When I look back at my first encounters with definitions of atheism I am astounded at how difficult it is to get across the basic concept of what atheism is. Theists have managed to muddy the waters to a degree that even actual young atheists are confused by it. Yet it is actually very very simple in principle.
I think one reason why some apologetics distort it's meaning is because only a distorted view of the stance is really something that is hard to defend.
So what is atheism from the point of MOST atheists, including the major thinkers like Hitchens, Dennett, Dawkins and Harris.
It's a lack of belief in god or gods. That really is the broadest brush on the topic.
However there are subsets of atheistic views that can be held by particular atheists and those views can include disbelief in gods, rejection of claims about gods, belief in no gods and even the old and often misapplied belief that no gods exist.
Lets look at how 'atheism' is constructed to fully grasp my point. Theism existed as a stance and from it atheism was coined. Now once it was coined (put in use) it can be applied retrospectively to cover people that lived BEFORE theism, but it is not its OWN label, but a reaction TO theism.
So lets break it down. 'THEOS' means god. That is usually accepted. 'ISM' refers to a belief.
So THEISM means Belief in a god or gods. Nowadays it might be more accurate to stick 'personal' into that to distinguish between theism and deism but that is beside the point for the moment.
Ok, now add the 'A' which is best explained as 'without'. So A-THEISM means 'without' belief in a god or gods.
This does not mean that atheism means belief that NO GOD exists. This is a distortion of how the word was developed as it ignores the history behind why it exists.
Now in practical terms what does all that MEAN? Well from my perspective it means we don't believe the claims made by theists that propose they know a god exists and they have some knowledge about what it wants. You might note that I solely focus on the CLAIMS about god, not the actual question of whether a god actually exists.
A good analogy might be if someone (John for argument sake) disbelieves in alien abductions when he hears his neighbour (Peter) claim he sees them when he is blind drunk walking back from the pub. Does that mean that John knows aliens don't exist or that they cannot have visited earth to do some nasty abductions? No. But the claim by Peter is so poorly supported that you doubt his veracity and credibility and so you put the thought of alien abductions out of your head and live your life as if it was never a consideration. If Peter came back with verifiable proof that he got from the aliens, (see N.D. Tyson's amusing talk on what to do if abducted by aliens) then John would reconsider and re-evaluate whether the NEW evidence is enough to sway him on the matter.
Why is there so many different definitions for atheism if its simply a lack of belief in gods?
Again this is often a simple misunderstanding. Atheism is the lack of belief in theistic claims, but there are many avenues that an atheist can approach that situation.
For instance there is often comments about babies being atheistic, but how can they be atheistic if they had not the ability to reject theistic claims. Well because the definition at its broadest is a LACK of belief and babies certainly qualify for that level of atheism. This is referred to as implicit atheism
Explicit atheism is when someone is aware of theistic arguments and rejects or disbelieves them.
This covers almost every atheists anyone is likely to meet and is generally how most atheists discuss atheism. But to be fair, BOTH stances are atheistic, just the approach is different.
Does any atheist say they know there is no gods?
I hear that a lot from theists, but there is often a rather selective hearing issue involved. It is possible to say "I believe God does not exist" and not mean any possible definition of god, especially vague nonreligious ones. In many cultures an atheist may simply assume you mean the abrahamic God (capital letter intended) and that is what he or she is referring to. Most theists of that presuasion only think about that God anyway so there is justification in answering like that. However some people take that and run with it as if all atheists MUST know somehow 100% that nowhere in the universe and beyond some form of higher intelligence could not exist or they are not atheists. This is of course simply a strawman view and I have never met any atheist that thinks such a view is even rational.
Even the most famous atheist on the planet, Richard Dawkins, repeatedly refutes this flawed view over and over again.
Atheism vs Agnosticism: Is there any link?
Frankly I find this truly amazingly misunderstood by all three 'sides' (those that call themselves atheist, those that call themselves agnostic and those that call themselves theists).
Huxley was the man responsible for coining Agnosticism and it was to cover the question of whether it was possible to know if god (no capital letter) can be verified empirically existing or not. If not, then you remain 'agnostic' or undecided about it.
However this has NOTHING to do with theism or atheism which address claims ABOUT god not whether god actually exists objectively.
Every agnostic still has to either accept or reject any theistic claim on its own merit. Even if you don't explicited reject it if you DON'T accept it you have rejected it in any practical sense.
