How much should atheists know?

Posted on September 15, 2008 by me

While I am by no means an expert, I do enjoy thinking about epistemological issues.  A few weeks ago, I started writing a series of posts on epistemology, appropriately entitled, “How do you know?”  It’s a theme I haven’t quite exhausted, as I’m not tired of thinking about it yet.  For the last week or so, I’ve been discussing similar issues with a couple of nice atheists over at my friend Mike’s blog. Mike started off the discussion with a post asking, “How much religion do we have to study?”, referring to how much atheists have to know about religion before they can proclaim the non-existence of God.

It’s a valid question, I think.  And, I have 2 answers, at the moment:

  1. None. You can choose not to believe in God at any time, even in a completely uninformed state.
  2. Enough to be intellectually honest.

I’m serious about both answers. Concerning answer #1, I think it is perfectly valid to simply not want to believe in God.  I am not about to tell my friend Mike or the others at his blog that they can’t be atheists. That would be silly. You can be an atheist simply because you don’t want to believe that there’s any type of god who you might need to answer to. In fact, I suspect that’s the type of atheism we usually see.  They’re probably not the ones who join atheist organizations and wear t-shirts with a big scarlet A on them, but they’re out there, quietly not believing in God.

Now, if you’re Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens, you’d better have something besides pompous idiotic rantings to back up your position. Even if you’re just some commenter on a blog, you’d better be ready to be intellectually honest and discuss your statements.  I think it’s fair to challenge blanket assertions like, “there’s no evidence for the existence of God.”  Seriously, anyone can say that. For some, it’s possibly the atheist version of “positive confession.” It certainly sounds authoritative, and most of the time, it probably goes unchallenged. But, what does it mean?

This is where the discussion on Mike’s blog ended up, with me asking for definitions of evidence and proof. “No evidence …”  What are they talking about?  What if I were to maintain that there’s no evidence for evolution (like some crazies might do).  Of course there’s evidence.  The question is not whether or not there’s evidence, but whether or not someone accepts the evidence as sufficient enough to conclude that it’s true. Of course, I am using the term in the legal sense, not with any implication that evidence equals proof.  Webster’s first definition for evidence is “an outward sign; indication.”  The 2nd definition is “something that furnishes proof.”

Now, proof is another matter entirely.  Can we ever prove anything?  My contention is that no, we can never really prove anything. We can only provide enough evidence or information for someone to choose to believe something. Belief is always a choice.  Even to believe that 2+2=4 is a choice, to some extent. However, mathematical and logical proofs are probably the only things that we can say are proven, by the respective laws of math and logic.  Every belief represents a decision – a Kierkegaardian leap, as it were – from collected information (including emotions, etc.) to that belief.

If we are to say that something has been proven to us, I think all we are saying is that we have sufficient information in order to make a certain leap to a belief.  What is proof, then, differs from person to person, and from decision to decision. If we are predisposed to not believing in God (for any number of reasons), I think the level of information necessary to believe in God is much higher than that necessary for the same individual to believe in no God. To be fair, the opposite would be true for someone who is more open to a belief in God.  Star Trek‘s Spock is about the only person I can think of who could possibly evaluate every decision equally. Of course, I am oversimplifying a number of things, but that’s the only possible way to deal with the issue in a blog post.

Peter (1 Peter 3:15-16) admonishes Christians to “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience…”  This is what I try to do, and hopefully do it with gentleness and respect.  All I ask of atheists is that they do the same with respect to their position.

Now, I’d like to see both Christians and atheists better educated in their respective beliefs, as there’s just a whole lot of ignorance going on. But, that’s a subject for another time.

Posted in Faith, Science & Doubt, Philosophy | Tagged | Leave a comment

Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton take on sexism in politics

Posted on September 15, 2008 by me

This is one of the funniest bits I’ve seen from SNL in a long, long time:

Posted in Humor and/or Sarcasm, Politics/Current Events | 2 Comments

Science and superstition

Posted on September 12, 2008 by me

Ewen Callaway wrote an interesting little piece over at The New Scientist last week that’s actually kind of funny, if you don’t take it too seriously.  The point of the article is to say that Darwin’s theory of evolution explains why people believe in superstitions. It’s nothing new, I heard this before: people believe in superstitions – including religion, I presume – because some superstitions help us to survive.  The logic is a bit back-assward: essentially, if evolution is moving in a positive direction and superstitions have persisted, they must be beneficial.

Superstition is defined as the tendency to falsely link a cause to an effect. The article states:

The tendency to falsely link cause to effect – a superstition – is occasionally beneficial, says Kevin Foster, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University.

For instance, a prehistoric human might associate rustling grass with the approach of a predator and hide. Most of the time, the wind will have caused the sound, but “if a group of lions is coming there’s a huge benefit to not being around,” Foster says.

…

In general, an animal must balance the cost of being right with the cost of being wrong, Foster says. Throw in the chances that a real lion, and not wind, makes the rustling sound, and you can predict superstitious beliefs, he says.

The article goes on to quote Michael Shermer, the professional skeptic, as saying

“Our brains are pattern-recognition machines, connecting the dots and creating meaning out of the patterns that we think we see in nature. Sometimes A really is connected to B, and sometimes it is not,” he says. “When it isn’t, we err in thinking that it is, but for the most part this process isn’t likely to remove us from the gene pool, and thus magical thinking will always be a part of the human condition.”

