I have posted here about my atheism before. It's a topic I tend to think about a lot at this time of year when various religions celebrate their solstice-based holidays. I am fully comfortable with my own atheism, but not everyone else always is. What can be puzzling to some are my reasons for celebrating Christmas wholeheartedly while dismissing Christmas.
My answer is simple: Christmas is not a Christian holiday. It is just a renamed pagan festival.
Before I go any further, I will give my usual disclaimers when it comes to religion. I am not some sort of atheist proselytizer. I have a very live-and-let-live approach to personal beliefs. I believe what I believe, and you can believe whatever you like, as long as you do me the same courtesy in return. But I will explain my own beliefs and conclusions about the nature of reality and how I came to them.
Christmas comes on December 25 each year. This date has nothing to do with the birth of Christ. It is not Jesus's birthday. The early church made an active attempt to replace pre-Christian holidays with Christian ones by overlaying a Christian meaning on a pre-existing festival. That's how we ended up with holiday traditions that are decidedly not related to Christianity - Christmas trees at Christmas, for instance, or the Easter Bunny (or even the name "Easter" which comes from the name of a pre-Christian goddess).
In my family growing up, which was nominally Catholic but quite lax about it, we never really talked about Christ on Christmas. It was all about decorations and food and presents (especially presents). It was always a fun day for me and I have many great memories of Christmas. My own kids enjoy it as much as I did, though I have never made any attempt to associate the day with Christianity. It is simply a fun day to get gifts from Santa.
Ah yes, Santa. Let me step aside to address that for a moment. Do you sense a sort of hypocrisy in my telling my kids there's a Santa Claus while not telling them there is a God? Why does Santa seem so much more benign to me? It's a fair question, but one that is not difficult to answer (at least to my own satisfaction).
Santa Claus is not a belief system. There is no set of dogma associated with him, and his existence or non-existence affects little about one's understanding of the nature of reality. He is not some end-all-be-all source of wisdom. He's just a guy who gives gifts. I don't mind allowing my kids to believe in myths. I enjoy cultivating their imaginations, and it is fun for them. But I do not feel comfortable telling them that there is some sort of God who is the explanation behind everything everywhere. I feel like that stunts their inquisitiveness. The explanation "because God made it that way" cuts off further digging, and I want them to dig further. I want them to seek knowledge and not stop at the first potential answer they get.
Anyway, back on the topic of Christmas, it is a holiday for me that is more of a cultural tradition than a religious one. I roll my eyes when I hear people talk about "the real meaning of Christmas". The real meaning of Christmas is, in our modern world, increased revenue for retail outlets. Whatever meaning the Catholics and their offshoots have grafted onto the holiday, that is not the "real meaning". It's just an imposed one.
I suppose any meaning is an imposed one, really. That's what we do - we impose meanings on days and objects and events that help us divide and differentiate the continuum of our lives so we can try to make sense of it all.
...wherein one man's delusions of profundity are communicated to the world.
Showing posts with label atheism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label atheism. Show all posts
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
An Inconsistent Truth
I was asked in conversation not long ago what bothers me most about religious thinking. First, I have to say that I am not truly bothered by religious thinking. I believe it to be a part of the human experience in many ways. While it is not a part of my own experience as I live my life, it does not bother me that others have it in theirs. But I am bothered by some versions or aspects of it.
First and foremost, I am bothered by the use of religion as science. Religion should not be used, in my opinion, to make factual statements about the world or universe. Religion involves the acceptance of certain things as fact without regard for evidence. This is what is called faith. We all have faith in things, whether religious or not. We wouldn't get very far without faith. However, it is important to recognize that faith in something is not sufficient to regard that thing as some kind of universal truth.
For that reason, I am bothered by, for example, faith healers, who believe that praying for someone's recovery from a physical ailment will bring it about without the intercession of medicine. There is no evidence for this, but there is evidence for medicine. Foregoing medicine for faith healing is erroneous and wrong-headed. I have no problem with someone praying in addition to medicine, but you cannot replace medicine with faith.
