| Personal thoughts--Religion and lack thereof |
[Jun. 1st, 2009|10:58 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  peaceful | ] |
I'm kind of surprised by how quickly I've moved from being nonreligious into pretty settled nonbelief. It's been on my mind a lot, especially since, once you start walking around thinking of yourself an agnostic/atheist (a distinction I'll return to later), you VERY quickly start seeing how much religion and irrationality permeate American culture. I am an extremely introspective person by nature, and I'm even faintly troubled by how I seem to have taken to this like a duck to water. Ironically, I'm wary of unexamined beliefs, and I'm unwilling to be hypocritical as to my own.
I went to church as a kid, lost my religiosity when I was 18, but I kept believing in god for the next twelve years. Up until a few months ago, actually. I've a co-worker who's a committed god-botherer, who home-schools his children because, apparently, public schools are only good for teaching things like liberalism and evolution. What could I do but promptly up my intake of science and evolution books, podcasts, and personal research. I do like to leave evolution books out on my desk for all to see, of course.
The more and more I learn about our universe and life on our planet, as a result of this, the more aware I’ve become that no aspect of existence requires any sort of god to explain it. In effect, science asks the question, "if we take as a hypothesis that a universe contains no god, no supernatural influence whatsoever, that it came into existence and continues to exist under knowable laws, in what ways would it be different than our own?" The answer, thus far, is "none at all."
In fact, if we were to assume that universal laws allowed an omnipotent being to create and design life, to set the heavens in their course a bare handful of millennia ago, to intervene at need based on the supplication of its inhabitants, that the laws and characteristics of such a universe would actually be measurably different from what we observe. While one cannot DISPROVE the existence of god, there's no reason to think that the converse is true. God could easily prove itself, were it theoretically inclined.
To me, the only theistic hypothesis that makes sense is to believe that god created the universe and everything in it for the express purpose of actively deceiving its inhabitants as to its nature, and this seems to me cruel and pointless. Bill Hicks said it first and best: "Dinosaurs? 'God put those there to test our faith!' Doesn't it bother you...that GOD...is F***ING with your head!?"
The only other theory that seems to me at all plausible is what’s termed “God of the Gaps,” wherein he invisibly works in the gaps of scientific knowledge, tweaking and influencing but leaving no fingerprints behind. But, this kind of thinking doesn’t give god much elbow room these days. At this point he has one foot in the first few seconds after the big bang, and the other in the origin of self-replicating organic chemistry. Everything else has either been placed firmly in the realm of the known or is being so furiously researched that there's emphatically no need to give up and ascribe it to god--there's no reason to assume such things are UNKNOWABLE. But if science gets asymptotically close to proving the utter materiality of the universe, and god is pushed further and further back into the ineffable, and what's the functional difference between that and atheism?
That's kind of one question I've been mulling over. There is an entire spectrum of irreligiosity, from a very weak agnosticism barely more skeptical than "spiritual but not religious" to the hard-core denialists. I know where I stand--while absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, it still leaves no affirmative reason to believe a god of any kind exists. I choose to forgo the emotional and existential comforts of belief. I could be wrong; my beliefs could be disproven at any time. I doubt my co-worker could say the same. And honestly? It's not a belief. It's just taking the null hypothesis on the god question.
I find the question of the Gold in the Dark to be particularly compelling. All of us humans are in a dark room, filled with heavy, metal objects, searching for the one lamp or candlestick or bookend which is made of pure gold, with no way to know whether what we hold is or isn’t of value. I wonder—why should we be convinced that there is one to be found? Because we are told as children? Because we are afraid to leave the room empty-handed? I don’t know that there is one, or that they aren’t all gold. There’s no way to know, and I find it actually rather soothing not to stress out about what can’t be resolved.
Technically I suppose that makes me an agnostic. Up until a few weeks ago, I'd have agreed--the question of god is unknowable. But there's a social aspect of it as well--tell someone you're agnostic, and they assume you haven't made up your mind yet. I'm not ambivalent; I'm just not playing the game. Nobody ever asks you "Do you believe there is no God?" (A: I don't know.) It's always "Do you believe in God," which implicitly asks "Are you on my side of the belief question, since if I didn't believe in god I'd have no reason to ask you." To say "yes" is false. To say "no" is to be contrarian to society and culture.
I'm actually considering a tattoo. Unfortunately atheism has an unavoidable dearth of iconography. I want something to stake out my position. Richard Dawkins is actually sponsoring an "out" campaign. The parallels are hilarious...nobody ever asks a person "are you heterosexual." It's the default assumption until indicated otherwise. I am starting to understand why some gay people are "flaming." Maybe they're not wanting to recruit (and how do I hate that homophobic accusation) or to flaunt, they just don't want to be assumed as something they're not; they don't want to "pass," as it were. I don't want to pass as a theist. I'm actually worried about coming out to my parents, religious as they are. I'm sure they must have some idea, but we haven't talked about it. (Truly, truly funny parallels.)
Don’t get me wrong, you can’t swing a dead cat in skeptical circles without hitting atheists who are elitist, confrontational, rude, embittered and did I mention elitist? I don’t want to be that, even though I have taken offense from time to time. Most recently I called out my own aunt in front of everyone for forwarding around a religiously-themed email glurge which concluded by saying “if you agree forward this, but if you disagree I don’t want you to reply, just delete it.” Talk about hypocrisy. But I really don’t want to be “that guy.” I have a position that I have arrived at through much thought and consideration. (What a theist would invariably call “through much prayer and contemplation.) I want others to allow me to be content with it, but also that they would know it about me and that I’m not simply on the fence about this, or that they’re likely to get me to come around. I think if you’ve got a scarlet “A” on your arm, that doesn’t bespeak a wavering conviction.
I still haven't settled on the tattoo idea, until I'm done thinking critically about the subject in the first place. (In addition to my philosophy that body alteration of any kind deserves long reflection) I think the reason I'm wary of myself is that it is difficult to subjectively tell the difference between my own thoughts and a nonrational CONVERSION EXPERIENCE. I've always accepted science as valid. I've never believed, even as a child, in the literal truth of scripture. Skepticism seems natural to me, and since I've stopped trying to sustain an unsupported hypothesis on the god question, I feel like I can finally breathe. Ironically, the sensation when I contemplate that our planet, life, humanity itself is incalculably small, accidental, and finite--I feel a sense of peace and tranquility that I used to call "the presence of God."
But religions and novel belief systems have a tendency to make people's minds "click" into new modes of thought. Evangelical Christianity absolutely uses it. Everything about "letting the Savior into your heart" and "accepting Christ" is designed to trigger that personality shift. They don't believe that it's psychological; they believe that God himself is literally tinkering with your mind and your heart. That's why they liken it to being born, only, you know, "again," since you're already walking, talking and whatnot. Incidentally, cults and fringe religions like Scientology that depend on recruitment do the same, some of them with unsettling sophistication.
I don't want to "snap" into atheism, I want it to be the logical conclusion of a lifetime of experiences and a valid body of scientific, verifiable knowledge. I have no intention of being born-again godless. I don't feel the need to proselytize (except inasmuch as I'd like to be respected for my nonbelief. The only "belief" system that polls worse than Islam among Christians is mine.) In the final analysis, I suppose that my concerns may be somewhat exacerbated by the territory I find myself in. Perhaps it's not too much to reserve a bit of skepticality about skepticism, and to be a bit agnostic about Atheism. I could do worse--I doubt very much that a Christian convert worries overmuch about internal contradictions of the Bible as they sit down to doggedly read it front to back, or if a Scientology recruit questions the wisdom of signing checks to pay for the self-help classes. |
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