“Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too.” - Douglas Adams
I’m an atheist. I’d like to tell you why. Most of the arguments for being an atheist point to how it is more scientific or probable. I’m sure you’ve heard those before, so I’m not going to touch them. Instead, I’d like to focus on the reasons atheism can lead to a greater quality of life.
That said, I’m not here to convert anyone, just expose people to different ideas. I’m not on a crusade against religion. I’ve read many different books on various world religions. Even if I disagree with some of the founding points, the exposure to those ideas improved my philosophy towards life.
Common Arguments Against Atheism
I’d like to start by giving my rebuttal to many of the common arguments against atheism. I’m not even going to touch the circular logic of going to Hell or blasphemy. But here are some of the supposedly sensible objections to denying the existence of a god:
Morality
Morality doesn’t need to come from the threat of divine punishment. Religion can do much good, but it can be twisted to do evil as well. I believe ethics come from society. It comes from the basic principles of respecting the rights of others, service and altruism. You don’t need a god to explain morality anymore than you need Zeus to explain lightning bolts.
Afterlife
Another common objection is that in not believing in a god, you believe death creates infinite nothingness. I don’t have space to fully explain different theories on the life and death, but this doesn’t need to be so. Atheism only suggests that death is a current unknown.
Scott Adams suggested another possibility in his book God’s Debris. Your consciousness is based on a pattern stored on neurons in your brain. If this is the case, dying would simply pause the pattern and it would resume sometime in the future. With no delay being seen from the observer this would essentially mean you couldn’t experience death.
I’m not arguing that this theory is the way reality works, just that atheism isn’t surrendering to a nihilistic view of life. Instead, it is opening yourself to many different possibilities.
Meaning
This is an argument I’ve never quite understood. It basically goes that if you don’t believe in God, isn’t life meaningless? I think this is a rather weak argument since it assumes that meaning can’t be self-determined. It also assumes that without an invisible spirit watching you, life doesn’t have a purpose.
I pick a meaning for my life and I believe it is just as satisfying without conjuring a notion of a god. I believe a god can actually become a distraction from meaning since it causes you to focus on a divine overlord instead of what really matters – the other people and beings you share the world with.
Atheism for a Greater Quality of Life
Aside from being an atheist, I’m also a vegetarian. Beyond putting myself in two self-selected minorities, many of the arguments I’ve seen against vegetarianism are similar to those against atheism. A common cited reason people I know don’t want to eat meat is because they enjoy it too much. They don’t want to sacrifice.
This is hard to explain until you’ve tried both sides, but I don’t see avoiding meat as a sacrifice. Instead I see it as an opportunity to live a healthier life, reducing my chances of many chronic diseases and giving me more energy to do what I love. I also see it as removing the environmental and ethical discomfort in supporting an industry with questionable practices.
Similarly, I think a lot of believers don’t rationally believe in a god. But they don’t want to sacrifice the comforting notion that a being greater than themselves is watching down on them and helping them out.
But in focusing on that one benefit, you miss on the potential benefits of not believing in a deity:
- Freedom – The mental freedom to explore your world, learn and challenge your own assumptions. Instead of rejecting evidence that doesn’t fit your notion of a god, you can embrace everything with curiosity.
- Self-Reliance – Temporarily focusing on a god may keep you happy, but what about the long-term? Instead of expecting divine intervention to let everything work out, I focus on my own abilities and reasoning to improve my experience of life.
- Beauty – I believe beauty lies in the unknown. It lies in the things you can’t explain. That is what atheism really means. Instead of resorting to weak explanations of a deity creating the world, you see all the beautiful aspects of nature you currently don’t understand. Why tarnish evidence that the universe is larger and more magnificent than we ever realized by placing an invisible man in front of it?
Pantheism and Rational Spirituality
So far my arguments have been against the traditional notion of a god. That is an invisible, all-powerful being that not only created the universe but also, through conscious force, interrupts the rules of nature, that he himself created, to perform miracles for the benefit of one planet amidst billions of billions of stars.
The alternative to that doesn’t need to be a cold, hyper-rational, if-I-don’t-see-it-it-doesn’t-exist mindset. Pantheism (or as Richard Dawkins refers to it as “sexed up atheism”) is another choice.
Pantheism literally means “God is all.” It is the belief that the universe itself is god. That nature, humanity, science and truth are the reflection of god. In the most basic sense, this isn’t any different from atheism or science. But while atheism emphasizes what the atheist doesn’t believe in, pantheism presents the alternative.
I’m a follower of rational spirituality. Although it may sound like an oxymoron, rational spirituality means that truth, and your understanding of the world, enhance your appreciation of it. Instead of supplementing an unemotional scientific perspective with superstition, you find the emotional beauty in science and reason.
Read a book on evolutionary biology or quantum physics and it you soon realize how mind-blowingly amazing the universe actually is. The wonders of the New Testament, in my opinion, pale in comparison to how evolution works, the possibilities of string theory or quantum entanglement.
Appealing to a Higher Motive
God can serve a purpose in causing us to aspire towards something greater. But I don’t believe a theistic god is the only (or even the best) possibility here either.
Even beyond just appreciating nature and the world for beauty, you need an ideal to strive towards. A motivation that gives your life purpose and your broader actions meaning. An answer to the question, “What does it all mean?”
Finding your higher ideal is an incredibly personal task. It is a task that can’t be delegated or avoided by reading a holy book. I can’t tell you what your higher ideal should be. All I can show you is what mine is.
My higher motive is based on three separate principles:
- Truth - Complete understanding is the first part of my higher ideal. This means that there is intrinsic purpose in seeking the truth. And that faith or any suspension of the rational mind I possess is an inherent evil towards this goal. I don’t believe a lie at the most basic level can ever be superior to what reality actually is.
- Service – The second aspect of my higher ideal is service and morality. This means that there is intrinsic purpose in serving the greatest good and respecting the rights of others. Any act that harms the greatest good or infringes on the personal rights of another conscious being is inherently evil.