So its possible to be both agnostic AND atheistic or theistic as they cover two different questions.
Nowadays many theists and atheists accept the following groupings.
gnostic theist = someone who knows that god exists and believes in that god.
agnostic theist = someone who does not know that god exists but believes that he might exist.
agnostic atheist = someone who does not know that god does NOT exist but disbelieves claims that he does.
gnostic atheist = someone who does know that god does NOT exist and disbelieves claims that he does.
Its perfectly acceptable to be a gnostic atheist about SOME gods (Zeus or Horus or Allah or Jesus) while being an agnostic towards poorly defined possible gods. After all it would be irrational to expect someone to have only ONE view on every possible god.
Wednesday 31 July 2013
The Moral Argument and how theists fail with it.
Of all the arguments for theism and attempts to prove a god exists, usually assuming it's their chosen favourite, the Moral Argument is probably the most powerful. I say powerful not convincing for several reasons. But first lets be fair and give a rundown of what that argument entails.
The arguement often put forward entails what is called 'objective' morality existing. This presupposes god existing automatically to justify what the theist is aiming for when he defines objective.
Basically it runs like this:
If objective morality exists, then it exists externally to mankind. Morality requires a mind to formulate and understand what is right and wrong and if it transcends all of man, then it must be a mind external and greater than mankind. This mind can only be God.
Since objective morality exists, then God exists. QED.
Some go further and say that their God is the personification of Morality itself, the source not only in revelation but in essense. God cannot be immoral or he would not be God. Being moral IS part of God's nature.
This is basically how it is commonly argued by apologetics like William Lane Craig or John Lennox.
They then say that atheists cannot have objective morals without God, and if they say they do have such morals they are either lying, inconsistant with atheism, or too ignorant to know what they are talking about. Such apologetics usually claim then that total subjective relativism on moral issues must be how atheists think to truly be atheistic.
They usually throw in a cavaet that they are not saying atheists cannot be moral but that they cannot justify being so if they are atheistic as they have no basis for it.
Often they also throw in social darwinism into the mix and even attempt to bring up Hitler or raping babies too.
Now for my response:
This has a vast amount of problems with it and has been discussed by philosophers for centuries, and like many theistic arguments, never really dies because its so complex while seeming simple and obvious, that most people struggle and handle it badly. I hope to give at least a solid attempt to deconstruct it.
First off, lets look at the icing on the cake comments about raping babies or Hitler and Nazi Germany. These are simply emotional assaults to put their opponent off guard and poison the well for rebuttals. Many atheists stumble a bit in sheer horror and outrage at these comments and certainly in a debate such comments are hard to ignore.
1. Social Darwinism has nothing to do with Atheism or Darwinian Evolution. So its a red herring. We can discuss that in another post.
2. The idea that if the the Nazi's won the war then it would be seen as subjectively ok to exterminate the jews because 'everyone' would see it the way Hitler did is wrong on many levels. One it is a simplistic view of a hypothetical outcome that ignores any factor outside of Hitler and some Nazi members thinking it was ok to murder Jews. Even if that happened the outcome presented is unrealistic and likely false. But even so it cannot be seen as subjectively 'right' because the JEWS would have disagreed. Its similar to the concept that if everyone thought that raping a woman was ok would it be ok to rape a woman. No, because the definition of rape means the woman objects, regardless of how many OTHER people think it was ok.
Its a strawman argument.
Now that we have dismissed the little adhomim attacks and emotional sabotage lets really look at whats left.
1. There is an equivocational fallacy here for the term objective. It is defined to retrofit a preconcieved conclusion and ONLY that narrow definition is allowed in the theist mind.
So what can 'objective' truly mean? Well it can mean any form of morality not dependant on a single individual or group or state of humans' personal whims. It can be hypothecially a course of moral decisions in potentia that leads to the most beneficial outcome.
Well can such concepts exist in an atheist's worldview? Well yes, if defined in such manners and not limited to the narrow and misleading theist definition of objective that requires a mind.
Many scientists do propose a mix of genetic and social contract obligations that transcend the individual or any group, and in some cases even the current species.
These ALL are objective yet not rigid and change as we evolve as a species and as a society, that can superseed personal agendas or political agendas. These impulses and reasoning exist regardless of personal choices so if understood and adhered to, or avoided, can be a form of objective morality.