Another thing that truly bothers me is when people use religious reasoning in public policy debates. Saying that homosexuality is a sin in God's eyes is not sufficient reason for denying gays the right to marry. You have to be able to demonstrate what harm would be caused to others by allowing gays to marry.
I recently read an article in the New York Times that gave a good, detailed explanation of the reasoning of evangelicals in regards to the governance of the United States, and it just killed me. The idea that there are enough people in the country willing to vote for someone because he or she will help usher in the glorious end of the world is a little funny but very scary. It is the same sort of thinking that grips those in the Arab world who believe they will attain glory by blowing people (including themselves) up.
The very worst aspect of religious thinking, though, is that it can be co-opted by anyone with sufficient charisma and steered towards destructive ends. The fact that it requires no evidence, only faith, means that nothing more is needed than the words of a person who claims to know the Truth. The most egregious example of this sort of thing would have to be the Catholic Church. Millions of people across the world believe that a single man is the primary conduit for God's word. He lives in splendor and riches provided to him by the (often very poor) faithful, preaching about a need to help the poor and about the virtue of poverty. The friction between the stated belief of Christianity and the gaudy glamour of Catholic churches and cathedrals and such doesn't stop this from happening. For many Catholics, the thought process is something like, "Sure, these things seem to be at odds, but the Pope is the word of God on Earth, so the flaw must be in my understanding." This is the "mysterious ways" defense of religion that can be used to gloss over any set of inconsistencies.
Obviously there are plenty of other examples of this. Cults of personality are not confined to religious institutions either. Hitler's rise had little to do with religion, for instance, though the Nazis had the same sort of religious thinking - belief in a concept regardless of evidence.
People can be made to feel that just about anything is true. That is the very reason that science exists. It is a confession that we are flawed in this way and need some external means for estimating the truth of things. I say "estimating" because a core aspect of science is that even its most seemingly sacred tenets can be challenged using the same methods that brought them to their exaulted status. Recently, scientists observed a particle traveling at speeds that seemed to refute one of Einstein's core theories upon which much of the physics of the past hundred years has been based. That sort of thing just doesn't happen in religious circles. Science admits that we can never be completely certain about anything, but we can develop better estimations of the truth by manipulating the world around us and seeing what happens.
And this is something that rings very true to me. I don't believe it regardless of evidence. I believe it because of evidence. Thousands of years of praying to God for a cure never had nearly the effect of the development penicillin.
Maybe there is a God up there somewhere. Maybe he's playing with us like dolls, or we're in some kind of video game like The Sims, in which we are just pawns at the mercy of some occasionally sadistic player. He certainly can't be the omniscient, omnipotent, ominbenevolent, omnipresent being I grew up being told about, as such a being would not have created this cruel and unfair universe (though I'm sure I'd be told that I see it as an inconsistency only because the human mind lacks the ability to see God's glorious grand plan for the wonderful thing that it is). I don't see any good reason to lob prayers at him, but others can go do that if they want. It doesn't seem to hurt.
I guess you could call me an apatheist - I don't really care if there is a God or not. It's not an interesting question to me because it's completely unknowable, untestable, and without impact upon anything in my life. If he wants me to shower him with praise, well, he's never told me so. As far as I can see, those orders came from people, and they didn't have much backing them up. If he wants me to behave a certain way, he hasn't told me or given me any good motivators to do so. There are various groups of people all over the world who are absolutely certain that they know what God wants, spouting off a variety of wildly inconsistent truths.
So I just live my life as if there is no God, and I think I'm happier for that.
First and foremost, I am bothered by the use of religion as science. Religion should not be used, in my opinion, to make factual statements about the world or universe. Religion involves the acceptance of certain things as fact without regard for evidence. This is what is called faith. We all have faith in things, whether religious or not. We wouldn't get very far without faith. However, it is important to recognize that faith in something is not sufficient to regard that thing as some kind of universal truth.