- Challenge - The final aspect of my higher ideal is that the pursuit of both truth and service is supposed to be challenging. Pain and struggle are not goals in themselves, but moving through challenges has intrinsic meaning if it moves you to greater truth and service. This means that no matter what happens to myself, there is a meaning in it if I choose to find it.
The two elements of rational spirituality and appealing to a higher motive do a far more elegant job of fulfilling me than adopting a specific religion and worshiping a god. Better yet, my beliefs are self-correcting. By placing the highest emphasis on truth, I am always willing to change my beliefs if evidence shows them to have errors.
Should You Become an Atheist?
I didn’t write this article to convert you. I fully expect not to have converted anyone who was already set in their beliefs. But just as I read religious and spiritual books to enhance my philosophy, hopefully this could do the same for you.
Further Reading for Atheism, Rational Spirituality and Higher Motives
Atheism:
- The God Delusion
- Letter to a Christian Nation
- God is Not Great
- The End of Faith
- The Blind Watchmaker
Science:
Spirituality and Philosophy:
- Buddhism Plain and Simple
- Tao Te Ching
- The Bhagavad Gita
- God’s Debris
- The Courage the Live Consciously (article)
I'm a speed-reading, vegetarian, holistic learning, productivity hacking recent university graduate. And, for the last five years I've been experimenting to find out how to get more from life.
Scott,
Saying God is defined as being without cause isn’t cheating. It’s the only logical explanation. God by definition is self-existing, and exists outside of the bounds of time and natural laws, because He created these things. We don’t live outside of the bounds of time, otherwise we would be able to go back and forth in time to any point that we wanted to. But we cannot do this and thus there must necessarily be someone who can because nobody can traverse an infinite amount of anything, time included. The rest of the thought you are absolutely correct on…God would be infinitely more improbable to happen as life just spontaneously happening.
I’m sorry I didn’t bother to go back and check that…you didn’t say that we would reach a “higher” state. But you did say that maybe we wouldn’t experience death at all. And I guess my point is if you aren’t going to experience it, why not just “kill” yourself and thus get that event out of the way, because you’ll get wherever you’re going that much faster.
Also Pascal’s Wager isn’t putting fear above truth. First of all, there is abundant evidence for God in science, life, knowledge, etc. And second, it’s just illogical not to bet on something (i.e. eternal life) when you have no chance of losing if you do bet and a chance of losing everything if you don’t.
You also have to argue against the law of biogenesis, among a myriad of other proofs, which hasn’t yet in any circumstance been shown to have any exceptions.
Hey, very diplomatic article about atheism. I can tell you do value relationships.
I was born into a Christian family and raised that way, now, after a good savage beating from the world and its editorial pages, I think I’m mostly just confused. There’s too many viewpoints out there to process, and I can’t pretend to have any defensible basis for picking one (can’t argue, see below), so I prefer to default to the one I was raised to believe.
Life has taught me that expressing a worldview will just cause people to argue with me, which I’m no good at; don’t have the will for it, so I give up on it. I never could do evangelism. First I couldn’t find a way to convince anybody else, after all that I can’t find a way to convince myself in the face of constant opposition to that belief.
I still call myself Christian and I’d like to be one, more than any other worldview – in fact, I feel there’s sort of an immovable part of me that’d nag me about going to hell if I ever became an atheist. (I’m a bit like Charlie Brown or George Costanza that way.) But I think I’ve learned that Christianity is entirely unarguable on anything but its own terms – not sure if that’s a good argument for faith or not – so there’s no way to justify that belief on the planet I’m placed on, other than it’s my identity by birth, so might as well carry that forward. I can’t take the atheist gambit, because honestly, I don’t have enough confidence that I’d be right. So I just default.
On bad days, I think I believe that I’ll be confused about this until I die, at which point I’ll go to hell for not believing.
[...] comment on a blog post that a person wrote on why they believe in atheism, which you can check out here (I’ve written some comments on it too, if you would like to read those*). Anyway in one part [...]
[...] this post I was totally inspired by Scott H Young, and he’s writting Why Atheism ?, I agree with him in all the mostly important things that he says about this topic, even the one [...]
“Atheism for a Greater Quality of Life” just made me laugh.
God bless
Scott,
50% chance you are right and 50% chance you are wrong, you get nothing either way.(after this life)
A believer wins regardless and I am a believer Thank you God.
Tuffy,
You’re paraphrasing Pascal’s Wager. The problem is that it ignores all the other possibilities. (Such as a God that approves of skeptics over believers)
Pascal’s Wager screams against every rational thought in my head and appears to be nothing more than intellectual cowardice.
-Scott
a spiritual man must put faith above his intelligence to comprehend it
Scott,
This might sound a little crazy, but hear me out. I have a challenge for you: study the body. I mean, completely study the body in depth. Study each body system, especially the nervous system. Study this with the amount of energy you use to fight against the being of God. If you already have a good understanding of the body and its functions, i encourage you to look at it again. In our body, in a normal body, EVERYTHING works together and works together for the good of itself. Our body is so amazing. Our brain, our liver, our muscles. There is no way that you can study the body without believing in some “higher power”. Personal testimony: I felt like you when i was younger, but became a believer while taking two Human Anatomy and Physiology classes in college. Read the personal testimony of the “Growing Pains” actor, Kirk Cameron. He was also complete Atheist but started going to church and completely found God. It is remarkable. Well, Scott, I urge you to atleast take me up on my challege. If you do it and still feel have the same views, well, all the best to you. I completely will respect your decision.
Oh, and science does not always explain everything. Since you are so science-based, Explain how my grandmother can have cancer throughout her body, and three months later she is cancer free. No chemo or radiation…only prayers. Hmm…interesting, huh?
Sarah,
Two points:
1) I wouldn’t put myself as a militant atheist so you’re statement, “with the amount of energy you use to fight against the being of God.” I’m not really fighting against anything. I just happen to feel God is highly improbably and emotionally dissatisfying.
