After well-received multiple-authored posts on "Depression 101" and "Paganism 101", there were several requests for similar posts on various religious worldviews, especially atheism.
It soon became obvious that anything approaching a comprehensive and authoritative "Atheism 101" was beyond the scope of this community; so in response to this interest, the decision was made to create an "Atheist Roundtable", expressing the personal perspectives of several self-identified atheist members of the community.
TBAT posted the following call for submissions:
Since there are many takes on atheism and much controversy among atheists TBAT is asking for members of our community who wish to take part in the atheism 101 to begin the process by submitting an essay (500 words or less) entitled "what being an atheist means to me." Explanations of why you don't agree with the arguments for religion and/or find religion problematic are welcome, but please try to stay on the right side of the line between direct and rude. Please also put some focus on the positive aspects of atheism and how you find meaning in an atheist life.
...and received more than a dozen submissions. Editing and coordination among so many authors proved more difficult than anticipated, and by the time the piece began to come into shape, the publication of another piece on atheism led not only to an influx of malicious and destructive trolls, but also to months of serious and passionate controversy that very nearly destroyed this community.
In the aftermath, TBAT made the decision to delay the publication of the Atheism Roundtable. Whether that decision was a wise one or not, opinions differ; but what is done is done, and we hope that the community will welcome the publication of this long-delayed but still-relevant (and wonderfully diverse) collection of essays.
Note: We ask that commenters on this post focus on the essays published, and refrain from bringing up old controversies and past grievances. Entries have been listed in alphabetical order according to the name/Internet handle of their author.
C. Adam Scott: Aside from being surrounded by a very pro-theism culture, what atheism means to me wouldn’t be all that much. It would be similar to describing my fashion sense as not-disco-oriented. Imagine people making snap judgments about your family life just because you don't wear bellbottoms.
In terms of morality, atheism means I have to answer some questions. What is good and what is evil? What categorizes an action in one or the other? What should I do?
Growing up going to a Methodist Church, answers were handed to me before I could even comprehend the questions. As an atheist, I might never have any absolute answers and absolute answers may be inherently impossible.
Starting with these questions means that I am free to entertain more thoughts. “Worship, itself, is immoral and harmful to all, no matter the object of worship.” That is one of my personal beliefs. And, it’s one that the childhood Christian me would be barred from based on its opposition to worshipping God.
I’m also allowed to, as many atheists before and since have done, think ill of God. In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam thinking ill of God is, in some cases, the only unforgivable sin. A liberal Christian once told me that she didn’t believe that God had done anything wrong in the book of Job, but that, if he did, he would have good reason. What, to me, is unacceptable categorically must become acceptable to anyone who believes that all that God does must be, by definition, good.
Because atheists, in general, are all on our own with these questions, we come to all sorts of conclusions. I’ll disagree with Sam Harris that objective morality is even possible. I know two staunchly Libertarian atheists who believe that any social safety net, from Social Security to Food Stamps to Medicare and Medicaid, are all immoral. In college, I had another atheist friend who would argue against allowing homosexuals in the army. And that’s just a fraction of the list of disagreements I can have respectfully believing the other side is acting intelligently and in good conscience.
Atheists, as well as not being worse than the rest, aren’t any better. The World Church of the Creator, for instance, worships only racial purity. They don’t believe in any gods. By the way, if you want to know something really creepy, its founder went to my same college.The similarities among the majority of atheists are few, but significant enough. We’re the ones most likely to straightforwardly oppose religion as a concept as well as the dominant religions of our cultures.
But, what atheism means most to me, in terms of morality, is that I live in a culture that most often assumes I have none.
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Froborr: I’m not an atheist because something is wrong with religion. I’m an atheist because I don’t believe in gods. Never have, and never felt like I was missing anything. They’re just not for me, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with other people believing in them.
I am agnostic toward the existence of gods in the sense that I don’t believe, as the term is usually defined, “Gods exist,” is actually a positive claim* or an empirical statement.** There can be no evidence one way or the other (or, more accurately, which way any potential piece of evidence counts is entirely up to personal preference), and thus I am equally right or wrong whichever I believe. (To be right is to believe in accordance with all evidence, including future evidence; to be wrong is to believe in opposition to all evidence; neither is possible here.) Personally, I prefer not to believe in gods, so that’s the way I go.
But there is more to (my) atheism than not believing in gods. There’s also disbelief in all non-empirical supernatural phenomena (afterlives, souls, and so forth) and skepticism about positive claims (instances of magical thinking, pseudoscience, and science). Many atheists derogatorily refer to everything in both categories (except science) as “woo”; on the rare occasion I use the term, I confine it to pseudoscience (for example, homeopathy or the Myers-Briggs personality test) and magical thinking. "Woo" is a very negative, dismissive term, so I try to confine it to ideas (not persons) that actually deserve to be dismissed.
I reject the premise of the question “Does your life have meaning?” because it’s missing two vital words at the end: “Does your life have meaning to you?” Nothing has intrinsic meaning; meaning is in the mind of the beholder. My loved ones have meaning to me. Trying to be a better person has meaning to me. Trying to make the world a better place, starting with my tiny corner of it, has meaning to me. My hobbies and entertainments, the works of art I appreciate, all these things have meaning to me. The beauty of nature and my love for my city have meaning for me. My life is brimming with meaning, and I fail to understand why someone would think I need more.
*That is, a claim about the properties of a material object or phenomenon.
**That is, something that can be tested by empirical observation. Probably the same thing as a positive claim, but I’m not sure that’s proven or provable.
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Giles: Being an atheist is not about what I believe, but about how I come to believe it.
Our feelings and emotions – such as spiritual feelings, or compassion and empathy for others – are important for making decisions. But I don’t believe that they directly reveal truths about the world. We can only find the truth the hard way – by observing, researching and trying to find consistent theories about the world.
Equally, I try not to define my identity in terms of factual beliefs. If I did, and if those beliefs turned out to be factually false, then it would lead me to either deny the truth or be devastated by it. I’d rather just be able to change my mind and carry on (although this has still been difficult for me in the past).
For me, there is a strong separation between my factual beliefs and my values. I believe that the universe runs according to mathematical laws, and that people are nothing more or less than collections of atoms. But this doesn’t stop me from caring about them as people. Facts may not be part of my identity, but values are, and I try to let them guide the important decisions in my life.
Some might consider aspects of my worldview to be a religion – in particular the rigid approach I take towards deciding what I accept as fact and what I don’t, together with some of my beliefs (a bunch of transhumanist stuff which I won’t go into here). I don’t have a problem with that classification. For me, "religion" isn’t a dirty word.
The things religion has been blamed for – wars, human rights violations, poor critical thinking – occur in secular contexts too, so I don’t think it makes sense to attack religion as the cause. If I wanted to influence the opinions or actions of a believer, I would rather seek to draw upon the moral code and other wisdom contained within their religion, than try to tear that religion down.
Atheists can still satisfy their desire to find meaning and purpose in life. For me, one purpose is to try to understand the universe – not as a collection of isolated facts, but as a complete, complex system. Another purpose becomes obvious whenever I look at the news. The world is beautiful, but so much goes on here that would be unacceptable under any reasonable moral system. I consider it part of my purpose to try and put right as much of that as I can.
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J. Enigma: To me, atheism is more than just giving up on deities. For me, being an atheist also means that I am a skeptic and a humanist. My philosophies are intricately interwoven with my atheism: while others may be different, I could not imagine being one without having the other two. I feel the need to stress it, because the three are not mutually inclusive for all atheists, and because all three define me rather sharply.
For me, being an atheist lends a firm belief of being in command of one's destiny. Without deities, without a creator, without an afterlife or an eternity, I become responsible for my own actions; there won’t be a deity at the end of the road to punish or reward me. I have to take responsibility for everything I do here, without threat of punishment or promise of reward. I am the creator of my own destiny, the writer of my own purpose in life/reason for existence.
Atheism has given me a strong sense of social justice and respect towards my fellow humans – because they’ve only got one shot here, too, and I have no right, nor does anyone else, to take from them that only shot they have – linking me forever with humanism. I believe humanity is a worthwhile group to put faith in, and that the future is a worthwhile thing to invest faith into, so I do. I believe that if we put our faith in humans, eventually we end up doing the right thing.
There’s also the rationalism behind it. Every puzzle is waiting to be solved; every void is a new chance to uncover knowledge hidden within. Atheistic skepticism is an ideal that I aspire to; I attempt to approach things with an open mind removed from as many perceptions as possible, and keep in mind all of the evidence for or against a position. My epistemology defines my worldview; I am motivated by concrete and objective facts to make my decisions. As such, being proven wrong is not a very large paradigm shift in my world.
I am not an atheist because I saw something wrong with religion, or because I was exposed to a bad religion (I grew up in an irreligious environment). I am not an atheist as a reaction to religion; religion played almost no role in my becoming an atheist. It was my own use of logic and drive to not accept the unknown remaining that way that led me to my atheism, skepticism, and humanism. I am not one out of spite. I am one out of curiosity.