For that reason, I am bothered by, for example, faith healers, who believe that praying for someone's recovery from a physical ailment will bring it about without the intercession of medicine. There is no evidence for this, but there is evidence for medicine. Foregoing medicine for faith healing is erroneous and wrong-headed. I have no problem with someone praying in addition to medicine, but you cannot replace medicine with faith.
Another thing that truly bothers me is when people use religious reasoning in public policy debates. Saying that homosexuality is a sin in God's eyes is not sufficient reason for denying gays the right to marry. You have to be able to demonstrate what harm would be caused to others by allowing gays to marry.
I recently read an article in the New York Times that gave a good, detailed explanation of the reasoning of evangelicals in regards to the governance of the United States, and it just killed me. The idea that there are enough people in the country willing to vote for someone because he or she will help usher in the glorious end of the world is a little funny but very scary. It is the same sort of thinking that grips those in the Arab world who believe they will attain glory by blowing people (including themselves) up.
The very worst aspect of religious thinking, though, is that it can be co-opted by anyone with sufficient charisma and steered towards destructive ends. The fact that it requires no evidence, only faith, means that nothing more is needed than the words of a person who claims to know the Truth. The most egregious example of this sort of thing would have to be the Catholic Church. Millions of people across the world believe that a single man is the primary conduit for God's word. He lives in splendor and riches provided to him by the (often very poor) faithful, preaching about a need to help the poor and about the virtue of poverty. The friction between the stated belief of Christianity and the gaudy glamour of Catholic churches and cathedrals and such doesn't stop this from happening. For many Catholics, the thought process is something like, "Sure, these things seem to be at odds, but the Pope is the word of God on Earth, so the flaw must be in my understanding." This is the "mysterious ways" defense of religion that can be used to gloss over any set of inconsistencies.
Obviously there are plenty of other examples of this. Cults of personality are not confined to religious institutions either. Hitler's rise had little to do with religion, for instance, though the Nazis had the same sort of religious thinking - belief in a concept regardless of evidence.
People can be made to feel that just about anything is true. That is the very reason that science exists. It is a confession that we are flawed in this way and need some external means for estimating the truth of things. I say "estimating" because a core aspect of science is that even its most seemingly sacred tenets can be challenged using the same methods that brought them to their exaulted status. Recently, scientists observed a particle traveling at speeds that seemed to refute one of Einstein's core theories upon which much of the physics of the past hundred years has been based. That sort of thing just doesn't happen in religious circles. Science admits that we can never be completely certain about anything, but we can develop better estimations of the truth by manipulating the world around us and seeing what happens.
And this is something that rings very true to me. I don't believe it regardless of evidence. I believe it because of evidence. Thousands of years of praying to God for a cure never had nearly the effect of the development penicillin.
Maybe there is a God up there somewhere. Maybe he's playing with us like dolls, or we're in some kind of video game like The Sims, in which we are just pawns at the mercy of some occasionally sadistic player. He certainly can't be the omniscient, omnipotent, ominbenevolent, omnipresent being I grew up being told about, as such a being would not have created this cruel and unfair universe (though I'm sure I'd be told that I see it as an inconsistency only because the human mind lacks the ability to see God's glorious grand plan for the wonderful thing that it is). I don't see any good reason to lob prayers at him, but others can go do that if they want. It doesn't seem to hurt.
I guess you could call me an apatheist - I don't really care if there is a God or not. It's not an interesting question to me because it's completely unknowable, untestable, and without impact upon anything in my life. If he wants me to shower him with praise, well, he's never told me so. As far as I can see, those orders came from people, and they didn't have much backing them up. If he wants me to behave a certain way, he hasn't told me or given me any good motivators to do so. There are various groups of people all over the world who are absolutely certain that they know what God wants, spouting off a variety of wildly inconsistent truths.