2) The fact that there is beautiful, complex and intricate things in nature says nothing about the existence of God. I agree with you that the human body is marvelous, as is the amount of stars in the universe and the variety of animals on this planet. But to believe in an intangible concept of beauty or perfection in the universe is very different than believing an all-powerful invisible man, not only created that beauty but punishes you for sins and rewards you with a life in the clouds after you’re dead.
I must state for the record that my argument against God isn’t the argument that anything unscientific or anything I can’t explain doesn’t exist. As I tried to argue in the article, I see the world as being more beautiful, since I have nothing to append to its existence to make it so.
And Sarah, actually science has a lot of documentation, not only on the effect of prayer (in double blind trials it didn’t work) but on the placebo effect and the effect of optimism. That sounds a bit uglier, although more reasonable.
I don’t believe in unicorns, but then I haven’t written any books called The End of Unicorns, Unicorns are Not Great, or The Unicorn Delusion. Clearly the atheists go beyond disbelief; they are on the warpath against God. And you can hear their bitterness not only in their book titles but also in their mean-spirited invective.
Boss,
Now there I’d actually agree with you. I feel the God/Anti-God debate has become rather mean-spirited, and I disagree with many of those authors who claim religion is the source of all the worlds ills. Some awful things have been done in the name of religion, but I would say good old human nature is more to blame for that than believing in a deity.
Hey Scott, great article.
I always enjoy reading others points of view regarding God and religion, and appreciate it most when it’s done in a non-confrontational way that gets people talking and exploring the issue. I have a very different opinion and like you, I’m not trying to sell you on the belief of God.
One of the most intriguing issues about atheists that I read from your article is, even like religion, they have created different types of names for the different ways they express their atheism. I was extremely fascinated by that piece of information and would never know that there where different viewpoints on the atheism belief.
And seeing how you, as well as others who wrote in, and people I personally know who are atheists, often times they express they are atheists predominately because of their negative experiences with religion and then equating religion with God.
Religion is mans creation – NOT Gods, but either way it seems that because RELIGION has defined a heaven and hell, a fear in God for all of the WRONG reasons, and all of the other components from the catholic church and other religions that seek to deny people from being creative and having passion in life as well as understanding that God is love and we are here to realize our full potential. Every religion in the world has perverted the Bible to fit its own agenda and sell whatever idea they wanted to sell while all at the same time rolling in a healthy dose of paganism to spice it up some.
God is not some wizard in the sky or clouds, a Being that that determines how you think and what you think, and limits your creativity as a human-being as many religions in the world would have you believe.
Even though I do believe in God and his son Jesus, and all of Their wonderous creations, I still create a profound freedom, self-reliance, and find more beauty in the world every day. I have these things as much, maybe even more so, with God than I certainly ever would without God. For sometime I did question the existence of God and went on a research campaign to prove He didn’t exist, and I’m now always reading others opinions on this subject. I’ve read much on evolution and the bang theory and other fantastical idea’s of how the earth and human-beings were developed and all I found were scientists and super-intelligent people who had a lot to say about nothing. Many (not all) of whom seemed more angry and pompous about their atheist beliefs to the point of diliberatly over-complicating their explanations to an incomprensible nonsense that logically didn’t even prove back to whatever theory they were trying to establish.
My God doesn’t limit me from expressing myself fully and achieving my highest desires, and He isn’t sitting somewhere “out-there” with some magic wand waiting to give anyone divine intervention THAT is a RELIGIOUS concept not Gods. God wants everyone to prove he exists except that sadly those who are convinced he doesn’t exist already, due to their exposure to the Religous systems of the world, have made their determination he doesn’t exist based on man-made religious idea’s and fantastical creations of heaven and hell, and the bang and evolution theory by some scientist with formal education. Anyone who picks up a Bible can determine these places such as pergatory, heaven, hell are not any places of God, about God, or where God is going to send people someday if you do/don’t behave.
It’s interesting to see that you believe your higher ideal/motive/purpose is something that can’t be delegated or avoided by reading a Holy Book. Well I believe you are 100% right on that account. I took on the task of personal development pursuing my higher ideals/motives/purpose, and, reading the Bible doesn’t interfere with it as you have presumed it might be for you, or any atheist because it appears that any pre-conceived idea of a Creator is something that prevents you from exploring these pursuits to their fullest.
Although my higher ideals are similar and even if they are laid out exactly as you have them being truth, service, and challenge, I fail to see how that would prevent me from realizing these aspects of life if I believe in God as a Creator.
On some level, I can only imagine, that there must be an inherent struggle with holding onto a belief of atheism. It would seem to me that to hold the belief of atheism in light of all of the evidence pointing toward a Creator that on a daily basis somewhere in your sub-conscious you are suppressing the very idea of a Creator. Then using the believe of no Creator you allow yourself or give yourself permission to realize higher ideals? I don’t know it’s just a speculation on my part, but I tend to think that it would be a struggle internally within your mind.
On a daily basis I don’t evaluate everything I do based upon God, and yet I hold some of these same ideals that you do, and regardless of whether they are the same or not it just seems that atheists spend a lot of time denying a Creator so they can justify expressing themselves more freely. If you come back down to the basics of society and the laws we have in place wouldn’t we all be expressing ourselves to our fullest capacity within the laws that society has set up for us anyway? And I say this in all sincerity if you believe you have a moral obligation not to kill someone than wouldn’t that belief stand in the way of pursuing any higher purpose? It’s still a belief and you have to believe one way or the other. Either you kill freely or you understand that you can’t due to the laws we have and if you’re caught you’ll be in prison where you have even less freedoms than you do now.
God gave everyone the ability to worship Him or not. We are not robots and he gave us the ability to be free moral agents. Living here in the US I can see others express various religious beliefs and many more express nothingness too. I think living in a country that allows freedom of religion/or not and seeing others points of views can help everyone intelligently pursue or not pursue their ideals.