Sam Harris has some excellent points about the landscape of morality and I think he is onto something.
2. Its a false dichotomy presented. Theists have presupposed that their objective morality already exists and the ONLY alternative to it is total subjective morality where every individual is justified in deciding for themselves what is right and what is wrong and no one has any right to criticise anyone else. This of course is a very black and white view and is meant to force opinion into the theists favour. Who in their right mind would advocate for total relativism. Law and Order would break down. But there are, as discussed in No. 1 point, far more options than what is presented and so this is also a failure. They have to show that NO other option is available than the 2 offered.
They use deeply emotional statements about Hitler to obscure this and provoke an emotional outburst from their viewers and the opponent.
3. Now for the really sneaky part that is often something theists like to railroad over in any debate.
Is their objective morality actually objective if taken seriously and is it even morality at all.
This is often missed as atheists can be so busy defending not supporting total relativism that they forget that the whole argument is a smokescreen or a paper tiger.
So is it truly objective if a God makes the rules for what is right and wrong. Instead is it merely handing responsibility over to something external and not growing up and handling it ourselves? In some ways you could justify doing something similar if advanced aliens arrived on the planet. Is that truly objective or merely subjective to the alien or God and objective to humans. This is simply similar to a dictatorship where all power is given to one individual because he is seen as being better than anyone else for some reason. Certainly the bible shows that faith in God to be 'better' at being moral is questionable at best and suicidal at worst.
Is it even Morality in a secular viewpoint. Theists may use the words, but morality also requires responsibility for our actions and if that is taken out of our hands and given over to a third party, that is merely obeying divine mandate. Good is whatever a god says is good. Again the bible certainly seems to indicate that God considers murder, genocide, infantcide and rape 'good' if it suits his purpose and I have heard apologetics like William Lane Craig defend such actions AS GOOD as long as God commands it.
That should send a shiver down anyone's spine.
Now the extra bit I mentioned in green about Morality being God's nature is meant to counter this criticism of divine mandate. However it is simply an assumption without ANY basis in fact and can be dismissed in the same manner. The Bible clearly shows that God does ask some truly evil and immoral things to be done, so saying he is incapable of commiting an immoral act is playing a shell game with what morality means and involves circular reasoning (morality is what god is so therefore anything he does is moral by definition so immorality is impossible for him, but that means ANYTHING is permissible because it is MORAL because god did it.)
4. This is perhaps the most obvious of all but can be a case of not seeing the forest for the trees.
IF no god exists, or at least not a personal god that reveals itself to mankind then the version of objective morality proposed is nonsense and all the rules given by priests over the centuries from the thousands of religions were not objective but subjective to their own considerations. Indeed this is supported by the very fact that there are thousands of religions and they all have various and often conflicting 'objective' morality. Only the most primal laws have any commonality in many cultures, things like not killing your own tribe or not stealing from your own tribe are commonplace and it does not take much intelligence to see why any society might work those laws out for themselves without needing 'objective' guidence from a third party.
Even looking at the ten commandments there are multiple versions and protestants and catholics disagree on one of them. 4 of them are not even really morals at all but demands for submission and obediance to that god and one of them is not possible to fulfill (covet) and results in everyone failing and requiring forgiveness for an unavoidable thought crime.
5. Even if a god did exist, and objective morality exists and he was the source of it, even granting all that, theists still are no further than deism really. They have to prove that they have an avenue of FINDING these objective morals out from that God. What they have done of course is work backwards and hope that each point is cumulative, but the problem is that EACH point that builds from deism to a particular denomination of christianity has to be rock solid or ALL the points fail.
Only if a path of knowledge from a God is proven can it be known if objective morality truly exists otherwise its just an assumption.
Since all religions fail in their efforts to show that their 'objective' god exists, then there is no reason to consider their version of objective morality as anything more than wishful thinking.
Well those are my thoughts on the Moral Argument as commonly presented. I do not claim that my response deals with EVERY possible version of it, only those that I hear over and over again from well know apologetics.
The arguement often put forward entails what is called 'objective' morality existing. This presupposes god existing automatically to justify what the theist is aiming for when he defines objective.
Basically it runs like this:
If objective morality exists, then it exists externally to mankind. Morality requires a mind to formulate and understand what is right and wrong and if it transcends all of man, then it must be a mind external and greater than mankind. This mind can only be God.