So I just live my life as if there is no God, and I think I'm happier for that.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Godless Morality
I am somewhat bored of the question of whether there is a God or not. It's something that concerned me when I was younger and growing up Catholic, but nowadays I find it to be an irrelevant question. Whether there is a God or not does not mean anything to me.
I once had someone put the argument to me that without God, there is no source of morality, which leads to chaos and lawlessness. To me this is entirely backwards. For one, the laws of man and the punishments for breaking them are enough to keep most of us in line without some sort of otherworldly intervention. For another, the choice of whether to commit any act has nothing to do with God and everything to do with individual choice and perception.
Let's say a particular man is a deeply devout Christian. One day an angel appears to this man and tells him to kill his family (this is similar to what God supposedly did with Abraham, so, while unusual, this is not something entirely out of character for the Christian God). The man must now weigh his choices and decide which is more moral - following God's will or keeping his family safe. His action at that point dictates morality, not God. The fact that he can come to the conclusion that only an evil god would make such a request shows that morality cannot lie with God. It is, rather, something that exists within the individual.
I generally try to be as good as I can to people, and I think most people who know me think I'm a nice guy. Why am I nice, when sometimes it's not necessarily to my advantage, if there is no threat of punishment or promise of reward? Because there are punishments and rewards; they just aren't handed down by any God. If I'm cruel to someone, that makes me feel terrible. I can't help it. This is part of how I am. When I am nice to someone, it makes me feel good. Sometimes being nice is inconvenient, but I will do it anyway because I want to feel like I am a nice person. And why do I want that? Because it feels good (ascribe this to the various chemical reactions in the body if you wish). This is the same line of thinking people use to argue that true altruism does not exist, since everything we do is to reap some reward or avoid some punishment (my views on that are not quite so straightforward, but that's for another post).
A religious person makes a personal choice to follow a particular religion. In most cases, this is simply following in the footsteps of his or her parents or social circle. But it is a choice, and it is a moral choice. Any religion can be followed or not followed. Any rule can be obeyed or broken. We ultimately judge the moral systems presented to us against our own inner morality and find them worthy or unworthy. That in itself is a moral judgment that trumps any god's moral code.
I once had someone put the argument to me that without God, there is no source of morality, which leads to chaos and lawlessness. To me this is entirely backwards. For one, the laws of man and the punishments for breaking them are enough to keep most of us in line without some sort of otherworldly intervention. For another, the choice of whether to commit any act has nothing to do with God and everything to do with individual choice and perception.
Let's say a particular man is a deeply devout Christian. One day an angel appears to this man and tells him to kill his family (this is similar to what God supposedly did with Abraham, so, while unusual, this is not something entirely out of character for the Christian God). The man must now weigh his choices and decide which is more moral - following God's will or keeping his family safe. His action at that point dictates morality, not God. The fact that he can come to the conclusion that only an evil god would make such a request shows that morality cannot lie with God. It is, rather, something that exists within the individual.
I generally try to be as good as I can to people, and I think most people who know me think I'm a nice guy. Why am I nice, when sometimes it's not necessarily to my advantage, if there is no threat of punishment or promise of reward? Because there are punishments and rewards; they just aren't handed down by any God. If I'm cruel to someone, that makes me feel terrible. I can't help it. This is part of how I am. When I am nice to someone, it makes me feel good. Sometimes being nice is inconvenient, but I will do it anyway because I want to feel like I am a nice person. And why do I want that? Because it feels good (ascribe this to the various chemical reactions in the body if you wish). This is the same line of thinking people use to argue that true altruism does not exist, since everything we do is to reap some reward or avoid some punishment (my views on that are not quite so straightforward, but that's for another post).
A religious person makes a personal choice to follow a particular religion. In most cases, this is simply following in the footsteps of his or her parents or social circle. But it is a choice, and it is a moral choice. Any religion can be followed or not followed. Any rule can be obeyed or broken. We ultimately judge the moral systems presented to us against our own inner morality and find them worthy or unworthy. That in itself is a moral judgment that trumps any god's moral code.
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