Posted on by markusoreallyus · 1 Comment

Ungodly

Many people find it hard to accept that anyone is really an atheist. When the going gets tough, they think, the tough get praying. There are no atheists in foxholes. I suppose that last part may be true. Most of the atheists I know would rather find an alternative to fighting, if at all possible, while many religions have made a fetish of dying for your beliefs. And, statistically, atheism is fairly unusual, so it’s likely that not many atheists find themselves in a foxhole, especially outside the context of a World War, like the two that consumed the first half of the 20th Century.

Still, people look at you funny if you say you don’t believe in a god. Not that I say it all that often, and not generally unprompted. Atheism isn’t something I advertise. I don’t feel any need to proselytize in the name of… well, of no one, of nothing. I don’t really want to convert anyone to doubt.

But believers often want to convert me to faith, or to convince me that I really do believe in something, and that that something is really juts another name for a god. And not just any god, but their God. After all, as Ricky Gervais likes to point out, there are thousands of gods, and most religious people only believe in one of them, and disbelieve in the rest; I just happen to disbelieve in one more than they do. Or don’t. Whatever.

Frequently the something they try to convince me I believe in is science. This seems funny to me, and shows they don’t really understand what science is. What science isn’t is a system of beliefs. What science is is a method of proving (or, more often, of disproving) hypotheses about the world. It is a useful method for developing our understanding of natural or physical phenomena, and has led to a great many technological advances (although technology, contrary to popular belief, is not the same thing as science).

There are, of course, things I believe for which I have insufficient or no proof at all, although I tend to view these beliefs as hypotheses. I don’t, however, believe these things religiously. If someone were to provide proof that I’m wrong about them, I don’t think I would have much trouble changing my mind. I’m not speaking, here, only about scientific proofs/disproofs. This could be (and often is) more a matter of philosophical persuasion. That was the case when I stopped believing in gods.

I was brought up in a religious family, as an Anglican (the Canadian version of Church of England, Episcopalian, etc). All my early life, I was trying to find ways to think about god that made sense to my young mind. When I was very young, for example, before I started school, I imagined that the bright light at the centre of a light bulb was god. Even then, I wanted some evidence that the being in the Sunday school stories was more than just an idea. Much later, it was the problem of evil that ended my faith for good. The question if god is all powerful, all knowing, all good, and the creator of everything, how is there evil in the world? didn’t seem to have a reasonable answer. It still doesn’t. I don’t buy the ‘free will’ argument, that god is just letting us choose. My will would be no less free if all the options I had to choose from were good. Also, it still doesn’t explain the origin of evil.

That problem, of course, is specific to Semitic or western religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – and wouldn’t necessarily be a problem in a polytheistic world view, or one in which the creator god is not all good. Those have other issues, that western religions share, such as how gods interact with the physical world and its laws, such as conservation of matter and energy.

It may be that I am wrong. That there is a god, or many gods. Perhaps even the one worshiped by Christians, Jews, and Muslims. I doubt it, but that possibility exists. If I am proven wrong in my atheistic hypothesis, I will acknowledge it and change my mind. (Continuing to believe something that’s proven wrong is just idiotic.) But in the meantime, rest assured I will not try to convert any religious folk (including my family) to my point of view, and I hope I can expect the same treatment in return.

Posted on by markusoreallyus · 1 Comment

Sunday morning

My cat, as I’ve stated previously, is an asshole. Case in point, she does not let me sleep in on Sunday mornings. She likes to think of our bed as being hers, and gets annoyed that I’m in her spot. So she wakes me, repeatedly, and eventually I get up – usually far earlier than I’d like – and she curls up and sleeps in my place.

The advantage of being up early on a Sunday, is that I can more or less do what I like (as long as it doesn’t make too much noise – after all, my wife is still sleeping). This is me time. I can listen to music (with headphones), read, or watch the news or something on Netflix. When the weather and road conditions are better, I can ride my motorcycle, and maybe meet friends for breakfast in Whistler or Hope. This morning, I am going to use this time to muse about one of the frequent arguments for the existence of a god, the argument from nature.

