Do-It-Yourself Philosophy

Comedian Adam Carolla once said “I know everything because I know nothing.” By this he meant that his lack of parental involvement and disinterest in school led to a kind of philosophical blank slate which allows him to assess reality on reality’s terms. He claims the opposite of indoctrination in which every opinion is fully his own, made from scratch. I’m sure this is hyperbole, but I believe that he is more like he describes than the average Joe. In the same way, I came into blogging about atheism with little to no knowledge about theology, philosophy or, well, atheism.

I didn’t think this lack of knowledge was a good thing, mind you. Once I realized secular thought was a real option, my first instinct was to quickly build a knowledge base. I listened to the audio version of God Is Not Great and The God Delusion. Here’s an atheist confession for you: I didn’t like either. I’m probably not supposed to say this, but I’m not a Hitchens fan in general. I’ve since given Dawkins a second and third shot and enjoy his books on biology and evolution immensely. The Selfish Gene may be my favorite science book, but I’m still not interested in his editorializing. I generally desired the data and the consensus interpretation--the science, not opinion. For this reason, I discounted philosophy for a long while, which I saw as a field of speculation.

When I started debating religious apologists I really didn’t know what apologetics meant. I've since found this to be a cliched joke, but I actually thought they were going to tell me how sorry they were about their church’s policies. When they presented  their arguments for God, I never needed to look up how to refute them. The flaws were usually glaring when looking outside of their indoctrinated box. When in doubt, I only needed to turn their own reasoning back on itself which made any defense of my retorts a delegitimization of their original premise. Many of these theists go through “apologetics training” because almost every argument for God is the establishment of a carefully worded and memorized rule, for which their deity is the sole exception. To back up the argument they have what feels like a series of call-tree-like responses to common atheist rebuttals. The responses are seen as valid not because they came to them via their own reasoning, but because the training says they are valid. Understandably, years of Sunday School trumps any one conversation, no matter how clear the points made.

I’ve written about counter-apologetics before, but not because I want to train my readers to debunk arguments for God in a certain way. Most of my posts are the process of me working out my own thoughts. By committing them to the blog, I am forced to analyze my growing philosophy which sometimes results in editing or reinforcing my beliefs. And since apologetics is, for the most part, the aforementioned call-tree of responses, I feel like I can only cover it for so long. I don’t want to repeat myself and I don’t want to preach. If you are new to atheism, to some degree I don’t even want you to read--at least until you hash out all this for yourself.

Any single-topic world-view with as much on-line coverage as atheism is bound to create an echo chamber. It is important to not get lost in it as a consumer of words. My advice is to think for yourself. Decide on your own if the God hypothesis is consistent with your philosophy, morality, and the consensus reality of our world. Then, if you’re so inclined, blog your journey and supplement your knowledge with the material available from everyone point of view. It has helped me immensely and I’m thankful for all the fellow bloggers and commenters I’ve met along the way.

Links Shminks #15

The many possible outcomes of a Pascalian Wager render it useless.

The 10 weirdest right-wing Xian conspiracy theories

Vjack talks about Atheism+ and where it went wrong.

Richard Dawkins had a short interview on The Daily Show, and a longer interview with Jon Stewart on-line.

A great post for those wondering if a religion is harmful.

Rosa Rubicondior's take on the censorship tendencies of religion.

An atheist wonders if his rationalization to eat meat is religious in nature.

An atheist thinking about the kind of theist he could be.

And finally, a cartoon creationist needs representation.

Lingering Questions

“God of the gaps” is a type of theological perspective in which gaps in scientific knowledge are taken to be evidence or proof of God's existence. (from Wikipedia) History has shown us that many gaps can and have been filled as scientific knowledge grows. So much so, in fact, that it is perfectly reasonable to assume that there is a natural explanation for our remaining gaps. Theists tend not to come to this conclusion, for obvious reasons, but I wonder how long this conclusion may be avoided. I wonder how much longer this theological perspective will have any semblance of relevancy.

The best example of a closed gap is Darwin’s shutdown of the argument from design. Of course, I realize there are still fringe individuals and backward denominations that dismiss evolution as a valid explainer of the world’s biological complexity, but if the slow-to-come-around Catholic Church is on board, it’s safe to say that the others are simply in denial. From most of my interactions with honest theists, their main beef with “evolution” is that it is incomplete--meaning that it doesn’t take into account life’s ultimate origin. We should recognize this for what it is: a misunderstanding of the Theory of Evolution’s scope, a moving of the goal post from the argument of design to entirely different argument, and a detour from a closed gap to another open gap.

via the great Jesus and Mo

Darwin closing one of the biggest gaps unintentionally converted many theists across the world. Atheist favorite, Richard Dawkins, wrote that he would still be swayed by life’s apparent design if not for the Theory of Evolution. However, explaining the complexity of life doesn’t explain the existence of life. Our biological origin is still an open gap. Science calls it abiogenesis. We have some ideas how it could have happened, but no reproducible experiments to prove which hypothesis is correct. Like the other gap of note, the ultimate origin of the universe, we are unsure. Whether you’re in the quantum foam, the violation of causality camp, or any of the other camps that could all be possible from what we see at the quantum level, there’s no smoking gun...yet.