Too many people live life today holding onto beliefs others gave to them so in many instances I believe atheism serves its own purpose to allow those who are frustrated with the inablity to “see God” here and now another outlet to express that frustration and give themselves peace of mind.
rj in missoula,
Thanks for the great comment. You wrote a lot so I feel I need some response:
1) I’m not really against religion or God per se. My attack is more on the notion that questioning your beliefs is morally wrong. Many (not all) theists believe that questioning God’s existence or coming to the conclusion that a god doesn’t exist is punishable by an eternity in hell. This seems like a far worse version of hell to me where one cannot even have freedom within their own mind.
2) Am I struggling to suppress the notion of God? Not really. I believe the theistic arguments of a conscious deity who pays attention to your thoughts and created the world in seven days to be rather farfetched. But do I believe there is a quality in the universe that can’t be understood rationally? Yes. That’s called pantheism though, and that isn’t the type of philosophical viewpoint I’m arguing against.
3) Depending on how you define “God” you could cast me either as an adamant believer or complete skeptic. When you have the ability to define “God” as anything you want, then he or she can exist in the light of any evidence. This is why I avoid the word “God” when describing a universal quality in different philosophical viewpoints.
Einstein and other physicists encounter this problem when they make reference to God. Few of them actually believe in a supernatural conscious being, but see “God” as representing the total harmony of mathematical laws. Those are very different things and while they may have the same emotional effect, they imply completely different natures of the universe.
Hi Scott,
I am quite curious–
I am on a quest to understand more about Christianity—not religion–but just about Christ and God.
My first step is reading the Bible in it’s entirety. And not just reading it lightly, but really taking time to sit and unlock the mystery to it.
It is my understanding that athiesm is affirming the nonexistance of God (yes, I looked that up on Wikipedia.
)
I happened to read in a blog earlier that you have not yet read the Bible in its entirety.
I was curious as to why you would choose to be athiest without having really read about the God you want to reject. (I really do not mean this sentence in a negative way–just in a curious way)
I really would love to know.
Thanks so much–
Lindsey,
First off, to say Christians have a monopoly on God is a bit of an exaggeration. I have read books studying hindu and buddhist philosophies. Hinduism is also theistic.
As for the Bible, I have read parts of it, if not the whole thing. I think of it as an interesting story and metaphor, but not representative of reality. I’d like to read the Bible sometime soon, but unfortunately my understanding of the universe doesn’t wait until I gather all possible evidence.
Scott –
I’m just a first time reader, and have really enjoyed a couple of the articles on your site so far. I came across this one and was intrigued. I’ve read through the chain of comments above, and the one that stuck out to me as a strong rebuttal was Steven Cornell’s. You’ve given excellent arguments against the majority of the other comments, but didn’t really answer that one on a point-by-point basis – could you perhaps address where you felt you were misinterpreted and speak to the points that were made in that post?
In my exploration of life and the meaning thereof, I’ve come across many arguments for both sides – I found that set of arguments particularly compelling, and just wanted to hear your side of things!
Thanks so much,
Jon
Jon,
My lack of response is usually due to time constraints, rather than having been backed into a corner. Let me see if I can address some of Steven’s points:
1. This assumes that ultimate meaning is required by god. Read a book by Ayn Rand. You don’t have to agree with her philosophy, but you can see that she makes a very clear case about the ability for a person to have purpose without a god.
2. I’m not an expert on evolutionary theory, but I’ve read a dozen or so books about the topic, and the logic of evolution is unerring. Intelligent design fails to answer the most important question: “who created the creator?” Evolution has an answer by leaving a conscious entity of immense complexity out of the picture.
3. What about the Big Bang? A cause need not be started by a conscious force, just as the pi is caused by the division of a circumference of a circle by its diameter.
4. Morality and ethics without a god require more thought, but they don’t become meaningless. I’m sure most current philosophers of ethics would be disturbed by the idea that there work is meaningless without an invisible judge watching over them.
5. If we both agree in an objective reality, then we can both agree on definitions of good and evil. I can’t say that the sky is green when it is blue, if it isn’t. If there can be an absolute measure of truth, then there can be an absolute definition of morality. Not to say that there isn’t gray areas or considerably more complexity than most religious systems of ethics would claim.
6. This is a false counterattack. I never said that God was impossible. Only highly improbable based on current evidence and emotionally dissatisfying. To be fair, I could reverse this argument by saying that a believer must be arrogant because he believes in a god without complete knowledge.
7. Sorry I’m not even going to argue this one. Historical evidence? Cite something reasonable before you make ridiculous claims.
8. What can I say, I’m a vegetarian. I don’t believe we are as different from animals as we would like to admit. Clearly there humans have a richer depth of consciousness, but that does not mean we belong in a completely separate category, just a different spot along the continuum.
How’s that?
-Scott
Hi Scott,
I came across your blog when I did a google search on how to give up television. In addition to a well-written and informative article on giving up tv, I found a wealth of helpful articles to read, enjoy and learn from. The only article that troubled me was your article on atheism, because I happen to (try to) be a Christian. I didn’t agree with much of what you had written though I note that many of my objections have been covered in the posts above. What I did want to mention was how happy I am to see a dialogue between atheists and theists that remained respectful and friendly at all times. You don’t need to look very hard to find dozens if not hundreds of Internet forums in which religion is discussed with nastiness and poison spewing forth from both sides. It is testament to the quality, I think, of your character that you have attracted a readership that, whilst not everyone is always in agreement, they can meet in an atmosphere that is respectful, warm, honest and sincere. Congratulations mate, thanks for all the advice and keep up the good work. Best wishes, Stephen
[...] discussing my own atheism, many people claimed that rationality meant rejecting everything that could not be proven. This is [...]
