What if there is no God?

Occasionally, we all get asked the question: Do you believe*** in God?

Lots of people have no problem answering this: Yes.

Others, such as myself, are tempted to answer the question with a question: What do you mean by "God?" That has been my strategy for many years, but now I'm beginning to think it misses the issue.

Let me put aside those who define "God" any way they like and assert that they "believe" in whatever that is. That boils down to linguistics- a dispute about words. **

The important issue is whether you believe in the God described in the major "theistic" religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam.) This, in turn, is a question of whether you accept the mythology, theology and rituals of the given religion (whether or not you actually participate.)

So, if your answer to the key question is "no," then you are claiming that all the actions based on religious motives are based on nothing. For example, prayer is pointless, building cathedrals is pointless, "faith" is nothing but hope, and religious wars are over nothing. For example, the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre was about nothing:

The massacre began in the night of 23–24 August 1572, the eve of the feast of Bartholomew the Apostle, two days after the attempted assassination of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, the military and political leader of the Huguenots. King Charles IX ordered the killing of a group of Huguenot leaders, including Coligny, and the slaughter spread throughout Paris. Lasting several weeks in all, the massacre expanded outward to the countryside and other urban centres. Modern estimates for the number of dead across France vary widely, from 5,000 to 30,000.

It's easy to add to this example. Religion (supposedly about nothing) has been behind mass slaughter for centuries - much of this documented in the Old Testament. The crusades would make no sense without serious, literal belief in "Christianity," including the doctrine of eternal life. Most recently, the religious "right-wing" in the United States backs Israel because the return of the Jews to the "Holy Land" is a necessary step to the Apocalypse - when the dead shall rise and be judged. American support of Israel led directly to the 9/11 attacks. and decades of war in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Such wars were partially justified as a conflict of civilizations - the civilizations being Christian and Muslim.

My point is simple: "beliefs" are not neutral. Our acts in the world are real. What we think we are doing directly impacts the "real world."*

On a personal level, if you don't believe in God, you need to ask about how the policies and actions of the "believers" around you are based on (according to you) nothing. For example, God's "policies" feature prominently in arguments against abortion. Abortion is real. We must have the courage to call BS on those who claim to "know" what some imaginary being "wants." The kindest way to view "faith" is that it's a systematic self-delusion. 

We are also left responsible for building a whole ethical structure without reference to the big religions. We tend to coast along on the coattails of what we imagine religions teach.  There is no eternal life. There is no divine judgment. It is left to us to define laws and consequences. "Justice" is up to us. Sadly, our track record is not great. However, our track record is horrible in times when religion totally dominated the discussion. For example, the scriptures have never had a problem with infanticide, war or slavery. "Scriptures" are unequivocal in their opposition to equal rights for women. The list can be expanded endlessly.

There is an alternative based loosely on the Buddhist perspective. All this "God stuff" is made up. But suffering is real. We should base our actions and our laws on the idea that we should reduce suffering. Of course, the devil is in the details - a problem you have with any policy based on facts rather than fantasy.

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*This insight dawned on me during a dialogue with my wife's nephew about climate change. I have gradually been drawn into realizing how beliefs influence policies to overhaul modern society from the ground up. The same can be said about the beliefs of those who resist such changes.

**So-called "proofs" that God exists don't really change things. People who accept these proofs tend to be "believers" to begin with. To those who are sceptical, such "proofs" are unconvincing. 

***The argument here does not depend on any particular concept of "belief." It's about what people think is going on as it affects and justifies their actions.

Dennett and Dawkins Grapple With Death

D&D dance around the terrible reality of death.

It's fascinating to watch two of the world's leading atheists grapple with the big issue that religion supposedly deals with. Typically, Dawkins waxes eloquent, firing off an impressive display of wordy fireworks that almost makes you forget what he's talking about.

We see them both grasping for "big ideas" that make life make sense. To my mind, they both avoid what Buddha saw: that suffering is inevitable. Suffering must be faced head-on. The "self" is ephemeral. All things come to an end.

What D&D are doing is making death part of a grand and compelling story, which is exactly what "religion" does.

Death is a terrible tragedy. Is it not possible to face it without fear, without rationalization?

Assimilation and Atheism 101

Interesting discussion between leading atheists 
Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Ayaan Hirsi Ali

A wide-ranging discussion of subtle issues with atheism, including an unusually subtle treatment of why people accept religion - the process of assimilation and the difficulty in freeing people from assimilation.