Since objective morality exists, then God exists. QED.
Some go further and say that their God is the personification of Morality itself, the source not only in revelation but in essense. God cannot be immoral or he would not be God. Being moral IS part of God's nature.
This is basically how it is commonly argued by apologetics like William Lane Craig or John Lennox.
They then say that atheists cannot have objective morals without God, and if they say they do have such morals they are either lying, inconsistant with atheism, or too ignorant to know what they are talking about. Such apologetics usually claim then that total subjective relativism on moral issues must be how atheists think to truly be atheistic.
They usually throw in a cavaet that they are not saying atheists cannot be moral but that they cannot justify being so if they are atheistic as they have no basis for it.
Often they also throw in social darwinism into the mix and even attempt to bring up Hitler or raping babies too.
Now for my response:
This has a vast amount of problems with it and has been discussed by philosophers for centuries, and like many theistic arguments, never really dies because its so complex while seeming simple and obvious, that most people struggle and handle it badly. I hope to give at least a solid attempt to deconstruct it.
First off, lets look at the icing on the cake comments about raping babies or Hitler and Nazi Germany. These are simply emotional assaults to put their opponent off guard and poison the well for rebuttals. Many atheists stumble a bit in sheer horror and outrage at these comments and certainly in a debate such comments are hard to ignore.
1. Social Darwinism has nothing to do with Atheism or Darwinian Evolution. So its a red herring. We can discuss that in another post.
2. The idea that if the the Nazi's won the war then it would be seen as subjectively ok to exterminate the jews because 'everyone' would see it the way Hitler did is wrong on many levels. One it is a simplistic view of a hypothetical outcome that ignores any factor outside of Hitler and some Nazi members thinking it was ok to murder Jews. Even if that happened the outcome presented is unrealistic and likely false. But even so it cannot be seen as subjectively 'right' because the JEWS would have disagreed. Its similar to the concept that if everyone thought that raping a woman was ok would it be ok to rape a woman. No, because the definition of rape means the woman objects, regardless of how many OTHER people think it was ok.
Its a strawman argument.
Now that we have dismissed the little adhomim attacks and emotional sabotage lets really look at whats left.
1. There is an equivocational fallacy here for the term objective. It is defined to retrofit a preconcieved conclusion and ONLY that narrow definition is allowed in the theist mind.
So what can 'objective' truly mean? Well it can mean any form of morality not dependant on a single individual or group or state of humans' personal whims. It can be hypothecially a course of moral decisions in potentia that leads to the most beneficial outcome.
Well can such concepts exist in an atheist's worldview? Well yes, if defined in such manners and not limited to the narrow and misleading theist definition of objective that requires a mind.
Many scientists do propose a mix of genetic and social contract obligations that transcend the individual or any group, and in some cases even the current species.
These ALL are objective yet not rigid and change as we evolve as a species and as a society, that can superseed personal agendas or political agendas. These impulses and reasoning exist regardless of personal choices so if understood and adhered to, or avoided, can be a form of objective morality.
Sam Harris has some excellent points about the landscape of morality and I think he is onto something.
2. Its a false dichotomy presented. Theists have presupposed that their objective morality already exists and the ONLY alternative to it is total subjective morality where every individual is justified in deciding for themselves what is right and what is wrong and no one has any right to criticise anyone else. This of course is a very black and white view and is meant to force opinion into the theists favour. Who in their right mind would advocate for total relativism. Law and Order would break down. But there are, as discussed in No. 1 point, far more options than what is presented and so this is also a failure. They have to show that NO other option is available than the 2 offered.
They use deeply emotional statements about Hitler to obscure this and provoke an emotional outburst from their viewers and the opponent.
3. Now for the really sneaky part that is often something theists like to railroad over in any debate.
Is their objective morality actually objective if taken seriously and is it even morality at all.
This is often missed as atheists can be so busy defending not supporting total relativism that they forget that the whole argument is a smokescreen or a paper tiger.
So is it truly objective if a God makes the rules for what is right and wrong. Instead is it merely handing responsibility over to something external and not growing up and handling it ourselves? In some ways you could justify doing something similar if advanced aliens arrived on the planet. Is that truly objective or merely subjective to the alien or God and objective to humans. This is simply similar to a dictatorship where all power is given to one individual because he is seen as being better than anyone else for some reason. Certainly the bible shows that faith in God to be 'better' at being moral is questionable at best and suicidal at worst.
