Ask an atheist

[ciphergoth]

In a discussion about religion in wildeabandon's journal, meihua writes: "this seems to have turned into me interrogating you. [...] Is there anything you'd like to challenge me on, instead?"

I think it's only fair enough to open up my own beliefs to the challenges of others, since I'm always keen to respond when theists invite me to give my perspective on some aspect of their beliefs as wildeabandon has in a series of recent posts. So, is there anything you'd like me to respond to?

Rules:

• You don't have to read this thread. This post is an invitation, not a challenge; if you don't like to read me talking about this then feel free to skip this.
• Be honest. Please don't advance arguments you don't personally buy, unless you're also an atheist and you want to discuss how best to counter it.
• If you come to change your mind about the validity of an argument, think about how you can generalise the lesson learned so as not to misassess similar arguments in future.
• Don't just match the politeness of what you reply to, but try to exceed it - see Postel's Law. Otherwise it is very easy to end up with a thread where each contributor thinks they are merely matching the snark level of the other, and yet the thread starts with the very slightest suggestion of rudeness and finishes with "please choke on a bucket of cocks".

Comments

[duranorak.livejournal.com]

Without having seen this post, I was thinking about all this yet again earlier today.

I haven't read anyone else's comments here yet, I usually get caught up in what other people are saying and then don't say anything myself because I feel like everything I might say is far too simplistic. I still feel like that, because it is simplistic, but, oh well. I still have a question or two that I hope you don't feel are beneath you. :)

Dear Mr atheist,

The only thing I would ever try to assert as 'truth' about my gods is that they were once worshipped by a relatively significant number of people, and that I experience things I believe are me having an interaction of some kind with them. (NB, I would assert that I have the experiences, and that I believe etc etc, not that those experiences are me having said interaction.)

I would not attempt to tell you that they had a hand in the creating of anything, or that they have the power to affect the earth or people on it in general in any way, nor that they ever have had. I would not attempt to tell you that any stories about them are accounts of actual events, or that they are any kind of allegory - just stories. Also, the experiences I have, that I believe are connected to these gods, have not at any time involved requiring any specific action of me, and therefore I would say there is nothing remotely Bible-comparable in what I do. While I discuss the concepts with people, I have never done nor do I have any intention of ever doing anything connected with my gods or 'religious beliefs' with or in front of anyone else.

Given the above, how would you respond to what I believe compared with, say, a practising Christian or Jew? Are there differences in how you would want to go about arguing with me? Am I less of an enemy of reason than someone who follows rules because they believe those rules were put there by god/a god, or is it the same with me as with anyone else, and why? Would you class me as 'religious'?

These and other things, but if I don't post this now I will delete it in fear of being laughed at, so~ You don't have to answer, I was just wondering this earlier.

E.
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[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I think you're asking "given all this, why would I want to convert you?"
If so, then see in part my reply to friend_of_tofu below, though that's not all there is to it. Let me know if that's what you're getting at and I can compose a longer answer.

[duranorak.livejournal.com]

No, I'm not, I'm asking (given I've now read what you've said below) 'does what I believe make your brain itch in precisely the same way as, say, what a practising Christian believes?', I think - I want to know what differences you see that are relevant to you and your arguments, if that makes sense?

I already knew why you'd want to convert me. :) I keep telling people that's what it is, with you, and it's something I completely understand.

E.
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[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Not in precisely the same way, no :-) actually it's like a zillion different itches. There's a different itch for all-religions-are-alike than there is for jesus-died-for-our-sins. Actually, there appears to be an entire lobe of my brain devoted to different how-do-they-think-it itches.

I don't think you want me to start trying to convert you here, so I'm steering clear of any aspects of your question that veer into "if you were going to try and convert me, given this set of beliefs, where would you start?"

[duranorak.livejournal.com]

I genuinely don't mind if you'd like to try (and I am curious, which is probably why there were questions that veered in that direction), but everything I believe is so pointlessly nebulous that I don't know how you'd manage it, especially as I've gone from having the same argh-why-do-these-people-believe-this-stuff brain itch you have to what I believe now...