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Leum: I don't really like to talk about being an atheist as such. As a negative label, it denotes very little about me—simply that I lack theistic beliefs. It says nothing about a skeptical outlook on life, nothing about the joy of living, nothing about the potential for humans to better themselves as individuals and as a society. The term “secular humanist” is probably more applicable, so I'm going to talk about that. I've outlined what are, to me, the three basic tenets of secular humanism as I see them above, but they deserve more than a cursory examination.
A skeptical approach to life: I believe in basing your understanding of the objective universe based on empirical, rather than personal, evidence. This is where the atheism comes from. But it's also where my rejection of the soul, of magic, of alternative medicine, and of conservative ideology comes from. I hold that we shouldn't believe in things because they serve a positive function in our lives, but because we have evidence for them.
The joy of living: I believe that being alive is good, that it is something to be cherished. We express this goodness through art, but also through daily living, by partaking in the good things the world has to offer, and by preserving those good things so future generations can also have them. I believe we have a duty both as individuals and as a society to ensure that those who do not experience joy from being alive be given the opportunity to do so. I reject the idea that life is nothing but dukha (a Buddhist term generally translated incorrectly as “suffering”) or that we should live in hope of a better life beyond this one. We should focus on making this life the best it can be for ourselves and for others.
Betterment of self and society: I do not believe humans are depraved, but that we have flaws, and I believe we can overcome these flaws. Perhaps not perfectly, but to a great extent. I believe that through knowledge and empathy we can become better people, and that we can improve society as well. I reject doctrines such as original sin.
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A Slacktivite: I think the most important thing for me about atheism isn't that it makes me particularly happy, or that I find other ways to fill some answer-seeking, religion-shaped hole in myself. The important thing to me is that I lack that hole in the first place. I tend to describe myself as a-religious rather than atheist, in part because I suppose I'm open to gods existing if I could be convinced of them, but I don't see it mattering very much to my day-to-day life. In my childhood, I was creeped out and disturbed by the (very tame) rituals of my reform Jewish temple; as an adult, I'm not even into secular rituals like graduations. My community needs are better-served by interacting with people who have the same interests, rather than the same beliefs. I feel my morals are just fine, built on common sense and treating other people well. There's just nothing that any organized religion I've seen has to offer that I'm interested in taking.
I can't actually answer the question of how atheism enhances my life, because I don't feel that it does. All it means is that I'm not religious. I can't say that I "find meaning in an atheist life", because I don't think life has a lot of exterior meaning. It just is. Someday it will end, and in all likelihood I won't remember any of it after my consciousness isn't there to do the remembering. It's not a thought that makes me sad, and it's not a thought that's comforting. Atheism just is. Why does life need to have meanings and explanations beyond that?
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A different Slacktivite: I identify as a Catholic atheist. For me, it is impossible to separate the two. I am an atheist who is sympathetic to the Catholicism of my culture; I am a cultural Catholic who does not believe in God.
My family has been Catholic for several generations. Where I live, non-Catholics tend to link the faith to class and language privilege because of its colonial associations, although it is also linked to the charity work of the early religious sisters and brothers who set up schools for the poor. (In fact, the majority of my relatives, all the way to my grandparents, were educated at such schools.) However, there is little detailed understanding of the religion proper. Until I was ten, I did not know the word Protestant, even though I studied in a Catholic convent school, because the word for Protestant was "Christian". When people asked about my religion, they would ask if I was "Christian or Catholic", and I was taught to answer that I was Catholic, not Christian. Government and other forms, which require religion to be specified, often distinguish between "Christian" and "Catholic" as well. Catholicism is hazily thought of as a religion with a polytheist mystic bent – which is not inherently treated as negative– and I am frequently described by other people as someone who believes in "Jesus and Mother Mary". Although I am mostly accustomed to the novelty of Catholicism in the cultural landscape, I do feel frustrated because Catholics do form a significant minority (10%) in my homeland. Catholicism does tend to be Other-ised as the province of people who are considered by the ethnic majority to be racially Other, like Eurasians and Filipinos, even though I am neither.
I started to move away from Catholicism when I was about fourteen, mostly because I was discovering feminist politics and exploring my queer identity. After identifying as first a Deist and then an agnostic, I went through a spell of strong atheism (also called "hard", "explicit", or "positive" atheism, because it expressly affirms that no gods exist, as opposed to merely failing to believe in gods). After a while, though, I decided that this section of the community, which tended to be dominated by hardliners like Richard Dawkins, had less good faith and rather a lot of spite. I could not in good conscience identify with a movement that failed to respect the importance of religious belief and practice – which are already two very different things – in cultures like my own. The same sense of post-colonialism that drew me away from mainstream feminism drew me away from mainstream atheism as well, because they are movements heavily dominated by a perspective that is culturally and politically alien to me – that is saturated with the vestiges of imperialism. Because my body and my mind are read as coloured, and because of the values with which I have been saturated, I still feel the effects of this cultural imperialism, and the sense of being an unwelcome outsider in mainstream atheism rankled.
To me, being an atheist is simple – it’s about not believing in god/s. There are a large number of people here who call themselves "freethinkers". It is quite divorced from the philosophical sense of the word but is nonetheless recognised by the government and community as a valid religious identity. Freethinkers often come from a Buddhist or Taoist family background, are widely accepted in this milieu, and practise a form of reverent indifference towards religion. I don’t use the word "freethinker" because my Catholic roots have given me a completely different perspective on faith and culture, and I don’t intend to appropriate the term, but my disbelief takes the same form. (Roses by any other name, and all that.) Some days, I reject god/s; some days I feel Deist still, like a free-willed person in a universe where the maker/s have gone on a terminal lunch break. But my atheist identity remains integral to me. It is the knowledge that, whether or not they exist, I do not want them in my life, because I believe in myself; and if they exist, and they are the god I was raised with, they would be a proud parent because of what I have done for myself. I cannot in good faith believe in a deity whose representatives tell me I am improperly queer, improperly a rape survivor, but I can and do believe every day in a certain kind of wonder in the universe that may or may not come from a different aspect of that deity and that deity’s loving Mother.
My identity is complex because my experiences with both atheism and Catholicism are so closely intertwined, and my culture bleeds through into the way I frame them all. To me, there is little difference between both forms of my religion and faith. From one, I take a sense of individuality; from another, a sense of community; from both, a respect for dignity and devotion to justice. Of course, this is not a very common or commonly acceptable worldview, but I cling to it, because it’s who I am.
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Slow Learner: Billions of years passed before my birth; billions of years will pass after my death; and I could easily not have been born at all.
Does this make my life meaningless or worthless? No, no more than it is not worth going to see a play because it will end. My life is contingent, not required as part of the course of the universe, but that makes my very existence a most wonderful opportunity.
I used to call myself a Christian, because my parents are, and it was part of the cultural backdrop (Anglican Church specifically). I'm not sure I ever believed it, though I have always rather enjoyed some of the hymns. However, it wasn't until I was about thirteen that I began seriously asking myself whether or not I believed, and the immediate trigger was my parents asking whether I wanted to be confirmed. The more I thought about it, and the more questions I asked, the more I realized the concept of God meant nothing to me. It quite literally does not compute. The way I'm wired, I don't think it is possible for me to believe in God without seeing Zir personally, and even then my first thought would be to doubt my sanity.
As such conventional Christianity is clearly a non-starter for me, but I did spend a while wondering whether I could take much from this Jesus bloke. And I...wasn't especially impressed. The Golden Rule, while nice, had been stated earlier. "Love thy neighbor" is a useful principle, but again hardly earth-shattering. And there remained teachings in the New Testament and Acts, especially about slavery and the place of women, that made me deeply uncomfortable.
So that left me with a need to explore and discover what my principles and values were, and what they were based on. And here, a couple of Christians were very helpful, along with another atheist. In rambling, long-running conversations in the school library we sometimes explored, sometimes railed against each others' ideas. Over several years we each founded our thinking much more firmly as the weak foundations were struck away. We never reached agreement, and that taught me one more lesson I needed - that intelligent, educated, well-meaning people can fundamentally disagree.
Some of the things I was told horrified me; such as R's assertion that zie would do anything God demanded; anything at all, no matter how immoral; or when J said that God had commanded His people to destroy the Canaanites. And these were the things which brought me to realize that a rigid moral code based on a revelation could be dangerous on two grounds. Rigidity can affect anyone’s morality, and the key symptom is putting principles before people. I am very wary of people who do this, whether they do it as Christians, communists, neo-liberals or anything else.
The other problem I see is that a moral code based on revelation can be quite impenetrable to anyone working from a different basis. In a multi-faith society, public policy must be based on secular reasoning – it is the only one accessible to all members of society.
My life is my own. I try to do right because it is right, not because it is written. And my greatest hope is to pass to my children a better world than I was born into, in some small way.
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ZMiles: Q1: What does it mean to me that I am an atheist?
For me, the answer to this question is based on the answer to a somewhat similar question:
Q2: Why am I an atheist, or, alternately, why do I not believe in God?
A2: My short answer to the above echoes Pierre-Simon Laplace. Laplace, when asked why he did not write about God in his book describing the universe, stated: “I had no need of that hypothesis.”