Is it even Morality in a secular viewpoint. Theists may use the words, but morality also requires responsibility for our actions and if that is taken out of our hands and given over to a third party, that is merely obeying divine mandate. Good is whatever a god says is good. Again the bible certainly seems to indicate that God considers murder, genocide, infantcide and rape 'good' if it suits his purpose and I have heard apologetics like William Lane Craig defend such actions AS GOOD as long as God commands it.
That should send a shiver down anyone's spine.
Now the extra bit I mentioned in green about Morality being God's nature is meant to counter this criticism of divine mandate. However it is simply an assumption without ANY basis in fact and can be dismissed in the same manner. The Bible clearly shows that God does ask some truly evil and immoral things to be done, so saying he is incapable of commiting an immoral act is playing a shell game with what morality means and involves circular reasoning (morality is what god is so therefore anything he does is moral by definition so immorality is impossible for him, but that means ANYTHING is permissible because it is MORAL because god did it.)
4. This is perhaps the most obvious of all but can be a case of not seeing the forest for the trees.
IF no god exists, or at least not a personal god that reveals itself to mankind then the version of objective morality proposed is nonsense and all the rules given by priests over the centuries from the thousands of religions were not objective but subjective to their own considerations. Indeed this is supported by the very fact that there are thousands of religions and they all have various and often conflicting 'objective' morality. Only the most primal laws have any commonality in many cultures, things like not killing your own tribe or not stealing from your own tribe are commonplace and it does not take much intelligence to see why any society might work those laws out for themselves without needing 'objective' guidence from a third party.
Even looking at the ten commandments there are multiple versions and protestants and catholics disagree on one of them. 4 of them are not even really morals at all but demands for submission and obediance to that god and one of them is not possible to fulfill (covet) and results in everyone failing and requiring forgiveness for an unavoidable thought crime.
5. Even if a god did exist, and objective morality exists and he was the source of it, even granting all that, theists still are no further than deism really. They have to prove that they have an avenue of FINDING these objective morals out from that God. What they have done of course is work backwards and hope that each point is cumulative, but the problem is that EACH point that builds from deism to a particular denomination of christianity has to be rock solid or ALL the points fail.
Only if a path of knowledge from a God is proven can it be known if objective morality truly exists otherwise its just an assumption.
Since all religions fail in their efforts to show that their 'objective' god exists, then there is no reason to consider their version of objective morality as anything more than wishful thinking.
Well those are my thoughts on the Moral Argument as commonly presented. I do not claim that my response deals with EVERY possible version of it, only those that I hear over and over again from well know apologetics.
Introducing myself
This blog is a kind of diary for my thoughts on issues that interest me, especially in regard to science, philosophy and religion.
My username "amomentofclarity2011" was chosen by myself to represent a sort of secular revelation on my former beliefs about god and religion that occured in January 2011. It was a true 'moment of clarity' as far as I was concerned so that was why I chose it. It was not meant as some form of putdown on anyone else. It simply refers to my experience and a reminder of when it happened.
I lived most of my life in Ireland, a country I do love and I find many Irish people's self-depreciating wit satisfying and familar. However I was raised a christian, and more specifically a catholic. Both my parents are of that faith and while neither were overly pushy towards religion, I was throughly indoctrinated by the culture as were my parents before me. They, like so many, were thought to never question the church and certainly not the doctrine. It was ok to dislike a particular priest but not baby Jesus.
As a child I accepted, with some sceptical questioning, the general theme of religion and did absolutely believe in the abrahamic god. It never dawned on me to EVER question that he existed.
I was given a comic book bible while I was 5 or 6, and had my heroes like Samson and David, and dreamed of what it must have been like waaaay back then in such a foreign land. I of course assumed they spoke modern english and that Jesus was just like in the pictures, a white 30ish man with a nice brown beard and a full head of Richard Branson styled hair.
However there were doubts even then. I did have OTHER books like the Greek myths and I also loved Hercules and was fascinated by the Gorgons and Harpies. I saw how fantastical their stories were and never believed they actually happened. However when I read Genesis I was struck by how similar in outlandishness some of the stories were. They all had characters that had special dealings with the gods or were gods made flesh or had superpowers or fought evil beings.
