherwise bight, capable, worldly individual into an intellectual ne'er-do-well, ready to accept the most absurd, Sesame Street nonsense in this one specific area of their psyche?
I have read many theories on religious beliefs and where they come from. My own view is that they are so varied and pervasive that they must have bestowed some survival advantage on our early ancestors. The expenditure of time, calories and wealth that religious devotion entails (just look at your average European cathedral compared to any contemporary structure) must have had some return on investment, or it would have been selected out by more parsimonious theological competitors. One author, upon reviewing the various religious rituals around the World, felt it was "as obvious as the Mandrill's swollen buttocks" that religion bestows a Darwinian survival advantage on its adherents. Indeed, I know of no civilization, modern or ancient, that does/did not have a religion of some sort. As an interesting aside, Bertrand Russell once quipped that, statistically, every believer is likely doomed to eternal damnation, given the number of gods they reject.
In an article published in the New York Times (Thursday, March 25, 2010; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/opinion/25nyhan.html?scp=3&sq=Thursday+March+25%2C+2010+Health+care&st=nyt) Brendan Nyahm described the well known psychological phenomenon in which people tend to ignore facts that do not fit their own pre-conceived opinions. Although he was talking in the context of US health care reform, the article is (even more) relevant to religious beliefs. To quote directly from the article:
Studies have shown that people tend to seek out information that is consistent with their views; think of liberal fans of MSNBC and conservative devotees of Fox News. Liberals and conservatives also tend to process the information that they receive with a bias toward their pre-existing opinions, accepting claims that are consistent with their point of view and rejecting those that are not. As a result, information that contradicts their prior attitudes or beliefs is often disregarded, especially if those beliefs are strongly held.
Exactly, and even more so when emotions also run strong. Try convincing a doting mother than it was her gang member son who shot the grocery store clerk, a giddy 21 year-old bride that her marriage will end in an unhappy divorce (you'd be right about 60% of the time) or a staunch white racist that Barak Obama may prove to be a good President.
This is why I believe it is so damn hard to dislodge religious nonsense from believers’ heads. The empty promises and false comfort it brings are so intoxicating and alluring that the thought that they may be bogus is emotionally dismissed out of hand. The priest says, “believe in me and you will live forever in eternal bliss”, whereas the atheist proffers nothing more than the cold hard truth, “you and your beautiful little children are this layer of sediment’s Trilobites, and will rot in the ground along with every organism that ever preceded you.” What view is the pink and puffy mother likely to gravitate to, as she cuddles her newborn child?
Sweet promises of eternal happiness, of stress-free bliss, of never having to worry, or see loved ones perish are so completely intoxicating to many among us that the cold hard truth does not stand a chance. This is particularly so when one has been taught from a very young age that it is somehow WRONG and IMMORAL to even question the above placebo. Mix a lack of scientific astuteness (90% of the country) a strong emotive desire that “it must somehow get better than this,” and a social mandate constantly reinforced since early childhood that it is wrong to question religious dogma (anybody sense collective insecurity here?) and it is little wonder that such a large number of people end up buying the bottle of "Doctor Good."
This is also the very reason that one cannot help but feel a strong thump of pride in one's chest at being an atheist. I feel proud that I have "gotten above" the feel-good fantasies that indulge the mind of the theist. I know I will die and that that will be it. No trumpets will sound, no angels will sing, and there will be no final accounting at the Pearly Gates. Just a big zero. A big nothing. Just like during the entire 14.6 billion years before I was born. In this respect, and survival instinct aside, it is impossible for the atheist to fear death, for the simple reason that the capacity to fear (or to feel pain or discomfort) itself dies. Fear of death is as meaningless to the atheist as is the fear of a vacuum, the fear of not being born. I feel a lot more secure in this comforting acceptance than I would in trying to yoke myself to some quasi-hope that every part of my intellect tells me is untenable.
Bible Belt Atheist
Jason Burnette commented on this blog...
Your recipe for dogmatic religious belief--a lack of scientific astuteness, a strong emotive desire, and cultural disposition against questioning religious authority--ignores the fact that religious belief persists in countries and among people where these conditions do not prevail. One only has to think of empiricists and scientists like Bacon, Newton, or Einstein who held to the belief of a prime mover or uncaused cause that brought creation into being. Your argument suffers from the fallacy of ascribing the basis of religious belief held by only a few or a part to all of those who believe that creation must have a creator. Not all of us are beggared into that view by society or by our own ignorance.