Interesting posts. I respect everyone’s right to their own opinion but I’ve always struggled with atheism. I find such joy from my relationship with God. I’ve been a Christian for a long time but a praying-every-day Christian for just about 3 years. I am amazed at the joy it brings me. Since relationship with God is based on faith, I sometimes wonder if those who do not believe could not possibly understand those who do because they have not felt the presence of God. I feel I have. And experiencing that just increases your faith.
Scott, it seems your views are more against organized religion than with God. I believe the two are very separate-religions are run my men who are fallible, not perfect. Also, I don’t look for divine intervention to help me out in life. I do believe in it (as a hospice volunteer, I have seen some amazing things happen) but the God I know expects me to do my very best always, not to expect him to carry me through. In fact, if I ever get desperate and find myself trying this route-guess what? No help from above.
I also feel I have the right to explore and question, even the Bible. If I did not, I wouldn’t be using my God-given brain. I don’t even feel badly about it. The only true commandment Jesus gives us is to love one another, and I definitely try to do that.
Frankly, since life is merely perception, things happen for whatever reason we attribute it to. If I think I am a successful because I’ve worked hard, then I am a success because I’ve worked hard. If I think I am blessed because of my faith, than I am blessed because of my faith. What difference does it really make? Except of course on the battlefield. Because as it has been said many times, “There are no atheists on the battlefield.” Just joking here, I respect all opinions and feel I can grow from thinking about them, even if I disagree. Cheer-Tracy
Scott,
I’ve just read through your initial article and the ensuing thread of comments and your rebuttals. It’s amazing how civilized this whole discussion has been. That in itself shows there’s a chance for rational people to get along. Have you had any secret death threats that we haven’t seen?
I see that the theist side has been well-represented by my Christian brothers-in-faith. I am Muslim myself, following what I believe to the final revelation of God’s religion on Earth. (Talk about a currently massively misunderstood religion…) My arguments will hold as much weight as those of all the others since they are all based on a plane other than rational, and you’ve shown that you understand that. So, as some have asked: how can you really refute that until you’ve experienced it, or rather as we believe God desires, to have attempted to seek it? What I mean is, I’m trying to understand how athiests grow up to be so without having been fully exposed to God and finding no solace there. (I’m re-reading this and find I cannot convey my confusion properly).
I guess in analogy: how can the blind man tell the seeing that there is no such thing as color differences? You can admit that you don’t perceive as others do and therefore have difficulty understanding what they mean by red or green or blue… This is, of course, assuming we’re staying away from the belief that we can rationalize religious faith and read about it. Am I saying that you have to dance with the Derwishes or meditate with the Sufis before you can give up… maybe, I don’t know…
And also this assertion (perhaps not yours) about saying that looking at the record of world religions and the problems they’ve caused, it’s better to stay away from them and be more balanced as a rational being — I’ve never understood it because most of the conflicts have always been rooted in power and territory (on this plane of existence). I do agree that it’s shameful that the world’s Faithful have been poor examples for those who have trouble in finding God…
Hope some of this resonates somewhere, because after reading the long thread of arguments and counter-arguments, my age-old sentiments (questions) concerning athiesm were bursting to come out… maybe I should have waited to write that at a better hour.
I would end with “Keep the Faith” but that doesn’t apply here… I guess it’s more like: “Get the Faith, and then drop it, and then decide there is none to be had.”
Naseer,
If I may have license to clump your argument into another category, I’d say it is the familiar “Orgasm Argument”.
The basic argument here, argued by theists is that an atheist arguing that God does not exist is like a man who has never experienced an orgasm arguing that the experience of an orgasm does not exist. The a-orgasmist has similar objective evidence to refute the claims that the atheist does.
My rebuttal is twofold:
1) Let’s separate “Feeling of God” from “God”
2) Let’s avoid “secret evidence” arguments
1) Separating “Feeling of God” from “God”
As I stated in my introduction, my attachments to the word “God” are highly specific. Namely, God is:
-A conscious being that thinks, although with infinite power, in the same way humans identify as “thinking”. (i.e. Universe=God is a false statement by this original definition)
-That God is directly involved in the affairs of human beings either through their creation (deism) or currently (theism).
Those two descriptions don’t pinpoint a subjective feeling. They describe something objective, like President Bush or a unicorn. The statement, “The non-believers in unicorns are missing my essential feeling of unicorn-ness, therefore their reasoning that unicorns do not exist is flawed.” This is a ridiculous counter-argument since unicorns have specific, objective properties that should be verifiable (under ordinary circumstances) equally by two different outside observers.
The feeling of God is quite different. My claim of atheism isn’t that I don’t believe that there is something greater, more beautiful and higher that we should use as our principle of life. My only distinction is that I don’t attach this feeling of God-ness to specific objective properties that my reasonable evidence claims does not exist.
Does the “Feeling of God” exist? Undoubtedly. I’m not arguing that you are lying about having that experience. My argument is that theists are mistaken (or at least wagering on an extremely unlikely proposition) that this feeling is directly attached to an all-powerful, conscious creator.
Pantheism, or the belief that “God is all” is closer to my current beliefs, since this coincides with the “Feeling of God” without proposing objective details that are difficult to justify.
2) No “secret evidence” arguments
The other flaw in this reasoning is that using “secret evidence” arguments may not be logically unsound, but doesn’t leave much room for intelligent discussion.
Saying you have special access to evidence of God (as a super-conscious being, not as a subjective experience) simply closes off any room for debate.
Could you imagine a lawyer going before a judge and claiming that “My client is innocent, but I can neither lucidly explain or present evidence that he is not guilty. However, I ask that you trust my evidence over the air-tight case of the prosecution.”
Your personal beliefs are your own (and should be), but if you want to discuss them with others, “secret evidence” arguments aren’t going to persuade.
I’ve thought about the idea of God for sometime and, I can say that there is no rational argument for the case of the existence of God.
However, to assert that the nature of reality can only be fully captured within the dimension of human understanding is a bit presumptuous.
I went for coffee today and I stood in line. After a while, another lady came along and asked “Are you in line?” I said “yes!”. And then I thought… I suppose I should ask the person whom I *assume* I am standing behind is in line as well!