I began to wonder if perhaps some of the old stories were perhaps not literally true but allegorical (yes I understood that term even as a young child even if I probably never used it).
When I was introduced to science in school, along with history and geology, I certainly found it hard to credit many of the old testament tales, especially Adam and Eve and Noah. These simply could NOT be true if they had any relation to reality at all.
I still believed in miracles and many of the old testament tales, but was more sceptical than before because if this book was inspired by a God, then he seemed to have made the book with a lot of very strange tales that could not be true if taken literally. Why would God need to obscure his messages so?
So I worked on the principle that anything that COULD not be true was not literally meant to be true.
I loved the bible, loved the stories, especially of Moses and Jesus and Joseph. I did not like Abraham because of the attempt to kill his son. I understood it was a test supposedly but such a test was morally wrong regardless of the final result.
I began to feel the bible was not infallible. It was more than just needing interpretation, it needed ignoring completely in parts.
Of course I was innocent as a child and did not grasp many of the consequences of what was said in the stories. I simply assumed it was alright because it was in the bible. Yet even so I objected to Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of salt. I thought that seemed a bit much of a repremand for a fairly mild infraction that harmed noone.
I also objected to the idea that if my friends were not true christian (protestant for instant, remember it's Catholic Ireland), or someone had not heard of Jesus (like the starving ethiopians we saw on TV in the 70's and early 80's), they may go to hell, or at least purgatory. But what horrified me the most was Limbo. I had a vision of a grey mist, endless in all directions and tiny baby heads with tiny wings, much like you see some cherubs being depicted in christian medieval art, foating around with nothing to do, for EVER.
Now of course the church has dumped that completely, but when I was growing up it was as real to us as Heaven or Hell or Purgatory. It was a FACT of our faith. I never accepted that it was a just 'punishment' for being born and dying before baptism. I truly believed it existed, don't misunderstand me, I just did not accept that it was just or fair.
To most of my inquiries my weary and busy parents often resorted to the old "God's ways are not man's ways" or "God has a purpose for everything". But that never answered anything, it just told me that my parents didn't know anything about it either.
I also never understood why Hell needed to exist or what the Devil was supposed to get out of torturing people. The bible clearly showed the Devil to be quite friendly to God, more a sidekick or someone to do something distasteful so God did not have to. Why did he need souls?
Well my mother told me that there was a war in heaven and souls gave power to each side. Whichever side has the most, won. Well that made a kind of sense, although feeling like a powerup to be used in a battle seemed rather dissatisfying. Was that all I was to them? Some kind of currency or food to be used like a commodity. It seemed to cheapen any 'special' purpose for life being created.
It was commonly thought that God was a man in the sky (of sorts) and he watched us and had angels watch us and write down every bad thing we did in a giant book or ledger. Nowadays theologians would call that absurd, at least in public, but that was what we were thought as children.
As I grew older I learned from history and art history the history of the church, the inquisitons, the crusades, the witchburnings, the pograms, the hatred for the jews and the incredible amount of corruption that went on in the Church for over a thousand years. We read about Martin Luther and Protestantism and I had to agree I was on Martin's side for most of his issues.
This certainly helped to separate myself from unquestioning loyalty to the Church. I was still a catholic and a christian and an absolute believer in God and Jesus but I had considered the Church a lost cause.
My 20's saw my gradual drifting away from Catholic faith and more towards a nondenominal faith, especially when I lived in England and came across different denominations. I also encountered other non abrahamic faiths and my view of what God might be changed. I now knew that a God in the clouds was absurd and that he must be much more mysterious and less tangible.
What that actually meant was not something that I had any idea of.
By my 30's I was no longer a Catholic, but I considered myself a christian, but other ideas of god were appealing including Pantheism and Nature personified. Perhaps God was not a 'he' at all, but something much more alien. As I thought through this the bible's stories became less and less relevant and more obviously exaggerated tales. Nothing in history supported Moses and I wondered if anything in the old testament could be trusted.
However I still believed Jesus was at least a wise man, a good man but he was misquoted or mistaken in his alleged claims about being God.
Finally in 2011 I had just completed a government census form and marked myself down as a christian (probably saw myself as a cultural catholic) because it seems that was what I was supposed to do. However as I looked down the list of options I saw 'atheist'. I was baffled. I had heard of many religions including Wicca, but atheism was not something I was familier with. So I looked it up.