The longer answer is this:
I am training to be an engineer, and so have become familiar with the scientific method. Scientific principles about electricity, and about silicon, and about plastic, were all needed to design this computer that I’m writing this post on. And this scientific method, which expertly describes the interactions of all kinds of forces, hasn’t found even a hint of evidence for any kind of supernatural force, God or otherwise. No scientifically-measured phenomena in existence requires, or even indicates, the existence of a supernatural force. Therefore, I provisionally accept the conclusion that no such force exists.
But why assume that science is correct? I assume this because science works. Each and every tool, device, and material that we have today was designed on the basis of scientific principles, whether those be the modern experiments that we have today or the simple trial-and-error of eons ago; and if these methods were bad or useless, the devices would not work. Ovens work based on principles of heat convection; the existence of millions of working ovens demonstrates our understanding of convection is accurate. Even the earliest ovens were designed through the trial-and-error processes that were the prototypes for modern science, and their working validates such processes. Similarly, pencils work based on properties of graphite; if we did not understand graphite correctly, pencils would not work.
Science works – all day, every day, anywhere and everywhere. So I find it far, far more likely than not that it works when discussing religion.
A1: To me, being an atheist means that I accept the above conclusions, and live my life like they are true. It means that, rather than accepting and utilizing the bounties developed by science, but rejecting it in my private thoughts, I accept that science works everywhere. It means that I accept that there is no scientific evidence for god, anymore than there is for the existence of magic, and that, just as I therefore conclude that there is no magic, I conclude that there is no god.
And, as Dr. Myers has written, it can mean (and does, to me) additional qualities as well. For me, being an atheist means that I am also a skeptic who tries to consider critically all important claims (not just religious ones). It means that I acknowledge scientific realities about global warming, pollution, etc., and can promote policies based on science rather than emotion. It means that I do not reject ideas out of hand for being "sacrilegious" or "blasphemous", but rather I consider their effects on actual humans and on the world, and promote or reject them based on that consideration. Religious people, of course, may also support these ideals for a variety of reasons, but my atheism is why I support them.
In short, it means accepting that which the evidence indicates is true, in all areas of my life. And that is what I believe in.
--Co-authored by C. Adam Scott, Froborr, Giles, J. Enigma, Leum, A Slacktivite, A different Slacktivite, Slow Learner and ZMiles
The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.
FYI, the link in C. Adam Scott's piece is broken.
(Back to reading...)
Posted by: Froborr | Aug 30, 2012 at 11:31 AM
@Froborr: the link in C. Adam Scott's piece is broken.
It *should* work now. Thanks for catching that.
Posted by: The Board Administration Team | Aug 30, 2012 at 11:38 AM
TROLL!
Also, in the fourth paragraph of C. Adam Scott's piece, it says "God had done nothing done..." That should probably be "...had done nothing wrong."
Posted by: Troll and typo flagging | Aug 30, 2012 at 11:44 AM
This is where the atheism comes from. But it's also where my rejection of the soul, of magic, of alternative medicine, and of conservative ideology comes from. I hold that we shouldn't believe in things because they serve a positive function in our lives, but because we have evidence for them.
This is fascinating, and I would love to see an entire post devoted to it. I know a lot of liberals and progressive do like to think of themselves as "practicing evidence-based politics," whereas for others that's not important. And as in science and medicine and education, etc., you can go about it in utilitarian ways that ignore nuances of culture and personality... Anyway, I think it's a great subject for discussion.
Posted by: Lonespark | Aug 30, 2012 at 12:00 PM
This is a really lovely set of essays. Most of the comments I see from my atheist friends on this subject tend to be snarky anti-religious ones, so it was nice to have a contrast. I wish that religious fundamentalists of any stripe could read these essays with open hearts, because they illustrate both the scope of atheism and the thoughtfulness that the writers have put into these belief systems. I find the one by "A different Slacktivite," particularly fascinating because I don't know many people who are atheists but still strongly identify with their religious background, or at least not ones who talk about it.
Posted by: storiteller | Aug 30, 2012 at 12:34 PM
I probably should have started by saying it's wonderful work and I'm impressed and grateful to y'all for writing it and to TBAT for editing. They're very succinct yet rich statements of identity and philosophy.
Posted by: Lonespark | Aug 30, 2012 at 01:34 PM
This is fascinating, because I can see different times and places in my life in so many of these pieces. I'm somewhere in the part of the spectrum with ZMiles and Froborr now, but I have been elsewise. (My mother was raised very much Catholic but got away from that relatively early in life, went through a lot of family turmoil on the matter before finding some new equilibrium, and tends to be quite dismissive of religion while managing to be polite and accommodating to religious people. My father was raised staunchly antitheist but has recently decided that spirituality is a Universal Human Need and very quietly started self-identifying as some kind of Christian.)
I was not raised with any significant exposure to religion; I was probably seven by the time a great-aunt sat me down with an Illustrated Bible and started reading through a comicbook Genesis, and when she reacted to my boredom by telling me that this was important because it told us how the world began, my reaction was very much one of "Wait, what?" I had to arduously, manually construct an idea of what religion was in other people's lives before I could begin to grasp what it was that I did not have and did not ever think about. It's still tricky to imagine, a lot of the time.
Much appreciation for the work of the contributors and TBAT.
Posted by: Will Wildman | Aug 30, 2012 at 02:36 PM
This was good. I'm very grateful to all the contributors and the editors for putting this together. I'm kinda surprised that there was a lack of bitter-ex-theists. I can understand being very, very pissed off at religion. I'm still trying to deal with my own anger, and trying to understand where I fall on the religion scale.
Posted by: Asha | Aug 30, 2012 at 07:51 PM
@Lonespark: I can't write an essay about it right now (school and work are swamping me), and I'm not sure what I'd say if I did write it. Is there anything in particular that interests you?
Posted by: Leum | Aug 31, 2012 at 12:54 AM
I reject the premise of the question “Does your life have meaning?” because it’s missing two vital words at the end: “Does your life have meaning to you?”
Yes! Thank you Froborr for expressing this so much more clearly than I could.
Posted by: Giles | Aug 31, 2012 at 05:41 AM
Thank you all for a very interesting set of essays. To be mulled over more, later, but this struck me:
A Slacktivite: In my childhood, I was creeped out and disturbed by the (very tame) rituals of my reform Jewish temple; as an adult, I'm not even into secular rituals like graduations.
This is interesting to me because it was so much the opposite of my own experience and temperament. In my childhood, I absolutely adored all the Catholic ritual and pageantry, the more "high-church" the better. When I stopped going to Mass, it was because I wasn't sure I believed in any of it any more; when I started going again, it was because I had missed the ritual and poetry so much.
And when I stopped again, it was at least partly because the way the liturgy has been "dumbed down" and uglified, at least in my local parishes. I'm not asking for a return to Latin, or the pre-VaticanII rite, but the way it's done lately is not enough of a compensation for all the other problems I've been having with the Church. And I know that's not right, but there it is.
Secular rituals are tricky. Sometimes they strike me as a proper acknowledgment of the importance of an occasion, and sometimes they just seem silly.
@A Different Slacktivite:
I cannot in good faith believe in a deity whose representatives tell me I am improperly queer, improperly a rape survivor, but I can and do believe every day in a certain kind of wonder in the universe that may or may not come from a different aspect of that deity and that deity’s loving Mother.
That makes a lot of sense to me.
Posted by: Amaryllis | Aug 31, 2012 at 11:11 AM
@storiteller, I have to admit that if I am asked in person* my answers will often tend to be snarky or sarcastic.
Of course, it depends on how the issue is brought up, but a lot of the time people asking about my atheism do so with an undertone of "by what right do you reject MY religion?" That or a more 'broad'-minded implication that they are prepared to tolerate my non-belief as long as I keep quiet about it, or express an appropriate desire to be religious.
When I'm faced with a situation like that, the temptation to respond cuttingly is almost irresistible. Even if some of the people who will hear would appreciate a serious response, and actually listen to it if given.
@Lonespark, I'd love to see a discussion of that - because the way you mention evidence-based politics it is apparent that you see downsides to it, which I'm not really aware of - I don't think there's nearly enough evidence-based policy, and would have mentioned it in my own piece if I had focussed it more on my position now than how I reached it.
Posted by: Slow Learner | Aug 31, 2012 at 11:27 AM
These are interesting essays, and I appreciate the authors writing them and submitting them for publication here.
I would, however, like to debate with ZMiles on his view of Science:
Science works – all day, every day, anywhere and everywhere. So I find it far, far more likely than not that it works when discussing religion.
I am amused by your view of Science. It's also a bit... simplified. The scientific method, when properly applied, is a very effective tool for refining human knowledge, helping to confirm testable truths and toss out testable and incorrect theories. Science is not static or absolute; it moves on. Our understanding of things change, sometimes to the point of making a complete U-turn. It's always More Complicated Than That.
Example 1: Early 20th-century: we'll invent a theoretical massless, chargeless particle called a 'neutrino' to make this equation add up. Late 20th-century: Why aren't the solar fusion reactions putting out the neutrinos our theory predicted? Early 21st century: Wait, neutrinos have mass?? And randomly change phases?