It is true that positing the existence of a creator does not necessarily entail a Christian God. But we have evidence of the nature of God from His creation and from the personal experience of those who believe. Are you prepared to say that the personal, subjective experience of God is entitled to no weight whatsoever? What other subjective experiences (love, memory, taste) would have to be jettisoned in order to accommodate that view?
Bible Belt Atheist Answered.
Thank you for taking the time to comment.
I do not believe social pressure, emotional desire or a lack of scientific literacy are the sole causes of religious belief, I believe each such factor contributes to one's inclination toward religious belief. The stronger each is, the more likely one is to be religious. When all three are present (the "recipe" you refer to) religious belief is highly likely. Just as being grossly overweight, smoking two pack a day and eating a high fat diet won't guarantee an early death, but chances are.....
As to the empiricists you quote, Newton and Bacon lived in England in the 1500s-1600s, at a time when people thought mental illnesses were caused by evil spirits and women were still being burned as witches. They both received a classic church-based education, bereft of much of the scientific knowledge and discipline we take for granted today (including, obviously, the very advances they themselves would later introduce). It is little wonder they retained, to some degree, a theistic approach to the Universe. We know so much more today. Your average well educated tenth grader knows more about the World than Newton and Bacon could possibly have, simply because they are the beneficiaries of an extra 400 years of accumulated scientific knowledge.
Given Bacon’s and Newton’s respective approaches to science, I strongly doubt they would have concluded the existence of a god themselves, had it not been spoon fed to them from birth. I obviously can’t say, but would not be surprised if fear of reprisal also muted any inkling toward a more public atheistic view of things – recall Galileo, whose life was threatened by the Catholic Church for the heinous crime of espousing heliocentricity, was a contemporary of Bacon.
As to Einstein, he was, for all intents, a complete atheist. I know he admired Spinoza and brandied the word “god” around as a metaphor for the numinous, but he certainly did not believe in the notions of life after death or a god that in any way worried itself with human beings. Indeed, he referred to this as “the god of the naïve man.” For example, in his 1954 letter to the Physicist Eric Gutkind, Einstein wrote,
"The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."
More fundamentally, I believe there is strong empirical evidence to support the proposition that the more scientifically educated and worldly a person is, the less likely they are to believe in a god. For example, 95% of members of the American National Academy of Sciences are atheists, along with 97% of the UK’s Royal Society. I suspect organizations like MENSA and NASA would reveal a slightly lower, but still large percentage of atheists. You would never find anything close to these numbers in a statistically significant sample of say, hunters or NASCAR fans. Hence my comment.
PS: Do you really think Newton or Bacon would be other than atheists if born today?
You also ask if I am prepared to say that the personal, subjective experience of god is entitled to no weight whatsoever.
To answer, I accept that people have personal experiences with what they believe is a god. Hindus tend to have them with Vishnu or Krishna, Muslims with Allah, Buddhists tend to have reincarnation experiences and Christians see angels, Mary, etc. If I were to accept these personal experiences as evidence, I would believe in a lot of deities. I would also believe in the various spirits of Native Americans, the Dreamtime deities of the Australian Aboriginals, the gods of the Aztecs and Incas along with a couple of hundred others. You get my point.
Every culture has its gods and a proportion of its population will always claim personal experiences. It might be evidence if we all had the same experience across faiths. If Buddhists, Hindus and Jains regularly experienced Jesus or Mary. They don’t. Only young Christian women seem to experience Mary. The other faiths are busy experiencing reincarnation or their own deity(ies). Christianity does not have a monopoly on religious experiences.
It might also be evidence if a bystander ever witnessed the “experience,” but they tend to always be internal.
David Koresh and Charles Manson had innumerable personal experiences telling them they were the messiah, while Mark Chapman had experiences telling him he was Holden Caulfield ("that made me want to puke"). Thousands of people also believe they have had personal experiences with angels, sprits, “presences” or ghosts, with aliens who abduct them or with devils that torment them. I am not attempting to be pejorative here, nor to put all such experiences on the same level. My point is simply that the internal, subjective experiences people honestly believe they have are not at all probative of external reality.
So, my answer is no. Personal experiences are not at all convincing to me. I can’t help but think that personal experiences tend to be more “personal” than “experiences”.
Finally, as to your last question, “What other subjective experiences (love, memory, taste) would have to be jettisoned in order to accommodate that view?” None. I accept all of these emotions, just as I accept personal experiences. As with love, memory and taste, personal experiences exist in our heads. That’s the very point.
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