At this stage my beliefs had moved to a form of pantheism mixed with deism, a kind of odd unfocused hybrid that I was still trying to make sense of. There HAD to be a god of SOME kind, that was the rule, so all I had to do was find some way to make that god make sense in face of a complete LACK of evidence.
I google 'atheism' and then 'atheists'. I read the descriptions and suddenly had my moment of clarity.
I completely agreed with the definition, I related to it and all the problems trying to justify a god HAVING to exist no matter what, dropped away.
It changed my life. A great weight was metaphorically lifted off my shoulders. Suddenly I knew I could believe that there was a possibility that no gods were responsible and that theists simply made them up. I understood that it was still possible that a form of god still existed but was not interested in revealing itself. But what mattered was that the theists were wrong, not just confusing or contradictory, but flat out wrong. Their gods did not exist, because they had NO way of knowing objectively if they did. It was still a mystery. I later considered that part my agnostic view (that god existing is unknowable).
This started a journey for the last 32+ months of ongoing research as I sought to understand WHY theists believed in gods in the first place. I knew they were not trying to deceive me deliberately, at least not most of them. I also learned a lot more about my former faith, far more on church history, on other faiths and on logic and how to reason. I also studied science and sought answers that had previously been seen as the domain of religion, and found them.
So that is a brief story of my journey, a tiny synopsis of a LOT of thinking and a lot of research.
I can discuss other aspects in more detail in other posts.
My username "amomentofclarity2011" was chosen by myself to represent a sort of secular revelation on my former beliefs about god and religion that occured in January 2011. It was a true 'moment of clarity' as far as I was concerned so that was why I chose it. It was not meant as some form of putdown on anyone else. It simply refers to my experience and a reminder of when it happened.
I lived most of my life in Ireland, a country I do love and I find many Irish people's self-depreciating wit satisfying and familar. However I was raised a christian, and more specifically a catholic. Both my parents are of that faith and while neither were overly pushy towards religion, I was throughly indoctrinated by the culture as were my parents before me. They, like so many, were thought to never question the church and certainly not the doctrine. It was ok to dislike a particular priest but not baby Jesus.
As a child I accepted, with some sceptical questioning, the general theme of religion and did absolutely believe in the abrahamic god. It never dawned on me to EVER question that he existed.
I was given a comic book bible while I was 5 or 6, and had my heroes like Samson and David, and dreamed of what it must have been like waaaay back then in such a foreign land. I of course assumed they spoke modern english and that Jesus was just like in the pictures, a white 30ish man with a nice brown beard and a full head of Richard Branson styled hair.
However there were doubts even then. I did have OTHER books like the Greek myths and I also loved Hercules and was fascinated by the Gorgons and Harpies. I saw how fantastical their stories were and never believed they actually happened. However when I read Genesis I was struck by how similar in outlandishness some of the stories were. They all had characters that had special dealings with the gods or were gods made flesh or had superpowers or fought evil beings.
I began to wonder if perhaps some of the old stories were perhaps not literally true but allegorical (yes I understood that term even as a young child even if I probably never used it).
When I was introduced to science in school, along with history and geology, I certainly found it hard to credit many of the old testament tales, especially Adam and Eve and Noah. These simply could NOT be true if they had any relation to reality at all.
I still believed in miracles and many of the old testament tales, but was more sceptical than before because if this book was inspired by a God, then he seemed to have made the book with a lot of very strange tales that could not be true if taken literally. Why would God need to obscure his messages so?
So I worked on the principle that anything that COULD not be true was not literally meant to be true.
I loved the bible, loved the stories, especially of Moses and Jesus and Joseph. I did not like Abraham because of the attempt to kill his son. I understood it was a test supposedly but such a test was morally wrong regardless of the final result.
I began to feel the bible was not infallible. It was more than just needing interpretation, it needed ignoring completely in parts.
Of course I was innocent as a child and did not grasp many of the consequences of what was said in the stories. I simply assumed it was alright because it was in the bible. Yet even so I objected to Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of salt. I thought that seemed a bit much of a repremand for a fairly mild infraction that harmed noone.
I also objected to the idea that if my friends were not true christian (protestant for instant, remember it's Catholic Ireland), or someone had not heard of Jesus (like the starving ethiopians we saw on TV in the 70's and early 80's), they may go to hell, or at least purgatory. But what horrified me the most was Limbo. I had a vision of a grey mist, endless in all directions and tiny baby heads with tiny wings, much like you see some cherubs being depicted in christian medieval art, foating around with nothing to do, for EVER.