Example 2: Very early 19th century: Cuvier correctly identified fossils of extinct marine reptiles as reptiles. Rest of 19th century: early paleontologists assume dinosaur fossils are all also reptiles because Iguanadon. 19th to 20th century: because reptiles are cold-blooded, and dinosaurs are of course reptiles, dinosaurs are cold-blooded becomes dogma. Note: no experimental evidence. Early 20th century: Scientist proposes that birds descended from dinosaurs. Other scientist apparently demolishes bird-dinosaur theory, puts forth "birds, mammals, dinosaurs descended from common stem reptile" theory that becomes dogma. Note: again, no experimental evidence. Late 20th century: Bakker says, "hey, dinosaurs being cold-blooded doesn't actually match what we know of physiology and heat dissipation in large animals in warm climates. Physics, physiology and anatomical studies of dinosaur fossils strongly suggests they were warm-blooded. Also, birds are warm-blooded, structurally very similar to theropod dinosaurs, and are we seriously suggesting that homeothermy evolved separately in mammals, birds, and dinosaurs? Maybe birds came from dinosaurs. Also, feathers." Early 21st century: Bakker's theories are all accepted; evidence in the form of more and more discoveries of feathered dinosaurs keeps turning up.
They don't teach the dynamic view of science in high school, or college engineering classes. Young students are taught a view of Science as a static, absolute thing: what's been discovered is a fact, proven beyond doubt; it's only unknowns that still await discovery. As far as I can tell, only professional scientists (and grad students) get exposed to the awful truth that It's More Complicated Than That; proofs fail, doubts emerge, "truths" (that were no such thing) change. Frankly, that's what makes the sciences interesting.
...I accept that science works everywhere. It means that I accept that there is no scientific evidence for god, anymore than there is for the existence of magic, and that, just as I therefore conclude that there is no magic, I conclude that there is no god.
Basic logic fail: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We now know that Velociraptor was feathered, but prior to the late 20th century, there was no scientific evidence for that. Less basic philosophy of science fail: by definition, gods and the supernatural ("beyond the natural") are outside the realm of things testable by science. If you can't measure it, you can't test it, and science can say nothing about it.
Similarly, pencils work based on properties of graphite; if we did not understand graphite correctly, pencils would not work.
Er, no. The properties of real entities are not dependent on our understanding of them. You might want to re-phrase that sentence.
Posted by: Dragoness Eclectic | Aug 31, 2012 at 11:47 AM
I disagree. The designation of the supernatural as beyond the realm of things that can be observed (sorry, I'm a geology major, we do a lot of qualitative stuff that is neither measurable--at least not with numbers--nor testable--at least not the sense of repeatable) is fairly recent. Positing the existence of God is a hypothesis about the world. If God has certain attributes, they should be reflected in his creation. The fact that we are able to explain so much without God is, while not evidence of his absence per se, certainly a reason to doubt his presence. Unless someone can explain why God should not be detectable by science, I see no reason to believe that, if he existed, he couldn't be.
Posted by: Leum | Aug 31, 2012 at 12:17 PM
I have this amusing mental image of a physicist trying to write down a proof that just came to him of how the properties of graphite are actually quite different than what we had thought, but when he gets to a key conclusion, his pencil suddenly stops working.
Posted by: Ross | Aug 31, 2012 at 01:01 PM
I tend to agree with Dragoness Eclectic, but for possibly different reasons: I don't consider the concept god to be physically coherent. There is no way to define godhood in purely physical, empirical, observable* terms, and as such there is no way to observe (in the scientific sense) whether or not a given candidate entity is a god, and therefore whether or not a given god exists.
There's a rather famous piece by Carl Sagan in which he (successfully, in my opinion) argues that an invisible, floating, heatless, intangible dragon is the same as no dragon at all. However, I think he and most of his readers draw the wrong conclusion from this. If A=B, then the statements "A exists" and "B exists" are logically equivalent; therefore, the statements "Invisible, floating, heatless, intangible dragons exist" and "No dragons exist" are equivalent; either both are true or neither is. Which you believe is a matter of preference, not empirically determinable fact.
In other words, when dealing with a physically incoherent concept (such as god, or justice, or freedom, or good, or...), existence statements become normative claims.
*Yes, I am treating these as synonyms. I am aware that not all people regard them as such, but I am talking about my own views at the moment.
Posted by: Froborr | Aug 31, 2012 at 01:27 PM
Whose definition is that? I suspect it's a recent one. It is arguable that anything that cannot be observed does not, in any meaningful sense, exist.
TRiG.
Posted by: Timothy (TRiG) | Aug 31, 2012 at 01:34 PM
@Dragoness Eclectic, I second Leum - if the supernatural is required by no theory, and has shown no evidence of its presence, someone looking at it from a scientific perspective is quite entitled to argue it doesn't exist.
Absence of evidence, where evidence could reasonably be expected, requires an updating of your probabilities to reflect that.
Posted by: Slow Learner | Aug 31, 2012 at 01:37 PM
@Amaryllis,
I'm glad it's an interesting thought. I definitely think part of the reason I have no desire to find a better-fitting religion is that I don't want ritual and formality. A lot of what disturbed me was the fact that my services were in a language I didn't know (they taught us how to read Hebrew and sound it out, but nothing of the meaning of the words or the grammar of the language) and I was uncomfortable pledging or promising anything if I couldn't be sure of my words. This may be the part of me that loves faerie stories today.
The other part was knowing how many of my peers hated me for derailing lessons by asking for those answers - they all just wanted to get on with memorizing and forget what it meant. I'd look around the temple and see so many people bowing and reciting and going through motions, and wonder how many, if any of them really meant anything by it. I was 13 at the time, I know now that people really do mean it, but it wasn't a good formative experience.
Posted by: a slacktivite | Aug 31, 2012 at 02:34 PM
@Lonespark, I'd love to see a discussion of that - because the way you mention evidence-based politics it is apparent that you see downsides to it, which I'm not really aware of - I don't think there's nearly enough evidence-based policy, and would have mentioned it in my own piece if I had focussed it more on my position now than how I reached it.
I think there are downsides (that's life, right?), but it's more that I think a lot people identify as driven by rationality and evidence, when really they struggle a lot against cognitive biases just like the rest of humanity. And as far as policy goes, I think if you're going to talk about your policies or policy goals being evidence-based you need to carefully define what "good outcomes" and "best outcomes" are, and allow flexibility because the "best outcome" isn't going to be possible or even good for some people.
Posted by: Lonespark | Aug 31, 2012 at 03:01 PM
I neither agree with nor completely understand what you're saying about God, Leum, but...
Geologist solidarity fist-bump!
Posted by: Lonespark | Aug 31, 2012 at 03:06 PM
I have this amusing mental image of a physicist trying to write down a proof that just came to him of how the properties of graphite are actually quite different than what we had thought, but when he gets to a key conclusion, his pencil suddenly stops working.
Heh.
Posted by: Lonespark | Aug 31, 2012 at 03:10 PM
To address your point more directly, Leum, perhaps:
What experiments can Watson conduct to determine whether Doyle exists?
Posted by: Froborr | Aug 31, 2012 at 03:11 PM
@Froborr
Considering that Arthur Conan Doyle, in the Sherlock Holmes stories, is effectively omnipotent but not omniscient, one can look to the differences between how a reality would look if it is not under the control of a single being with limited imagination vs if it is not under such control.
So, Dr. Watson, assuming he is acting as a free agent and no longer under the control of Arthur Conan Doyle, can hypothosize on the legitimate alternate explanations for the clues that inevitably lead Sherlock Holmes down only one, but inevitably the correct, line of thought. He could use the number of legitimate alternative explanations for each to construe an average whereby even the best of detectives would, if not favored by an author, would be mistaken and compare it to the number of times that Holmes actually is mistaken.
The result would not be absolute proof, but then again science doesn't look for absolute proof. It looks for better evidence than current. Indeed, alternate explanations, for Dr. Watson to consider, could be that Holmes is observing things that he doesn't include in his observations, the lack of actual legitimate alternatives in the face of Holmes's knowledge at the time, and just plain luck. The first two are testable. The third is less testable but more easily compared to that of other investigators.
This would only all amount to a single test. But, it could be combined with other tests to develope the theory that an able storyteller, but one with limitations of knowledge or limitations invoked by intended narrative, control his known reality.
These tests would not involve any of the necessarily visible trappings of science. But, if something exists, then that something is, with the right tools, observable, quantifiable, and recordable. Science can look at whatever claim you make. The only thing it cannot do is falsify claims that are inherantly unfasifiable. Ghosts, if they exist, can be proven with the right experimentation. Ghosts, if they don't exist, can never be proven not to exist. Science can still look at the claim of their existence and interraction with confirmed reality.
This goes to say "No, the supernatural is not outside the realm of science."
Posted by: WingedBeast | Aug 31, 2012 at 04:03 PM
@Dragoness Eclectic - This is going to come across as a bit combative, but reading your post, it sounds like you may not understand the scientific method as much as you believe. I might be picking on minor points, or maybe I'm just reacting to what I see as common misunderstandings, so don't take this too personally.
I guess I disagree with your remarks that attempt to draw a meaningful distinction between "Science" and "the scientific method". When someone says "Science works", they're talking about the scientific method! They're not talking about men in lab coats with liquids in flasks and bunson burners, they're talking about epistemology, a way of "knowing".