Now, I really don’t think Darwinism has much to do with it, though I don’t have a problem with the concept that people make wrong cause-effect associations; I think this happens fairly often. However, primitave cultures, as far as I know, were less linear in their thinking than we are; the cause-effect principle is foundational to modernism.   Foster has to back off a bit from his theory when talking about why superstitions still exist in today’s modern, scientific world: “My guess would be that in modern life, the general tendency to believe in things where we don’t have scientific evidence is less beneficial than it used to be.”

Now, here’s where it starts to get really funny:

However, Wolfgang Forstmeier, an evolutionary biologist at the Max Planck Institute of Ornithology in Starnberg, Germany, argues that by linking cause and effect – often falsely – science is a simply dogmatic form of superstition.

“You have to find the trade off between being superstitious and being ignorant,” he says. By ignoring building evidence that contradicts their long-held ideas, “quite a lot of scientists tend to be ignorant quite often,” he says.

Like I said, I think people often make incorrect cause-effect associations, and I would expect that it’s more common if you expect to find a cause-effect association, making scientists prime candidates. I don’t really know… But, I can tell you this: no good can come from walking under a ladder.

Posted in Faith, Science & Doubt, Humor and/or Sarcasm | 1 Comment

Atheism, evangelism and the freedom to choose

Posted on September 9, 2008 by me

My friend Mike has written an interesting post (which can be found here and here) entitled “How much religion do we have to study?”  He’s referring to how much do people have to know about religion in order to properly reject it.  The discussions on both sites drifts a bit into the merits of Guinness and the applicability of The Emperor’s New Clothes and a response known as The Courtier’s Reply, but the discussion as it relates to the core question is interesting. I’ve 2 or 3 other comments in the discussions, but wanted to highlight what I commented tonight. Granted, it’s late and I’m tired, but it seems to make sense at the moment:

One of the issues that come up time and again in this argument of the truth of Christianity (a sub-set of the existence of God question), which I’ve picked up on in the current discussion, is the errant fundamentalist concept that Christianity is all about going to Heaven when you die.  Christianity is more than “getting saved,” it’s participating in God’s will being done “on Earth as it is in Heaven.”  One of the points in the Old Testament (as well as the Gospels) is that the Jews dropped the ball, so to speak.  Christians who have embraced dualism to the point that they’re not concerned about life on Earth have indeed missed the point.  That being said, Christianity is also more than simply a social gospel. Christianity is in a very real sense a revolution; 1st Century Rome understood that, as did the Jews.  Constantine subverted it, as did the Holy Roman Empire.

Now, often in the argument against belief in the Christian God, many people start arguing about threadcounts and whether it’s cotton or poly (referring to the Courtier’s Reply, if you missed it).  That’s a red herring. God has made himself known; either you see him or you don’t.  If you see him, then you can start arguing about threadcounts. If you don’t see God, then don’t worry about it.  You can give it some social psychological name if you want, but it doesn’t change this fact.

One of the reasons Dawkins failed so miserably in his book is that he let himself get sidetracked; he never really dealt merely with the issue of God’s existence. If you start arguing threadcounts, people are going to argue back, and you can’t blame them for that.

I have to say that I think Mike’s been pretty straight in this post, in spite of raising the Courtier thing and talking about beer (you never discussed whether beer actually exists or not).  You looked for God in a few places, and haven’t seen Him.  Fair enough.  I’ve looked in some of those places, too – but, I see God when I look out my window or read about quantum mechanics. I don’t need religion to show me God.

In some ways, seeing God is like those drawings where some people see a young girl, others see an old hag. Or, the one where you see either the 2 faces or the lamp.  Does that mean that God isn’t real?  not at all… my personal hunch is that God wanted to be fairly obvious, but still let people choose what they see.  Faith – belief – comes down to choice, to that Kierkegaardian leap.

If God does exist, then we’d be foolish to not find out who he is and what he wants; those who take the attitude “eat, drink for tomorrow we die” will have a very rude awakening.  I guess I’m taking the position here that we are given the freedom to choose; however, I’m not going to get into that discussion now. For those who do, I’ll point them to the Oracle scenes in The Matrix.  My point is that essentially, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink.  So much modern evangelism centers around red herrings of theology; now, if someone is genuinely interested in these questions, that’s one thing. However, much of the time the side issues are given far too much prominence.

I’ve often thought about Jesus’ evangelism methods.  His message is revolutionary: The Kingdom of God is here, believe it or not.  He sends more people away than he attracts as followers. He tells people “you don’t believe in me, and you won’t, no matter what I do.”  What kind of evangelism is that?  He even sends away people who think they believe!

Do we have an obligation to try to convince atheists that God exists?  My opinion is that if they can’t look out their window and see God, then anything I can do isn’t going to help.  That doesn’t mean that we don’t continue to proclaim truth, as Jesus did: God exists, Jesus is Lord, and the Kingdom is taking hold, take it or leave it.  Then, you’ve got to give people the freedom to reject it; after all, that’s what God did.

Posted in Faith, Science & Doubt, Theological Musings | 7 Comments