Now of course the church has dumped that completely, but when I was growing up it was as real to us as Heaven or Hell or Purgatory. It was a FACT of our faith. I never accepted that it was a just 'punishment' for being born and dying before baptism. I truly believed it existed, don't misunderstand me, I just did not accept that it was just or fair.
To most of my inquiries my weary and busy parents often resorted to the old "God's ways are not man's ways" or "God has a purpose for everything". But that never answered anything, it just told me that my parents didn't know anything about it either.
I also never understood why Hell needed to exist or what the Devil was supposed to get out of torturing people. The bible clearly showed the Devil to be quite friendly to God, more a sidekick or someone to do something distasteful so God did not have to. Why did he need souls?
Well my mother told me that there was a war in heaven and souls gave power to each side. Whichever side has the most, won. Well that made a kind of sense, although feeling like a powerup to be used in a battle seemed rather dissatisfying. Was that all I was to them? Some kind of currency or food to be used like a commodity. It seemed to cheapen any 'special' purpose for life being created.
It was commonly thought that God was a man in the sky (of sorts) and he watched us and had angels watch us and write down every bad thing we did in a giant book or ledger. Nowadays theologians would call that absurd, at least in public, but that was what we were thought as children.
As I grew older I learned from history and art history the history of the church, the inquisitons, the crusades, the witchburnings, the pograms, the hatred for the jews and the incredible amount of corruption that went on in the Church for over a thousand years. We read about Martin Luther and Protestantism and I had to agree I was on Martin's side for most of his issues.
This certainly helped to separate myself from unquestioning loyalty to the Church. I was still a catholic and a christian and an absolute believer in God and Jesus but I had considered the Church a lost cause.
My 20's saw my gradual drifting away from Catholic faith and more towards a nondenominal faith, especially when I lived in England and came across different denominations. I also encountered other non abrahamic faiths and my view of what God might be changed. I now knew that a God in the clouds was absurd and that he must be much more mysterious and less tangible.
What that actually meant was not something that I had any idea of.
By my 30's I was no longer a Catholic, but I considered myself a christian, but other ideas of god were appealing including Pantheism and Nature personified. Perhaps God was not a 'he' at all, but something much more alien. As I thought through this the bible's stories became less and less relevant and more obviously exaggerated tales. Nothing in history supported Moses and I wondered if anything in the old testament could be trusted.
However I still believed Jesus was at least a wise man, a good man but he was misquoted or mistaken in his alleged claims about being God.
Finally in 2011 I had just completed a government census form and marked myself down as a christian (probably saw myself as a cultural catholic) because it seems that was what I was supposed to do. However as I looked down the list of options I saw 'atheist'. I was baffled. I had heard of many religions including Wicca, but atheism was not something I was familier with. So I looked it up.
At this stage my beliefs had moved to a form of pantheism mixed with deism, a kind of odd unfocused hybrid that I was still trying to make sense of. There HAD to be a god of SOME kind, that was the rule, so all I had to do was find some way to make that god make sense in face of a complete LACK of evidence.
I google 'atheism' and then 'atheists'. I read the descriptions and suddenly had my moment of clarity.
I completely agreed with the definition, I related to it and all the problems trying to justify a god HAVING to exist no matter what, dropped away.
It changed my life. A great weight was metaphorically lifted off my shoulders. Suddenly I knew I could believe that there was a possibility that no gods were responsible and that theists simply made them up. I understood that it was still possible that a form of god still existed but was not interested in revealing itself. But what mattered was that the theists were wrong, not just confusing or contradictory, but flat out wrong. Their gods did not exist, because they had NO way of knowing objectively if they did. It was still a mystery. I later considered that part my agnostic view (that god existing is unknowable).
This started a journey for the last 32+ months of ongoing research as I sought to understand WHY theists believed in gods in the first place. I knew they were not trying to deceive me deliberately, at least not most of them. I also learned a lot more about my former faith, far more on church history, on other faiths and on logic and how to reason. I also studied science and sought answers that had previously been seen as the domain of religion, and found them.
So that is a brief story of my journey, a tiny synopsis of a LOT of thinking and a lot of research.
I can discuss other aspects in more detail in other posts.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)