I'm glad you're amused by ZMiles; I'm amused by this:
The scientific method doesn't function for "testable" truths, it functions for falsifiable claims. That's a meaningful distinction, and if you're going to criticize someone else's view of science, you should get those fundamentals right.
Also, science mostly weeds out falsifiable hypothesis; theories are hypothesis that have not yet been falsified after several attempts. Theories can and do get falsified from time to time, and when it happens, it's usually big news because it's so rare. Most things that are "theories" by actual scientists have survived many attempts at falsification.
Fixed that for you.
Are you sure they aren't teaching it, versus you not understanding it? I know that's a hostile remark, but earlier, you confused "testable" with "falsifiable", which is actually a pretty big difference that cuts right the quick of your complaint.
You see, science is about looking for evidence that falsifies a claim; the basic foundation of science is that experiments look to find evidence in contradiction to the predicted outcome. There's no such thing as the "dynamic view of science", because all science is dynamic. Every scientific inquiry, every experiment and search for data, is done with the purpose of disproving the predicted outcome.
Nope. sorry, that's simply wrong. And it's bordering on ignorant.
History is a static, absolute thing, and it's taught as lecture.
If science really was taught as absolute, science wouldn't be taught in labs! Students wouldn't be doing experiments, because there wouldn't be any need.
Students aren't asked to "design a math problem to test the Quadratic equation". I'm nearly 20 years out of high school, and even back then, I was being asked to design experiments to test things like molecular theory and acceleration due to gravity.
I'm sorry that your science education was lacking, but please don't make the error of expanding your sample size of "1" to everyone everywhere.
Actually, there are two basic concepts in logic that apply here, and you seem to be anware of either.
The burden of proof, which in this case lies with those who claim God exists. Otherwise, the null hypothesis holds.
That's basic logic: if you make a positive claim ("God exists"), then the burden of proof lies with you. If you cannot produce any evidence, then we must accept the null hypothesis.
Intercessory prayers, what's that? Claims that morality can only derived from a divine source? Biblical inerrancy? I must have made up all of these things that involve real people making predictions and expectations about how things in the real world should or ought to work.
It's a good thing that no one uses their supernatural beliefs to make public policy about women's health, homosexual rights, public funding for education or science, foreign policy, human rights or any other non-supernatural aspects of life. I sure am relieved to know that matters relating to gods and the supernatural are never used to influence decisions about empirical matters!
I do agree that the 'graphite/pencils' sentence is clunky. I believe the intended meaning was "if we didn't understand the properties of graphite, we wouldn't be able to consistently and reliably make a functioning pencil".
Posted by: RodeoBob | Aug 31, 2012 at 04:10 PM
Posted by: Steve Morrison | Aug 31, 2012 at 04:30 PM
Here's the conclusion to the Sagan piece, which is pretty strongly making the opposite point:
...the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.
Sagan's argument is that even taking arguments about invisible, floating, heatless, intangible dragons at face value, asking reasonable questions should inexorably lead you to tentatively reject such claims in the absence of evidence. The same holds true for other un-falsifiable claims.
Posted by: RodeoBob | Aug 31, 2012 at 04:52 PM
"History is a static, absolute thing, and it's taught as lecture."
Well, no, that's not actually true. The Past (which, admittedly, is what most non-historians mean when they say 'History'), one assumes, is a static, absolute thing.* However, our study of the past - that is, the discipline of history - is a constantly changing thing, as we discover new sources and new ways of reading sources, and search for new perspectives on the past.
Personally, I approach the discipline of history as a search for a possible capital T truth. I do not, however, expect to find the truth, and I'm not sure what I would do with it if I did. I also acknowledge that current trends in the discipline run counter to the existence of a fixed, immutable truth.
While lecture certainly plays an important role in the teaching of history**, current pedagogical models tend to emphasize a certain amount of "hands on" learning as well. In my classes, this takes the form of in class discussions, because I contend that the "doing" of history consists of conducting arguments, either in person (in the form of a discussion of a shared text) or at some remove (in the form of written essays).
*I don't really grok quantum physics, but perhaps this isn't true?
**and, I assume, in the sciences as well - I seem to recall the teacher explaining what we were going to do before turning us loose on the test tubes and pulleys and such.
Posted by: Mike Timonin | Aug 31, 2012 at 06:33 PM
Lies to children certainly form a large part of the teaching of science, but the same applies, as comments to that article point out, to history lessons.
TRiG.
Posted by: Timothy (TRiG) | Aug 31, 2012 at 10:16 PM
@RodeoBob: Yes, that is precisely what I am doing: I am arguing that he is correct up to the point at which he concludes that there is no physical difference between a dragon with no physical properties (let's call them garage dragons), and an absence of dragon. However, he then doesn't take that to the next logical step: if two systems are physically identical, then they will behave identically; any positive statement which is true of one is true of the other. If Sagan's friend were to construct a mathematical model of the physical reality of his garage, taking into account hir belief in a non-physical dragon, and Sagan were to construct a model with no dragon, they would both produce the same outcomes for all scenarios. From the perspective of generating true* statements about physical reality, both claims produce the same results; having no dragon, however, is simpler and more efficient, so if your primary goal is generating true statements about physical reality, that's the way to go.
However, Sagan's mistake is in his assumption that generating true statements about physical reality is (or should be) the primary purpose of thinking and believing. It's the purpose of doing science, of course, but most people spend most of their thought and belief on a different question: What should I do? Having accurate information about physical reality is useful to answering this question, of course, but it is not sufficient; at best it can tell you your options and their probable outcomes. To choose, you need to have some combination of preferred outcomes and rules that constrain which options you can take--goals and morals, in other words--and these will inevitably and necessarily vary from person to person. For Sagan--and for me and, I assume, for you--believing in the garage dragon provides no aid in making those choices and is therefore an unnecessary distraction, best avoided. For Sagan's friend, however, we must assume (for why else would zie insist on it) that believing in the garage dragon is an aid to making those decisions, and enough of one to make up for the reduced efficiency of the physical model. Long as zie's not hurting anybody, who cares?
Now, in the latter part of the essay, Sagan addresses a different creature entirely, when he proposes a group of people claiming that their garage dragon does have physical effects--that, for example, there is a burnt finger unaccounted for in the dragonless model. However, this is a different creature that happens to use the same name--this latter garage dragon clearly is not heatless, if it can burn a finger, and therefore can be tested for. If it isn't found where the finger-burning-garage-dragon model predicts it should be, that model is clearly incorrect and should rightly be rejected--but this says nothing about the original garage dragon model.
To get back to the original topic of religion, where religions make positive claims (that is, claims about the behavior and properties of physical entities in the material universe, including existence claims about physical entities), they can be either true or false, and science is the best means available to us by which to determine which is the case. However, when religions make normative claims (any claim which is not about the behavior and properties of physical entities in the material universe, including existence claims about non-physical or extra-universal entities), those are neither true or false, and science is of no use in evaluating them.
For example, if I claim that wine turns into blood during the Eucharist, that's a positive claim. You can test the sacramental wine, find that it doesn't, and point out that I'm wrong. However, if I claim that the wine becomes blood in essence, while retaining all the physical properties of wine? That claim is not about the properties of physical entities; essence is not a physically coherent concept. As such, from a strictly positive perspective, the statement is meaningless, and meaningless statements have no truth value. From a normative perspective, the statement may be deeply meaningful (or not, depending on how your particular normativity is constructed), which is fine; the sciences have nothing to say on the matter.
*Which we're defining here as "Statements which correctly describe the behavior of physical entities."
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Doesn't work. When Doyle writes a story in which Watson's wound was in his arm, for the duration of that story the wound was always in his arm. When Doyle writes a story in which Watson's wound was in his leg, for the duration of that story the wound was always in his leg. From Watson's perspective, the wound doesn't move.
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@WingedBeast: I don't think it would work out that way. Put yourself in Watson's shoes: Your friend Holmes jumps to conclusions, ignoring alternate explanations, and is almost always right. Which is a more reasonable explanation: That Holmes is either really lucky, or benefiting from a non-supernatural but hitherto unknown phenomenon? Or that there exists an entity which can act on you without being acted on in return, that can alter your reality but which you cannot detect?
The problem is that we are dealing with two different meanings of the word "exist," one of which is physically coherent, and the other not.
If something exists in the sense of having properties and interacting with other physical entities within Watson's universe, then given the right tools Watson can indeed detect it. However, Doyle does not exist in this sense; he has no properties within Watson's universe and does not interact with the physical entities it contains. He can make events occur, but there is no way for Watson to distinguish between Doyle-caused events that look like the natural progression of known physical processes and events actually caused by known physical processes (if these are even exclusive categories); nor can he distinguish between Doyle-caused events that look like "miracles," mere coincidences, and products of yet-unknown natural physical processes.
Any claim that Doyle exists necessarily is using the physically incoherent definition of "exists," because (from Watson's perspective) Doyle is a physically incoherent concept. Science cannot test physically incoherent claims, not because they are unfalsifiable (though they are, of course), but because they are meaningless within a scientific context. There's nothing to test.
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None of these things follow necessarily from religion. Indeed, it's worth noting that they are all products not only of the same religion, but of the same movement within that religion.