My point is… in my humble, entirely fallible human reasoning… if one wishes to fully try to understand the nature of reality… we must be willing to question *EVERYTHING* (including the limits of our capacity to grasp it’s borders). How do we KNOW that human intellect is an appropriate yardstick by which to characterize the universe? I suspect that (as most athiests pooh-pooh the bible based arguments as circular reasoning (as I would concur)), should one go about using one’s human mind as the yard-stick, one would come to circuitous conclusions of similar validity. We humans *do* come with brains and intellect; and to *rely* on the solely to explain the nature of the universe – clearly one will come to the self-fulfilling conclusion that there is no greater being.
And to those of you who think that your religion is the *ONLY* valid religion, consider this: religion inherently separates the soul from the temporal body. At the point at which the soul is breathed upon this body, and considering that there are billions of potiential bodies to choose from, there is a rather significant probablitiy that your soul could have been breathed into a body that grew up on the other side of the world; in which case you wouldn’t at all believe what you believe now.
So what do *I* believe? I believe that you are what you are and if it ain’t broke don’t fix it!
Ah, but Scott …
You ARE religious, my friend, and very strongly so.
It’s not that you have a God, but that you have made yourself God!
The quality of YOUR faith is sterling, dear “atheist”.
I could never trust in your system.
Jeff
blogrdoc,
You hit upon an important point. The problem is often described in philosophical circles as the problem of induction. But to say that both sets of faith are equal is a bit of a stretch.
-Scott
I would *never* say both sets of faith (an interesting choice of words on your part) are equal. I’m just saying *regardless* of what believe system one decides on, (theistic or otherwise) *some* assumptions are made. Note that the root meaning of the word “religion” is “to tie fast” or “to *rely* on something.”
In my humble opinion, the arguments you present for “rational spirituality” aren’t rational. Quality of life, challenge, self reliance, freedom… These are all very subjective. Is that the point you were trying to make? Not sure.
Please take these comments as food for thought, not at all criticisms. Clearly you’ve established a very successful blog and are a very smart, capable, enterprising person.
My favorite two quotes on science:
Science is the attempt to come up with systematic, coherent and useful descriptions of how the natural world works. – Chris Mack, lithoguru.com
Science always deals with models of reality, not the ultimate nature of reality. – lightandmatter.com
As a PhD in chemical engineering, having done research in fuel cells, nanotechnology and some other exciting fields, I can honestly say that I feel very fulfilled with the level of freedom and challenge in my life. In my experience, there is no correlation between these factors and spiritual beliefs. And as far as self-reliance: I’m armed to the teeth
Oh and I forgot my favorite quote about God:
(note: you’ll hate this to the core)
It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe in him, He believes in you.
blogrdoc,
I’ve actually heard that quote before–and no I don’t hate it. Although, I do feel it is a bit funny (no sarcasm).
Actually, you bring up a good point about how my thoughts on quality of life, challenge and freedom aren’t rational. I don’t want to start debating about what is “rational” because then we would be fumbling over semantics, not truths. I plan on writing a full article showing my view of rationality and the goal of a meta-philosophy (or a philosophy for how you handle your major beliefs). So I’m afraid I can’t offer much of a counter argument to that until I can write it in an article.
I think it’s important not to confuse rationality with science. Science is an extremely useful technique for uncovering facts about the objective world. However, science is just one (albeit, incredibly powerful) technique at the rationalists disposal. (Although, as a PhD, I’m sure you are already aware of this)
[...] comments from readers who were surprised at how friendly the conversation over Atheism VS Theism in this post. Instead, most of the online (and many offline) arguments I hear, go more like [...]
[...] comments from readers who were surprised at how friendly the conversation over Atheism VS Theism in this post. Instead, most of the online (and many offline) arguments I hear, go more like [...]
Great post. Impressively clear, given the subject. But, I’m even more impressed by you ability to keep the debate almost rationale, clean and friendly.
I’m an atheist too, but I don’t discuss religion often since I have hard time (and maybe some tiredness) dealing with the classic irrational arguments from theists. You do a very good job rationalizing what seem to be, at first, irrational arguments. I just read you post “How to Win a Debate Without Starting a Flame War”, and now I see how you put that in practice. Today, I learn quite a lot.
Good job with you blog.
…and, I forgot to say, thank you very much.
I too am surprise at how well people have controlled their remarks in this discussion. I have really enjoyed reading through the comments from both sides.
As for myself, I was raised as a Christian, but I’ve always had this little doubt in my mind. This doubt has grown in recent years as I’ve come to read and think about this topic in more depth. Right now I can’t say that I’m atheist or theist. The two main problems that trouble me when trying to come to a resolution are: the “correct” religion, and the cause argument.
1. The “Correct” Religion
Since there are so many different religions, that all believe they are the only “correct” one, what happens if you were born in one part of the world and indoctrinated in that geographic region’s dominate religion? How could a god condemn someone to hell if they had never even heard of this god to begin with?
Example: Imagine you are raised as a Muslim, and then practiced Islam throughout your entire life, but in turn had never heard of Christianity? How could a god sentence you to hell for being naive?
2. Cause Argument
My second problem is the question of cause. If everything has a cause, for example most religions believe that their god created, or caused, the universe, then what caused their god? The problem with this argument is both sides will just continue to argue in a circle getting nowhere.
For now, I will continue to study this problem. Maybe some day I’ll come to a conclusion, but more than likely this will remain an unknown.
Sam
Just one minor annoyance here, otherwise this is a really good article.
In the article body you state “The wonders of the New Testament, in my opinion, pale in comparison to how evolution works…” but in the comment reply to a number of readers you admit you never read the new testament. Surely, being rational you should suspend judgement on that until you have read it?
I think you should read it, even though you admit that you don’t believe in the God described therein, as you seem to actually think things through.
Thanks for such a thought provoking article – you can probably guess I disagree with it though.