My question to theists is this: would settling your lingering questions finally allow you to let go of God? Humanity is crazy smart. I used to think some answers would be forever beyond our grasp, but now that I have a clearer sense of where science is going, I wouldn’t take anything off the table. My advice? Don’t take atheism off the table. It’s already the most reasonable worldview, and it’s getting more reasonable everyday.

Extraordinary Evidence

Recently, I've seem some atheists post this flowchart as an indictment on theists' ability to discuss religion. You need not look far to see where most theists fail in this chart. In fact, it needs not "flow" anywhere. The first statement is: Can you envision anything that will change your mind on this topic?

Religious faith, by definition, makes the answer to this question no. If you have doubt, then you don't have faith. How different are atheists? We hang our worldview on critical thinking and the lack of compelling evidence and leave faith out in the cold. I am very certain that atheism is currently the wisest position. Still, we should ask ourselves what kind of evidence would be needed to change this.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. ~ Marcello Truzzi

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. ~ Carl Sagan

The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness. ~ Pierre-Simon Laplace

In my recent interview series, you may have noticed that I'm consistently asking the question "Is there anything that would convince you that there is a god?" The answers can be paraphrased as "barely." A believer might think that Jesus returning would immediately bring all the infidels into the Christian fold. Not so much. The general consensus is that, atheists would remain skeptical. This new Jesus would be subjected to the scientific questions posed to all supposed evidence. Is he authentic? Are his miracles more than tricks and illusions? Does he provide some wisdom that could only come from God? Some of us go so far to posit he could be the product of other worldly technology. 

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

Nevertheless, I would at least consider a magical Jesus in the real world is authentic, but it wouldn't get me speaking in tongues as fast as some other extremely unlikely scenarios. Below is a chart of events that would make a believer out of me. I used Dawkin's Scale of belief to show what degree of belief I would hold for each event. This is an approximation because each event could be more or less convincing depending on the circumstances. Of course, combining events would also hasten my conversion. For example, a previously dead religious figure performing a large-scale miracle with witnesses might seal the religious deal.

What The Hell Am I?

Do you believe in God? It should be a binary, yes or no answer. It is a very simple, yet very big question and the answer defines you in an important way. How you view the world and live your life is likely contingent on your answer.

But there’s a problem. I don’t know if it’s the shifting political correctness of our culture, or just opposing viewpoints projecting their beliefs onto others, but the question has become muddled. Let me help you answer once and for all, are you an atheist, theist, agnostic...what?

This handy question tree should allow even the most inept call centers to ascertain your position. It’s important to note that “Do you believe in God?” is an opinion question. Whether your answer is yes or no, you need not worry about showing your work. You are essentially guessing. Evidence and arguments built on sound reasoning could provide for an educated guess, but a guess none-the-less. People who have dwelled on the topic of theology all their life and those who have just been introduced to the concept of God have equal rights to their opinion. However, if you have no opinion at all, you are an apatheist. This means you don’t care about one of the biggest questions humanity has ever posed and likely live your life as an atheist by default.

From your yes or no response, we come to a question of knowledge. Are you sure that God does or does not exist? Are you 100% positive? This is a hard position to defend no matter which side of the issue you’re on. Generally, theists claim gnostism because their belief system requires absolute faith for the eventual reward. It is my opinion that if you claim certain knowledge, you are mistaken. We are all agnostic, even if we are right, because the question of God as he is typically defined, is unknowable.

Famous agnostic atheist, Richard Dawkins, has his own scale of belief. 1 is a gnostic theist. 2 and 3 are different levels of agnostic theism. 5 and 6 are both agnostic atheists. 7 is the gnostic atheist. The new bit is number 4, the pure agnostic. This is someone who thinks it is just as likely that a higher power exists as not. I’m not sure how you come to such an exact conclusion, but I accept that some might be able to nail down their own belief better than I.

The final way to look at belief is a sliding scale of probability. There are few black and whites in the universe, so the possibility of a creator should allow for shades of grey as well. If you think that it is more than 50% likely that God is up there, you are a theist. Less? You’re an atheist. Exactly halfsies on the issue? That makes you the elusive pure agnostic. Measuring your belief isn’t an exact science, so we are guesstimating here.

Note: Each of these questions and scales may be applied to a vague concept of god or specific definitions of the deity such as Yahweh, Vishnu, Zeus...whoever. For instance, I’m 85% sure that there is no intelligent creator of the universe, but 99.9% sure that Zeus is imaginary. (I just can’t commit to that last 0.1%) While I don’t think one can be gnostic of the concept of god, you can be gnostic of specific Gods if you can prove or disprove their existence.

Some choose to not answer the question of belief for the vague concept of god. If this choice isn’t made out of apathy, they are likely ignostic--thinking a clearer definition is necessary to confess belief.