Posted by: Froborr | Sep 01, 2012 at 06:01 AM
What experiments can Watson conduct to determine whether Doyle exists?
He could check whether his old war wound inexplicably moves from one part of his body to another?
It's a good thing he writes things down. Otherwise he might just have a vague impression that it used to be elsewhere. With Doyle the accidentally-gaslighting, absent-minded/unconcerned-with-continuity divine power?
But then how would Watson determine if he's not actually in a Doyle work, since there are so many other authors who have written Holmes and Watson over the years?
Posted by: Lonespark | Sep 01, 2012 at 11:28 AM
However, our study of the past - that is, the discipline of history - is a constantly changing thing, as we discover new sources and new ways of reading sources, and search for new perspectives on the past.
It kind of strikes me as a similar-but-different iterative process to the scientific method. Looking as an outsider. And when I think of the search for Truth (though I don't really think of it like that) that geologists perform, it fits both a bit; a lot of the time historical and geographic perspective is a large part of the knowledge we're seeking.
Posted by: Lonespark | Sep 01, 2012 at 11:33 AM
It's a good thing that no one uses their supernatural beliefs to make public policy about women's health, homosexual rights, public funding for education or science, foreign policy, human rights or any other non-supernatural aspects of life.
My goodnesss, it certainly is. It's a damn shame the way those Pagans are always on about how their view divinity requires that people of all genders have equal rights. It's horrific the way (many) UUs are inspired and moved to advocate for the rights of immigrants. To say nothing of those horrible irrational abolitionists, church leaders in the Civil Rights movement, etc., etc., etc.
Posted by: Lonespark | Sep 01, 2012 at 11:40 AM
@Lonespark: My history professor was of the opinion that history operated more like a historical science than like a social science, a position I find intriguing. As a geologist I imagine you, like me, get really annoyed when people assume that the scientific method always involves experiments and numbers. Sometimes it's "these microscopic fossils we found over here look like these other microscopic fossils we found over here" people!
Posted by: Leum | Sep 01, 2012 at 12:04 PM
@Froborr
1. Doyle, in Watson's universe, *does* exist and *does* have properties. The controlling of all elements/people within *is* a property. What's more, Doyle *is*, from the perspective of Watson's timeline, something that can be acted upon. I'm an aspiring writer. What's more, I've read/heard from other aspiring writers one similar strain throughout. That is that characters, despite the fact that they exist at the time entirely within the writer's mind, do things that the writer does not expect. These things impact upon the plot, the storyline, and upon the character's past.
2. When you say all the "could be"s that could explain Holmes's accuracy, I myself mentioned some. I also mentioned that they're testable.
It's true that there could be other explanations. Similarly, when Charles Darwin explored the Gallapagos Islands, the differing subspecies on different islands could have had other evolutions than decent with modification and natural selection. That's why he went on to search for evidence and/or falsifcation among the fossil record for history and among horse and dog breeding for the continuing principle. And, that's why I made clear that the test I suggested would be only one test, something combined with others.
3. The scar test is useful due to the fact that Dr. Watson does, within his own writings, have record of the scar having "always been" in different parts of his body. He might remember, at this moment, that his wound was always at one point in his body, but he also remembers parts of his life when the wound had always been in a different part.
4. Tack onto that the criticism that the Holmes stories indiciate a homogeneity among non-anglo-saxon cultures not found among the Brittish people.
From these multiple tests, Watson could bring in datapoints enough to hypothosize the existence of such a controlling force as an author, make predictions, test those predictions, and then theorize upon the result.
Posted by: WingedBeast | Sep 01, 2012 at 01:35 PM
First of all, many thanks to TBAT and the contributors for this roundtable, especially given the various hurdles that had to be cleared before it could go live.
Now to chime into the ongoing discussions...
I think Lonespark's point about Watson not being able to test _which_ author is writing him is key. A sufficiently talented non-Doyle writer could theoretically write a story and manipulate the evidence Watson has available to him to make Watson think that Doyle is the author, or that there is no author, or that he's being written by Victor Hugo or Andre Norton. If we allow for an omnipotent trickster creator-being, then we cannot prove or disprove anything about the existence from physical evidence.
@RodeoBob -- Actually, I teach my calc students how to test the truth of certain types of mathematical statements, and will sometimes give them a homework problem or two on this method. Yeah, that's now how math really operates, but (a) most of them aren't at a point where they can understand a proof that's been shown to them and why it's a proof, let alone generate their own, and (b) a lot of them still struggle with algebra. If a student is not sure if (a+b)^2 is equal to a^2+b^2, and they're not in a place to ask me or another reliable source, I'd like them to know that they can check it by plugging in numbers and see if they can falsify it right away.
\end{derail}
This is mostly because their memory/knowledge of algebra is imperfect, and they'll be working on a problem with (a+b)^2 and wonder if that is the same as a^2+b^2. So I encourage them to test things they're not sure about by picking a few examples (eg, a=1 and b=2) and seeing if it checks out.
Posted by: Wednesday | Sep 01, 2012 at 06:59 PM
For Watson's purposes, a perfect Doyle immitator would be functionally equivilant to Doyle himself. Meaning that what Watson could do, would do, and should do with the information is the same either way. A perfect Doyle immitator and Doyle himself would do and act the same way.
This brings the flaw in the analogy into light. It's not a bad analogy, just they all have their limits and this one's limit comes in with the fact that Doyle is only discernable because Doyle was not able to perfectly match his creation a reality with a reality that was not created at all. If, by claiming that God is outside of science, you mean to say that there's no way to find evidence of God, then you mean to say that God's existence is functionally equivilant to non-existence.
If, however, you believe that God exists and said existence is functionally different from nonexistence, then no, God is not outside the scope of science. You're saying that there is something to be seen and the only question about science's scope is what falsifiable predictions can you make that would discern the presence of God.
Posted by: WingedBeast | Sep 01, 2012 at 08:15 PM
If, by claiming that God is outside of science, you mean to say that there's no way to find evidence of God, then you mean to say that God's existence is functionally equivilant to non-existence.
Isn't that what we are saying. Well, in a sense. I think the argument is more like, For people who have no direct experience of divine/spirit contact God's existence is functionally equivilant to non-existence.
I'm not sure how it works for people with experiences they find it most useful/meaningful to characterize as divine or spiritual. In that case their god/gods/spirits/etc.'s existence is functionally equivalent to non-existence for everyone else, up until the point where they swing their fist, hit a nose, and blame their god/etc. If one person feels Thor's presence in a storm, and another person feels Shango's, and a bunch of other people experience the storm in other ways that exclude the involvement of gods or orishas, but they all agree that they've experienced the same scientific phenomenon...I'm not sure where we are. Maybe it depends on what we mean by "functional?"
Posted by: Lonespark | Sep 03, 2012 at 08:28 PM
No, that's not what you're saying.
Let me be clear, if you are saying that there are no falsfiable claims to be made about God's interaction with reality as we know it, then you are saying that God, for all people everywhere independantly of whether or not they believe they've had experience with him, is functionally equivilant to non-existence. That direct expreince of God would actually be God interacting with reality and, therefore provide something to observe, hypothesize, make falsifiable predictions about that could be then tested.
If, on the other hand, God does exist and interact with reality in any meaningful way, including giving people an experience of himself, then there are falsifiable predictions to be made and God's existence isn't functionally equivilant to nonexistence to *andybody*.
To be clear, one needn't predict exactly when and under what conditions these experiences happen. But, we should be able to get certain predictions about legitimate experiences vs falsified or halucinated experiences. For instance, I doubt you would claim that a legitimate experience of God would include God commanding genocide.
Thus, if God exists in any meaningful way that isn't exactly the same as non-existence even to those who believe they've directly experienced God, then God is not outside the scope of science.
By the way, this doesn't mean we would necessarily have proven that God exists by now. But, like many other things that are still only hypothetical but not yet proven, God would still be within the realm of science.
Posted by: WingedBeast | Sep 04, 2012 at 02:24 AM
"God is outside the realm of science" is basically a sort of cop-out. If you are interested in presenting evidence for the existence of God, a cop-out is unhelpful. If you're not interested in presenting evidence for the existence of God, a cop-out is unnecessary. Either way, it's annoying.
TRiG.
Posted by: Timothy (TRiG) | Sep 04, 2012 at 06:08 AM
@Froborr:
You stated what I was trying to get across rather more coherently than I did. Thank you.
@several people who are not Froborr:
Yes, I know the difference between "testable" and "falsifiable". However, not all audiences I write for do, and "can be tested" is more easily understood usage than the jargony "falsifiable". I misjudged my audience here; my apologies.
@WingedBeast:
"To be clear, one needn't predict exactly when and under what conditions these experiences happen. But, we should be able to get certain predictions about legitimate experiences vs falsified or halucinated experiences. For instance, I doubt you would claim that a legitimate experience of God would include God commanding genocide."
One of the problems of falsifying "legitimate experiences of God" is that in the worldview of those who believe in gods and spirits, otherworldly entities who strike up conversations (so to speak) don't always identify themselves. I agree that something commanding one to commit genocide is not a "legitimate experience of (the Christian concept of) God"; in the worldview of those who believe in gods and spirits, it is not necessarily the product of a deranged mind, either. It could be a lying spirit--a concept found in paganism as well as the Abrahamic religions. i.e., there are alternate explanations.