@Sam:
I agree completely with your first point. It is totally irrational to believe that there is only one *correct* religion. See my first comment in this thread.
As for your second point, I *speculate* that there is a non-zero chance that the nature of reality contains dimensions beyond human comprehension. It’s like when I took multi-variable calculus in college. An entire universe unfolded that I hadn’t realized existed when I took high-school level calculus. Or when you learn bridge (multi variable) after playing hearts or spades (single variable). The analogies fall short, however, in that these are examples that we *can* wrap our minds around.
robotii,
True, I haven’t read the New Testament, but I haven’t had a chance to read Origin of the Species, either. A little unfair I’m basing my opinions on smaller snippets of the original works, but I’m not really expecting a surprising ending from either of them.
blogrdoc,
I completely agree with you that there may be more dimensions, universes or properties of reality we can barely imagine. Richard Dawkins himself mentioned in a speech that the universe is not only “queerer than we suppose, but perhaps, queerer than we can suppose.”
Very good Scott, always impressed by someone who thinks out side the box.
I was reading your comments and noticed our way of thinking is very similar. Taking the the good and leaving the bad is something that should be applied to everything in life to bring more positivity. This and many other teachings are the true lessons of life which can guide us to higher truth. I’m not an Atheist but nor am I fanatic follower of any other religion. I was born into a Hindu family so I do fallow religious rituals as if it were my duty and to pay respects to ancestors. Always questioning rules or beliefs that I find unnecessary, I’ve come to discover Hinduism ( in it’s purity) to be the most scientific and free religion. I’m not favoring Hinduism because of my background but as a result of delving upon all religions including, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, and even Sikhism. I’ve read books, and attending scholar lectures taking the good and leaving the bad for further enlightenment.
Many people don’t know but, Buddhism and Sikhism, were born in India and can be thought of as branches of Hinduism. Buddha was a Hindu who found higher truth in essence of meditation, which is the core of Buddhism and isn’t applied enough in Hinduism by modern followers, although it’s been an essential part of the Hindu lifestyle for ages, this and Yoga (meant to pronounced as “Yog”) .
With all that said I still do not consider my self a part of any religion nor do I consider my self an Atheist since I do believe in a higher truth/power. I consider my self, much like everyone else is, on the search for this higher truth just like Buddha was. Much of my research has lead me to the teachings of Hinduism, well in depth it’s lead me to connecting every religion to Vedic teachings. There’s so much more to learn. There’s not enough space in this comment, nor is this the place for me to go on about Vedic teachings and the Vedas (pronounced Vade) but I’m starting to believe they are the backbone to most if not all religions and common knowledge.
Scott you seem like an avid reader if you ever want names of books on these topics, the comment box required my email, but for anyone else it’s piyush.shahenshah@gmail.com
I find it interesting that you feel you diverge so much from Christian teachings. It seems to me that true Christians are the ones who have turned from the dogmatic faith of childhood and really sought out a truer belief that only comes from that seeking. Rob Bell, an outstanding Christian speaker talks about the difference between knowing about something and truly *knowing* something. I think that both you and I really desire this for people, it is not enough just to know about (and claim to believe) anything be it atheism or Christianity or even fatherhood, it seems at least to me that both you and I hope that people come to really *know* (the greek for this true knowledge is epignosis) that which we claim to believe, be it atheism for you, Christianity for me. Of course I also believe (as a psychologist) that both you and I DO seek social acceptance by knowing that other people believe or *know* what we believe, which for you would mean that you do at some level hope that your beliefs are confirmed in people you respect, and for me it means that I hope this journey of seeking leads people to the God I know and love.
The point of all that was actually a kudos to you! Grace and Peace, Bryan
Bryan,
I actually agree with 90-95% of Christian teachings. Don’t tell anyone though–I think some people have the idea I dance around a pentagram naked each night killing babies.
-Scott
[...] make it no secret that I’m an atheist. But, that isn’t because I follow some secret “Atheist’s Handbook” (if there were such a [...]
[...] Exists (As well as the spaghetti monster) – So my previous statement of atheism needs to include the caveat that a 10-D universe would include, however disproportionately [...]
Scott,
I don’t understand how you are open-minded when you have not fully investigated everything…it just seems a man of your thought wouldn’t “subscribe” to somebody as flagrant as Richard Dawkins… He just seems to stereotype more than he actually investigates into scientific research…I guess what I am trying to say is that if a man truly understands wisdom and knowledge he wouldn’t label as so…is labeling not a form of stupidity? Everything is connected so there is not one label for one type of person…Christian or Atheist…I think what we all want is truth..if we can attain the totality of truth then…my mind can’t even comprehend what the totality of truth would be like…I just don’t see how you can label yourself as an atheist, your too open-minded to be labeled as so…to be reduced to a label and then write entire post about it (maybe I misread you)
…keep up the good posts!
Oh yeah, why did you put so many buy “buttons” next to your books haha
Ben,
That’s one of the problems with writing an article. When I use the English language, I’m forced to distill abstract ideas into discrete words, often with varying meanings.
By “atheism” I simply mean that my philosophy doesn’t include a creator. But that’s it. I don’t place further restrictions or accepting what others feel an atheist should believe.
So to answer your question, I don’t label myself. But this article has allowed some people to label me.
-Scott
Oh, and I put “buy” buttons next to my books, so that people will buy them. I can at least be honest about that.
Thanks for the well written response. I’m probably going to buy your study-less book, what you say makes a lot of sense, even though your so young you have a lot of wisdom-this is very encouraging. Keep up the good work.
Thanks Ben!
Dear Scott,
I am a Christian having invited the Lord Jesus Christ into my
heart when my father taught in Sunday School “be sure your
sins will find you out.” The heart talks about the real you or
the eternal person which
I truly believe that once we die we will go some place, either
to be with GOD in heaven or to a place of ETERNAL TORMENT.
Christians are not perfect and sometimes they say, “They are not
religious but that is another argument.”