E.
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[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Well, OK, why do you believe it?

[duranorak.livejournal.com]

Because I tried not believing it for years - many years. I rationalised away all the experiences I had or, in some cases, just made the executive decision to ignore them, because accepting them would make me a crazy person! so I thought, because at the time I thought all religion was a form of insanity; I hadn't really thought any of it through, it was just a gut feeling that religious people were just wrong, and that wrongness bothered me enough that I never wanted to end up like that, be one of Those People.

Then I had a long conversation with a dear friend who showed up some huge problems with the way I thought about religion as a whole - which was fair, as I'd never in my life actually sat down and thought about it for any length of time. So I decided to make much more of an effort to think about it all, even if it made me deeply uncomfortable to do so. And I realised one of the reasons it made me so uncomfortable was that I'd made such a huge effort to suppress and explain away my own experiences without ever having concrete reasoning for doing so. So! I thought, well, what if I look back at the things I buried under the carpet or talked myself out of believing, and what if, for a while, I stop trying to ignore or dismiss it, and see what happens?

And what happened was that very little about my life changed, except that I felt a lot more comfortable than I ever had while I was deliberately denying any of the experiences. I don't think I can explain to you in what way I felt more comfortable, because presumably it's something you either a) experience all the time, so wouldn't be able to picture the difference between not having it and having it, or b) never experienced. I can tell you that it's not about: a sense of community; a comfort derived from ritual; an ability to pin events on some higher force rather than the less romantic science or random chance; having rules to follow and make one's life more ordered; finding a way to justify my own actions or declare unjust the actions of someone else. (That's all the common reasons usually given for 'why people like being religious' I can think of off the top of my head right this minute.)

I'm sorry about what this must be doing to your brain. (I really am.) I don't often talk about all this with people, because I don't really care enough about whether I'm right to believe or not to get into discussions about it, but I hope it doesn't make you lose all respect for me. Just some. :)

E.
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[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

OK... do you think it's true?

[duranorak.livejournal.com]

I don't know, and it doesn't matter to me one way or the other?

That's a bit of a cop-out as an answer, but I'm not sure how to answer otherwise. Well. Yes, I think it's true that I have experiences of gods; no, I don't think this means anyone else on earth necessarily also does (I could just be very, very special!) or should, so I couldn't say that I think it's objectively true - I've no idea. It really could just be me.

If it is just me, then the odds of me being insane rather than right go through the roof. But I don't think it's just me. I know people who either have visions or are insane, and I have no idea how you could go about proving one over the other. (Old argument, though, I know - but it always seems as though ideally you would like nice, intelligent people to suddenly realise the error of their ways and embrace sweet lady logic, and it is very hard for them to do this without you giving them a reason if they are having, say, visions of the apocalypse. How do you disprove something like that? You can represent it as more likely that they're crazy than right, but only through indicating people in the past who were similarly 'crazy' and thought they were right, and that you'd only believe because it makes more sense to you that way round; because that's the way round that doesn't make your brain itch. But it does mine :)

Sorry, you probably just wanted me to go 'yes'. So, 'yes'. More or less.

E.
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[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Actually, no, I'm glad you haven't just said "yes"; from what you say it wouldn't be a fair representation of what you really feel, and your reply is pretty much what I expected and what I wanted to respond to.

I have more to say in reply to what you say, but I just want to dash off a couple of points while I wait for my latest test to finish. First, I don't think that all believers are insane. I think the beliefs themselves have features in common with insanity, but you manifestly don't have to be insane to believe them. You manifestly don't have to be insane, by any useful definition, to have religious visions. I think a lot of people slip on this; they think "well, either these visions are really of God, or I'm totally crazy", and I honestly think it's possible to have very vivid experiences which seem can only be the presence of God while not being crazy in any other way.

The question you have to ask yourself is whether the experience is "internally generated". Are you tuning into the Great Ringing, or is it tinnitus? The fact that it feels external, and so overwhelming that it can't possibly come from inside you, isn't really good evidence by itself.