@TRiG:
I am not interested in presenting evidence for the existence of God; God is quite capable of handling his own evidentiary affairs. I simply get tired of rude people telling me that if I, personally, can't come up with an argument that convinces *them* that God exists, then God doesn't exist and I am a deluded idiot for believing he does.
Posted by: Dragoness Eclectic | Sep 04, 2012 at 01:41 PM
@Dragoness Eclectic
"One of the problems of falsifying "legitimate experiences of God" is that in the worldview of those who believe in gods and spirits, otherworldly entities who strike up conversations (so to speak) don't always identify themselves. I agree that something commanding one to commit genocide is not a "legitimate experience of (the Christian concept of) God"; in the worldview of those who believe in gods and spirits, it is not necessarily the product of a deranged mind, either. It could be a lying spirit--a concept found in paganism as well as the Abrahamic religions. i.e., there are alternate explanations."
And, even that would be, assuming the difference between lying spirits/actual God and a mixed bag of halucinations and mistaken experience is not functionally non-existent, something that can be studied, predicted upon. Even the lies would provide some form of consistancy that could yeild falsifiable predictions.
It's an interesting nit that you've picked, but it's a nitpick nonetheless. Science still has the scope to study that which actually exists.
Posted by: WingedBeast | Sep 04, 2012 at 01:48 PM
I think one of the challenges in falsifying or confirming the existence of a sentient being, is that the sentient being needs to co-operate. Leaving Gods aside for a minute, if you want to verify that my telephone number is 555-1234*, you could try dialing the number, but what if i don't feel like answering my phone? I might be in the shower. Or I might look at the caller ID and say to myself "oh, it's you again. i don't want to deal with you right now." and then I don't answer. no matter how many times you call, if i don't want to answer the phone, i won't. you might try looking it up online or in a phone book (good luck. how would you even know you got the right anonymous?), but I'm unlisted anyway.
and that's the case when we're on equal footing, as fellow humans. if we're positing an omniscient, omnipotent being, as some religions do, then surely the omnipotent being would have more advanced ways than caller id to avoid giving up the game that you're been dialling the right number. if God is more powerful than us and more clever than us, then we can only come up with a test of God's existence if God's willing to humour us. otherwise, God will only say "Here I am" when God wants to.
*not my real number
Posted by: Anonymus | Sep 04, 2012 at 03:37 PM
@Anonymus
Well, we can falsify that in that 555 is always a Directory Assistance number. Or, replacing that with your real number, we can call in other ways. But, bare in mind that your analogy is actually putting in mind a you that is actively refusing to allow evidence to be collected. You're not merely refraining from cooperation, here, but opposing. Hense, for that anlogy to work, God would have to oppose our ability to confirm God's existence.
If God is actively refusing to allow evidence to even be collected, I would posit that said God isn't the one most commonly described by Christians (Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnibenevolent, and with a desire for us to have a relationship with him) as said deity would be actively opposing a necessity of an actual relationship (that each party in the relationship know the other party exists). But, also, said God would be functionally equivilant to non-existant, meaning the world would act, for all parties except God, exactly as though God doesn't exist.
Bare in mind, Anonymous, you're positing a deity that is actively opposing information to any but those with whome he personally decides to say "Here I am" to. Not merely refraining from cooperating, but actively opposing so simple a thing as basic knowledge of how reality really works. Not only does this fail to take the existence of God out of the scope of science (assuming that was your intent), but it also paints God in a less than omnibenevolent light.
Posted by: WingedBeast | Sep 04, 2012 at 03:58 PM
When I believe in God, I believe in a benevolent one, but I don't believe in a God that wants a two-way personal relationship with me, but a God that wants me to have a one way relationship with God, for my own sake (and if such a relationship is not beneficial to me, then God wouldn't want me to sustain it in the way I've been going about it). I know that some atheists consider a belief in God to be detrimental, and I know that some of the ways that people go about practicing religion cause real, measurable harm. If there is a benevolent God, I imagine that God would prefer no relationship to a deterimental one. A benevolent God should be non intrusive, and not force God on people that don't want God in their lives. And this would be functionally equivalent from our perspective to there being no God at all.
I don't think people who believe in God are more or less favoured by this God than those who do not. I'm not sure I'd attribute not wanting to be found to spite. It might be a mercy. Or it might be a God that doesn't want to intrude, or doesn't want to sway us too much when we're making up our own minds.
I'm more positing a God that may actively not want to be found in this place and time, which may change at a later date. (I might answer the phone eventually, but I'll do it on my own schedule.) But if there is a God, the fact remains that most people, even most religious people have not been given 100% evidence that God exists. Instead, if they're lucky, they found something that resonated with them and helps them to be more of who they want to be. And if they're unlucky, they've been frightened into it.
We do, each and every human on this planet, have sufficient evidence that plants exist, so there's no debate about that. You couldn't claim not to believe in the existence of plants, because the evidence is staring you in the face every time you go outside. If there is a omnipotent, omniscient God, and that God wanted to be found, then that God could give us just as much evidence for God's existence as we have for trees and shrubs. But God hasn't done this. God might in the future, who knows. But here and now, God hasn't done this. Why? Well, either God doesn't exist or God doesn't want to give us evidence, or we haven't advanced far enough (mathematically, scientifically, etc.) to be able to appreciate the answer, but someday we may get there. How many millenia did it take for us to discover the number zero from the time we first came down from the trees? And then how much longer till we could do calculus? And then another 400 years to prove Fermat's last theorem! Where will we be mathematically in a thousand years? A God who doesn't want to be found right now might be indistinguishable from no God at all right now, but as science progresses that may change.
I'm human and the person I know best is myself, so I ask myself "If I weren't findable, why might that be?" Perhaps it's best that I'm not a deity, because in my case, the answer is usually because I don't want to be. Maybe I actively dislike someone, but an omnibenevolent God wouldn't, but also maybe I just don't feel like getting out of the shower to answer the phone. I don't think it's that God doesn't want to say "Here I am" to you personally, or to me for that matter, I think God says that to hardly anybody, maybe only to a few prophets from various religions separated in time by thousands of miles and years. Then they say "hey, this guy said "Here I am" and I'm pretty sure it was God" and it's up to us to weigh the evidence and decide whether to believe them or not, and even miracles are poor proof: once everyone dies who saw the miracle, who's to say what really happened? God would have to sustain a miracle for eternity to make sure everyone got a chance to see it and decide whether it was legit. (Is the work of a God, even an omnipotent one, affected by entropy when this God chooses to interact with our universe? Would the energy required to produce this everlasting miracle speed up the heat death of the universe? What would the effect be of a temporary suspension of the natural laws of physics? And even if omnipotence could get around this, there may yet be consequences beyond my ken.)
Or maybe this God likes riddles and wants us to solve a puzzle before the door opens. That puzzle may be to find an experiment to prove God's existence that God finds suitably clever and entertaining. I know that I appreciate intellectual problems better if I have to work a bit to get to the solution.
I do think science will find God someday, if God exists. But it can't happen unless God is a willing participant in being found. Anyway sorry for rambling. I've enjoyed reading this discussion, that's all, and wanted to chime in with something I hadn't seen mentioned.
Posted by: Anonymus | Sep 04, 2012 at 05:25 PM
//But, bare in mind that your analogy is actually putting in mind a you that is actively refusing to allow evidence to be collected. You're not merely refraining from cooperation, here, but opposing. Hense, for that anlogy to work, God would have to oppose our ability to confirm God's existence.//
I didn't get that from the analogy at all. If I don't answer my phone, it doesn't mean I want to frustrate your desire to confirm that you've got my number correct. It means my phone's buried under a pile of crap, or I'm in bed and can't get up quickly enough, or I don't have caller ID and fear it might be an unwanted call, or I've got my hands full either literally or metaphorically. In other words, I've got my own things going on that have nothing to do with your evidence-collection process.
Posted by: Nick Kiddle | Sep 04, 2012 at 06:04 PM
@ Nick Kiddle: "I didn't get that from the analogy at all. If I don't answer my phone, it doesn't mean I want to frustrate your desire to confirm that you've got my number correct. It means my phone's buried under a pile of crap, or I'm in bed and can't get up quickly enough, or I don't have caller ID and fear it might be an unwanted call, or I've got my hands full either literally or metaphorically. In other words, I've got my own things going on that have nothing to do with your evidence-collection process."
Which is perfectly acceptable for a mortal who is not omniscient and omnipotent.
It's also perfectly acceptable for a deity who may not be omniscient or omnipotent (I can't think of any right now - reeling from the double whammy of a nasty chronic sinus infection and an ear problem, but I know they're out there).
However, as far as the Abrahamic God-concept is derived, that isn't acceptable. If God is both omniscient and omnipotent, then God should never be overwhelmed in the way that you or I can be due to the chores of day-to-day life and unpredictable problems that arise and literally throw lives into disarray. If you concede that God is both, then the analogy falls apart. Admitting god is neither means the analogy can hold, but there are still other ways to test theistic entities; interacting with reality in some way would leave some evidence, unless the deity thought to hide it from us. And even then, if the deity wasn't omniscient or omnipotent, there's the chance they missed something, and we catch it anyway.