Many people, when they confront the beauty and complexity and enormity of the natural world, conclude that something so marvellous, something that works so well in so many unexpected and (in some cases) mysterious ways, can only be the expression of a divine intelligence. This is the gist of the intelligent design argument. Surely, they say, something of this vastness and intricacy, something that all fits together in such unexpected and yet seemingly logical ways, can’t have just happened by accident. If there are complex rules governing the universe, those rules must have had an origin.

I do not deny that the natural world is often awe-inspiring. I have watched the sun rise over the dunes in the Sahara. I have marvelled at the detail in the construction of everything from spider webs to the human body to forests and mountain ranges. I see the images of galaxies and nebulae from the Hubble telescope and I am amazed. But I think it sells nature short to assume there must be a mind behind its construction, and a purpose for everything.

We often make the mistake of thinking of a current state as if it were an end, and that everything that had occurred to bring that end about. You often see this fallacy played out in relation to evolution, when we say a certain physical feature or behaviour came about for a certain purpose. In the case of the spider mentioned earlier, spinning webs becomes the reason that certain physical attributes evolved.

This is an understandable fallacy. After all, when we build something we usually have a purpose for all that something’s components. If the universe is something made, the argument goes, then it stands to reason that all of its parts are processes have a purpose. And since some things, at least, seem to have purposes, then it stands to reason that nature was constructed. For nature to have been constructed, it must have a maker who is somehow outside of nature, but able to manipulate it.

So, what is wrong with this reasoning? What makes me say it is a fallacy?

First, the notion of something (or someone) outside of nature being able to manipulate its elements and forces in a way that would shape it violates one of the basic laws of physics, namely the conservation of energy/matter. This law states that the sum of all energy (of which matter is just one expression) remains constant. Energy and matter can only be acted upon by other energy and matter. This rule has been tested and proven innumerable times.

Second, it mistakes effects for purposes. Imagine you are driving your car and you encounter black ice on the road, which causes you slide off of the road and hit a tree. You would not likely say that the purpose of black ice was to damage cars, or trees, or to injure drivers. You would not likely say that the purpose of the tree was to stop your car, or that the purpose of your car was to knock down a tree. These are all causes and effects, but the effects are not seen as the purposes of their causes.

Third, we tend only to arrive at this feeling that the world must be the product of a divine mind when observing something beautiful – or at least benign. While it’s true that some people believe that diseases and natural disasters are evidence of divine retribution for supposed moral failings, the argument from nature is rarely advanced by arguing that cancer or tornadoes are evidence of the divine nature of creation.

This leaves aside the many other philosophical problems confronting the existence of gods, but I think that’s good for a Sunday morning. If you would like to disagree, I’ll be happy to hear (or read) and consider your counter-arguments.

Posted on by markusoreallyus · 2 Comments

Faithless 

I am not a religious man.

Okay, that’s an understatement. I’m a card-carrying atheist. Not just an agnostic, either. I’m fairly certain there’s no god, and I don’t understand how anyone believes otherwise.

Of course, I know people do, many of them at least as intelligent as me. Many of the people I love and respect are religious. I don’t judge them, or anyone, for believing something different from me. I’m sure their reasons seem as good & sound to them as mine do to me, and I’m happy for them to continue to think so.

So why am I writing this?

I suppose because I’d like the same courtesy shown to my unbelief that I show to the beliefs of others. But I don’t expect necessarily to get it. In some places, they put atheists to death. In others, they try to convince them of their error, and shut them out of society if they can’t. Can anyone imagine an atheist candidate for public office in the US being elected? I don’t just mean as president, but even as sheriff or dog catcher.

Not that I – or any right thinking person – would want those jobs.

I didn’t become an atheist by accident, and I certainly wasn’t raised to be one. My father was very religious. My mother and younger brother still are.

Years of reflection led me to this conclusion. The same process has led others to Buddhism, Catholicism, Islam and other religions.

I won’t try to convince you I’m right, although I obviously believe I am. I don’t think atheists should be evangelical about their faithlessness. I also don’t think they should organize, codify their unbelief, or anything like that. Who wants an unreligion? Not me.

I do see the value of congregations, mind you. I just don’t like them. Mostly I prefer one on one encounters, or small groups. I don’t feel terribly lonely when I’m alone, either.

I will say that still maintain a moral code, and beliefs about how things are and ought to be. They are open to question, as are everyone else’s codes.

I don’t really have a point here, so I’ll just end.

(Feel free to say thank god!)