We can choose many different roads or paths in live.
I choose tonight to read your blog to try to get ideas on how maybe
to share ideas for Bible and life lessons with my adult children
and grandchildren.
You certainly gave some wonderful ideas for me to think about
in your blog.
The choices we make in this life will effect us today. Our choice
of where we will spend eternity with effect us forever.
We are more than simple animals whom we love and adore we are
special beings with an ETERNAL SPIRIT. The choice we make to
find or ignore God will affect us eternally.
Because a dollar bill can be counterfiet we still use currency of
some kind. Some call Christians can be fakes but if you look around
you just find someone who is a genuine believer in the Lord Jesus
Christ.
I am going to get off my soapbox
THANK YOU FOR THE EXCELLENT IDEAS ON HOW TO STUDY.
Blessings, Gerald (Jerry) Landis
ps. I am sorry but my PC service is down right now. May you have
a wonderful day and hopefully choose a wonderful eternity.
Hi Scott,
This is a great website. I found it somehow while searching for information on how personality types affect learning, and I’ve been slowly making my way through your articles. As someone who was raised Catholic by Catholic parents and was educated at both a Catholic elementary school and high school, where they give as much credibility to Bible stories as they give to math and science, I found this article particularly interesting.
No matter how many attempts have been made by others in my life to convince me of the existence of an all powerful God, these ideas have never made sense to me. To think that people in this day and age would choose to accept two thousand year old explanations for things, from a time when people had no idea how large the planet is, let alone the size of the universe, and ignore everything we know from science today about how the universe was created, well, I’m sorry but I find it embarrassing. Deeply religious people (referring here to Western religions) love to point to the sky when asked where God and Heaven is, yet how could they possibly know what’s above them when they live their lives with their heads buried in the sand?
We know from astronomy that there is nothing “above” us that resembles Heaven. We know from geology that while the center of the planet is certainly hot, there is nothing down there that resembles Hell. We know from meteorology that there is no old man with a long beard floating around on any clouds. We know that our planet is not the center of the universe, and therefore by extension, inhabitants of this planet are not the center of the universe. We know that it is simply not possible that Jesus or anyone else could have “ascended” into Heaven. Where could he have gone, since as I said, we know from science today that there is nothing resembling Heaven up there for him to have ascended to? Two thousand years ago, when people knew essentially nothing and were wide open to mystical explanations, it would have made sense. To still accept these stores as facts today, well, good grief. Is it any wonder we haven’t advanced beyond where we are today with this nonsense still holding us back?
Where do we go when we die? For the answer to that, you would need to take a long, hard look at what you really are – a biological organism with an ego that loves to think it’s special, even immortal, and a brain that’s on a constant search for meaning, even when there is no meaning to be found beyond a purely impersonal one. We, and everything we see around us, are nothing more than temporary forms of energy, coming and going like waves on the ocean. Imagine if waves were unable to see that they’re just part of the ocean and you essentially have the dilemma of human beings. Where does a wave go when it collapses back into the ocean, when it “dies”? Nowhere, since it was never really anywhere to begin with, and was never even a wave. The term “wave” is just something that human beings come up with because we see something that looks different and separate from something else, therefore we reason that it must be different and separate and we stick a label on it, and as soon as we’ve placed a label on it, we comfort ourselves with the belief that we now fully understand that which we’ve labeled. We’re an embarrassing lot, I’m sorry to say.
Why are we here? We’re here because this thing we call a planet happened to form 4.5 billion years ago at an acceptable distance from that thing we call a sun to support life on this planet as we’ve come to know it. And even then, it took an asteroid collision that wiped out the planet’s original inhabitants, the dinosaurs, before our species came to dominate this world. And yet through ignorance and the biggest “F word” of them all – FEAR – we’ve managed to come up with fantastical stories to explain our existence. We needed someone looking out for us and explanations for things we didn’t understand so we created God. We needed rules to live by so we created God’s Laws. We needed to be rewarded for obeying the rules and punished for our disobedience so we created Heaven and Hell. And now, thanks to these fictional stories having been passed down through the centuries to eager minds looking for the comfort and security of easy answers, these stories have been accepted as facts.
I can only hope that through the process of natural evolution, the God of today will eventually take his rightful place in history books with the gods of yesterday (and oh, how many there have been). Unfortunately, you’ll never get anywhere by trying to have a logical discussion with a God-fearing member of society about whether or not God exists. To these people, belief in God is their golden ticket to the afterlife, where apparently they’ll get to spend all of eternity sitting around telling God how great he is. They believe that the more their faith is tested in this life, the better off they’ll be when they die, so they love it when you try to convince them that they’ve got it all wrong. No matter how much scientific evidence you offer them that God cannot possibly exist, they’ll smile and say something like “I know God exists because flowers are beautiful.” Well, my dog urinates on flowers, and occasionally eats them, although usually not the same ones he urinated on. And those beautiful sunrises and sunsets that religions love to offer as proof of God’s love? I guess it’s pretty silly to think that they’re caused by the planet rotating on its axis, or that the colors we see are caused by different wave lengths of light passing through the atmosphere. A much more realistic explanation is that some old man in the clouds is showing off his art skills.
Having said all this, many people wonder how it’s possible to live without a belief in God. To them, I can only say that I don’t know how it’s possible to live WITH your idea of God. To believe that a god created me as I am and is then ready and willing to punish me for being what he created unless I atone for being what he created, well, all I can say is, good grief.
Take your heads out of the sand, put away your two thousand year old explanations for things, pick up a science book, and read it. I promise you, nothing bad will happen to you when you die.
Steve,
I agree with you, but I think much of the push towards a God has less to do with fact than the presumed side-effects of belief. I think there are important non-material things to believe in, I just don’t think God is the best delivery mechanism.
-Scott
[...] just found out that blogger Scott H Young is an atheist! (amazing what turns up in the archive section) I’ve found that a lot of self-help and [...]