We could be playing hide-and-seek with a pantheon of non-omniscient, non-omnipotent deities who reveal themselves in small ways to a handful of people at a time. Of course, this is where Okham's Razor comes into play - rather than assuming it's a deity, the explanation that we already have evidence backing for is that it's something the individual created in their mind. A neurotypical brain is capable of adjusting its memories to reflect current input and stimuli, meaning that a neurotypical (and non-neurotypical, too, but I'm trying to avoid throwing non-neurotypical people under the bus here - something a lot of atheists could probably use practice at) brain will, if prompted, concoct memories whole-cloth. A brain regarded as being perfectly healthy still glitches; someone in deep sleep might dream they're experiencing an alien encounter and wake up believing with all their heart and soul that they did. They're not lying. They're not non-neurotypical. And then there's the impact of being in a crowd: we shouldn't trust multiple eye-witnesses to a UFO sighting or a Marian apparition anymore than we should when they're testifying against someone in court because they saw the defendant murder someone; being social creatures, our memories are manipulated and change according to what we experience from our peers. There's a lot about the brain that we don't understand, especially in the area of memory formation and storage, which matters the most when discussing experiences with otherworldly/supernatural entites, but because we know the brain is capable of doing these things, it's easier to go with existing evidence that points in that direction than it is to concoct something whole cloth and attach it, especially when there's no evidence supporting it.
For the curious as to why I'm using UFOs and aliens to draw parallels: I'm not using it in the mocking sense that I've seen some atheists use it as. I'm trying to draw parallels, and really, there are a lot of parallels to draw. I know at least one person who believes that god is an alien and holds that the ancient astronaut "hypothesis" is how life came about on Earth. And there's a key parallel anyone familiar with science fiction will recognize: show me an alien civilization that can carry out stellar engineering, stabilize wormholes with negative energy for travel, construct Dyson shells around stars, terraform worlds, create life neogenetically, create Krasnikov tubes to facilitate FTL travel and use zero-point energy with a hefty amount of helping high advanced nano, pico and femtotech - possibly even atto and plancktech (if such things are possible), and I'll show you a civilization of what might as well be gods.
Posted by: J Enigma (the Transhumanist!) | Sep 05, 2012 at 03:02 PM
It's also perfectly acceptable for a deity who may not be omniscient or omnipotent (I can't think of any right now - reeling from the double whammy of a nasty chronic sinus infection and an ear problem, but I know they're out there).
*Points at Thor and Shango references*
*Expresses appropriate sympathy for @#$%&! sinus infection suffering.*
Posted by: Lonespark | Sep 05, 2012 at 03:14 PM
interacting with reality in some way would leave some evidence, unless the deity thought to hide it from us. And even then, if the deity wasn't omniscient or omnipotent, there's the chance they missed something, and we catch it anyway.
This makes me think of scientific adventure tales of hunting for shy, nefarious, or prank-pulling deities.
Posted by: Lonespark | Sep 05, 2012 at 03:16 PM
and I'll show you a civilization of what might as well be gods.
One of many reasons I love DS9 so much. It's a both/and universe. The Prophets are aliens and they are (some people's) deities, and they can be both and the characters can grapple with that.
Supehero (and other) comics sometimes have this going on, too, but usually in a less scifi way.
Posted by: Lonespark | Sep 05, 2012 at 03:21 PM
Crap.
Have I unscrewed my italics?
Posted by: Lonespark | Sep 05, 2012 at 03:22 PM
@Lonespark: Have I unscrewed my italics?
We went back and closed the italics tag in the original comment.
Posted by: The Board Administration Team | Sep 05, 2012 at 03:43 PM
I took a short course on Process Theology last year (UU churches have the best extracurricular activities!), and so I'm no longer sure I believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent deity. It's a "pick any two" situation. Process theology suggests that the one that should go is "omnipotent", with us humans standing in as God's hands and feet. So, perhaps, when God's phone rings, it's us who needs to answer it? Like Si's in the kitchen and Hir phone is on the couch, ringing, and Si is yelling "yo, one of you folks in the living room, answer that me-damned phone, would you?"
Posted by: Mike Timonin | Sep 05, 2012 at 06:13 PM
I never believed in an omnipotent, omniscient, onmibenevolent deity. In my religious upbringing the 'three omnis' were omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. Which made sense to me because the Old Testament makes perfectly clear that God isn't OMNIbenevolent.
I didn't encounter omnibenevolence as a claimed attribute for God until I was an adult.
Posted by: cjmr | Sep 05, 2012 at 07:29 PM
I feel like omnipotence automatically contradicts omnibenevolence. How could it not?
Posted by: Lonespark | Sep 05, 2012 at 08:14 PM
Well, one possibility is that an omnipotent, -benevolent god who wasn't also omniscient might be afraid of the consequences of using zir power. When you have eternity to observe the consequences, I can imagine that such a being might be paralyzed by the uncertainty of not knowing how zir divine intervention would turn out. The burden might just be too much.
Of course, being omnipotent, surely such a being could make zirself omniscient, so I don't know if that works. But an omnipotent being could also, if zhe chose, make zirself omnibenevolent.
But omnipotence is a weird term, in any case. You pretty much have to qualify it. Most theologians, for example, will limit omnipotence to the logically possible* and I think most implicitly limit God's ability to change his nature.
*I don't actually know if this is necessary. I think you could have a lot of fun in which the rules of logic are simply contingent on divine will. Writing a story about, say, mathematicians in such a world, or simply mathematicians who believed they lived in such a world, could be fascinating. I believe there's a theory in Islamic theology that posits this, but I can't remember its name. The implications are, to me, fascinating.
Posted by: Leum | Sep 05, 2012 at 09:38 PM
God would have to sustain a miracle for eternity to make sure everyone got a chance to see it and decide whether it was legit.
Human minds working the way they do, anything that stands around for an eternity will be considered a mundane, natural part of the universe. The entire universe may be such a miracle that we don't see because it's all around us.
Posted by: Dragoness Eclectic | Sep 06, 2012 at 11:02 AM
Human minds working the way they do, anything that stands around for an eternity will be considered a mundane, natural part of the universe. The entire universe may be such a miracle that we don't see because it's all around us.
Yes. This.
May I quote you?
Posted by: Lonespark | Sep 06, 2012 at 01:34 PM
@Dragoness Eclectic. True, in which case we're right back where we started. Either the miracle is of long duration and is thus just how the universe works, or it is of short duration and limited to a small group of people, and can thus be discounted by anyone who wasn't there because hey David Copperfield does miracles all the time too and no one thinks he's the messiah.
honestly, if the perfection that surrounds us arose from random chaos with no divine help, then that's all the more miraculous and awe inspiring and wonderful. glory and thanks to our creator can be easily exchanged for glory and thanks to the sequence of random events that brought for life and beauty out of a sea of random molecules. how wonderful it is that this multiverse is here! that our planet is habitable (for the time being) that there are trees with leaves that rustle and a canopy of stars across the night sky, each one a time machine giving us a picture of what a distant corner of the universe looked like millions of years ago. how wonderful our multiverse is, how awe inspiring the natural forces that surround us, how lucky we are!
Joy and delight! Wonder and awe! We are alive! We are sentient! We are here! If there is no God to be the object of my adoration, the fragrance of the earth after the rain will suffice!
Posted by: Anonymus | Sep 06, 2012 at 02:23 PM
For this miracle of long or eternal duration. There is a HUUUUUUUUUUGE difference between "fills one with wonder and awe" and "provides evidence for the existence of God." Even mundane evidence would be, you know, evidence.
Example: If, after every day in which a person prays, said person wakes up with a card under the pillow (or equivilant depending upon circumstances) explaining the answer to said prayer in detail, that would be a sustained miracle that would, very quickly, become a mundane part of life. It would be the every-day. "Oh, great, he said 'no' again." Yet this would be strong evidence of a very powerful supernatural prayed-to entity.
Would it still be possible to doubt? Yes. But, not all doubts are the same, otherwise go join Ken Ham at the creationist museum.
That's one of the things I tend to find difficult about discussions of evidence. Miracles get mixed up with feelings and, then anything that invokes those feelings becomes evidence of God. I feel the same moment of calm awe when suddenly noticing a uniquely perfect sunset that other people do. I just don't attribute that to God. Similarly, evidence that doesn't feel miraculous would still be evidence.
Posted by: WingedBeast | Sep 06, 2012 at 03:21 PM
Yes. It would be trivially easy for any competent deity to provide unambiguous evidence of zir existence. The fact that such evidence is not forthcoming suggests that (a) no such deity exists, or (b) the deity doesn't care whether or not we believe, or (c) something more complicated which I can't think of right now.
TRiG.
Posted by: Timothy (TRiG) | Sep 06, 2012 at 06:11 PM
@Mike Timonin,
Another vote here for process theology... I think that omniscience is overrated too... God may not know the future, because it hasn't happened yet (duh). Though if we live in a multiverse, what the future means might get kind of complicated.
Posted by: Rupaul | Sep 06, 2012 at 11:06 PM