I can't find a good article that explains this yet, but here's a short (1:30) YouTube video of Daniel Dennett explaining the distinction between belief and "belief in belief". From what you say, it seems less like you believe in God/gods and more like you believe in belief itself.

[duranorak.livejournal.com]

I am so confused as to why you think that Daniel Dennett clip is - well, no, I can see why you think it's relevant, just not how you can think I believe in belief rather than believing in gods. You've completely lost me there. :) I hear what he's saying - it makes a great deal of sense - but I don't think it applies to me; I don't recognise myself in the points he makes at all. I don't "believe that belief in god is a really good thing" (it doesn't make a difference to me whether anyone else believes or doesn't believe) or think it's "something to strive for" (that's really nonsensical; either it's there or it isn't. If you have to struggle to achieve belief then it was never there in the first place, what).

Surely going by what he's saying, if I believed in belief rather than in god/gods, I would be part of a group of some kind, or in some way encouraging others to believe because I felt it was 'the right thing to do' or something; exhibiting just the kind of behaviour I never understood in the 'religious' people I knew growing up, who viewed going to church and being part of parish events were/are a crucial part of the community. I am, uh, not like that.

Have I missed his point somewhere, or yours? What he was saying seemed pretty straightforward and very wide of the mark for me, I repeat, so confused. :)

I honestly think it's possible to have very vivid experiences which seem can only be the presence of God while not being crazy in any other way

Why does having visions of god/gods get its own special box outside any other form of crazy, for you, then?

E.
x

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I'll leave the Dennett thing then and pursue that line of thought another way.

Re your last question, it is purely for practical reasons. When people who think that the CIA is planting transponders in their teeth, it generally causes tremendous distress and huge changes to their actions in ways that can make it hard for them to function. It's a strong indicator of a problem that could kill them and needs to be urgently addressed. As a matter of actual practice, belief in God often doesn't have these consequences, and in that way it's not like severe mental illness.

Or to take it another way, someone who has the CIA delusion is likely to be mad in a variety of other ways; they would have to be to buy the CIA thing, because it doesn't have much social support. Whereas buying into something with a great deal of social support is manifestly a much weaker indicator of poor mental health if indeed there's any correlation at all; a variety of confounding factors could even mean that the correlation goes the other way.

Any definition of insane that leads you to conclude that Desmond Tutu is insane has serious problems, even though I believe that there's one specific point on which he believes something mad. It's not because of some inherent difference between the beliefs; it's just a matter of observable practical consequences.

[duranorak.livejournal.com]

The social support thing makes sense when applied to world religions with a number of followers, but less to what I'm doing over here, I think - I would have (did, originally) arrive(d) at my beliefs without any outside social influence whatsoever, although it's possible that ends up in the same place since, while I had no friends/internet to convince me into my beliefs, I also had no friends/internet to convince me out of them either. Hmm.

Also, what we were talking about was my given example of having visions, which might well lead to changes in someone's actions that might make it hard for them to function in normal society. Observable practical consequences of this can be found pushing shopping trolleys around old warehouses talking about Elijah's fire (or dropping to their knees in the middle of the British Museum). :) I mean, it's a more extreme example than what most people mean when they say 'I believe in god/gods', but then we're back to belief in belief versus belief in god, and what Dennett said about how if people really believed in god they might do all kinds of crazy things.

Not that I don't think it's possible to genuinely believe in god/gods in a quiet way that does not lead you to drop to your knees in public places for no observable reason - 'overwhelming' can come in a number of forms - but since you mentioned CIA paranoia, religious visions and such seemed to be the best comparison.

Also, seriously, because I just don't know and I want to know - do I sound like an idiot? These are arguments that people much, much smarter than I am have gone over a hundred thousand times; as such, I don't know why I'm doing this, and part of me would rather stop than have you conclude I'm actually quite stupid.

E.
x

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

No, there's no danger I'm going to think you sound like an idiot. As I've said many times, it's abundantly clear to me that no amount of intelligence is sufficient to ward off religion.