• Risks associated with criticizing Islam;
• When to take the gloves off - being polite to people who have been indoctrinated;
• Vetting the authorities;
• How liberal kids get assimilated to radical Islam;
• Sam Harris speaks eloquently about the powerful meme of Islam;
• Dawkins doesn't understand that everyone doesn't think like he does;
• Dennett refers to the "narrative arc" in TV shows and movies, which primes a person for assimilation;
• The appeal of Islam to intelligent, liberal women;
• Ali calls Islam a form of madness;
• Dennett compares crime committed for religious reasons with drunk driving
• Harris points out that religious delusion is excluded in DSM 
• Are religious people just lazy;
• Dennett makes the important point that religious people "just go along", they are not intellectuals;
• Harris makes the point that theologians are not lazy. Making sense of religion is hard work;
• Dawkins is unsympathetic - regards believers has having their ears stopped up;
• Harris points out that crazy Christians understand crazy Muslims better than atheists do. Atheists don't take belief seriously;
• Ali points out realization of individual identity as a core challenge to Islam. "Submission to Allah" is basically surrender of individuality;
• Dawkins makes a similar point about the depth and scope of the "bossiness" of religion, far beyond reason. Why do religions make things so hard for believers?
• Dennett points out the parallel between religious hokum and "viral" memes - "infectious stupidity". 
• Dawkins- quotes Chesterton- when people stop believing in religion, they don't believe in nothing - they believe in anything;
• Harris makes the point that, for example, there is nothing in Science to fill the "Santa Clause Hole";

The discussion is continued without Ayann, adding Christopher Hitchens

• doubt - the idea that doubts are "normal";
• faith - nice discussion of how belief without evidence becomes evidence and a barrier to further evidence;
• Dennett calls it all a "bag of tricks" - cons could be used to sustain anything;
• Harris points out how easy it is for Christians to spot the "bag of tricks" in other religions;
• Theology is like stamp collecting - theologians "take in each other's laundry";
• Dawkins again displays his lack of appreciation of myth;
• Dennett confusing myth with metaphor;
• Harris points out the pride of religious people when they maintain their faith in spite of the "hammer blows" that destroy all its premises;
• Dennett complains that the professionals "know better" but the problem with the flock is that they have ceded authority to the professionals. The buck stops with the professionals. The pastor's job is to know what he's talking about;
• How is scientific authority different from religious authority? Competitiveness, structure of the discipline, predictions, puzzles vs. mysteries, glorification of "mystery";
• giving up the demand for intuitive understanding; 
• religious moves are not allowed in debates. For example, if you say this is just what I believe, you disqualify yourself from the debate;
• Harris: "Is there a single sentence in the Bible or Koran that shows it's not a work of a human author?" If these are not "magic books", Christianity and Islam collapse.

Of Dawkins and Isaiah

A friend writes ...

You know that I am an atheist, or at best, an agnostic, ...I should like to go back to the simple belief I had in childhood, ... I am a product of a 'church' primary school, and the knowledge base, plus the experience of ritual is there. Nevertheless, I find that my mind has rejected Christianity, along with organised religion en mass

Because I place myself in what I call the "Christian Tradition", my readers often assume that I'm obligated to defend "Christianity" and they expect me to attempt to "convert" them. This is very far from the case. I was born into this tradition. I cannot change that any more than I can transform myself into a zebra.

The Christian Tradition goes back at least 3,500 years. We find ourselves at one particular point in its unfolding history. Because it is the very nature of "religion" to pretend that it is the guardian of eternal truth, the historical nature of its dogma is routinely swept under the carpet. Ordinary people often assume that current dogma is the same as dogma of 2,000 years ago and will remain the same for the foreseeable future.

This is far from the case, as I will illustrate in a moment.

The other thing that people often fail to appreciate is that most of us in the Western democracies are born into the Christian Tradition. We have no choice about this. We absorb the assumptions and priorities of the Tradition with our mother's milk. We dig ourselves more firmly into the Tradition as we grow up, even by our choice of the elements of the Tradition that we chose to reject.

My dear friend assumes that her skeptical attitude toward God excludes her from the Christian Tradition. Not so. The idea of God was certainly the central idea in the Old Testament and it still looms large. However, it has long since lost its central importance in the history of Western thought.

Personally, I regard belief in God or doubt about His existence as totally unimportant. Readers of this blog will have no problem determining what I do regard as important, but I digress ...

Our idea of God (as opposed to the one in may other worthy traditions)  appears in the Old Testament as an innovation in many respects:

• The number of Gods is reduced to just ONE
• The One God is responsible for everything including what we would now call physics, cosmology, biology and even human morality
• God appears in history in contrast to other gods who appear "once upon a time"
• God is chiefly concerned with the doings and fate of Israel
• Gods favors are dispensed and punishments meted out to Israel as a whole because of the special relationship God has with Israel. God does not concern himself with private morality except possibly in the case of Kings. Entire societies are viciously punished by God for the simple sin of not being Israel.
• Israel's relationship with God is the number one priority. THE most important thing going on in the Universe. Appeasement of this God has a lot do do with ritual sacrifice -- an idea we will find in may other traditions, including the Aztecs, who thought that the gods required massive human sacrifice.

This would have been just one more crazy tribal idea except that the Israelites started writing everything down in about 1,200 BC. There is good reason to suppose that the stories we read in the Bible are much older, with echoes all the way back to the Babylonians in 2500 BC, but I digress ...

In the subsequent 3,500 year history of the tradition, all of the above ideas have been thrown overboard.

• The number of Gods has been reduced to zero or, in some cases, a tiny shadow of a spirit that hides in unexplored places.
• God has been successively kicked out of responsibility for everything. Galileo tossed the Church out of Astronomy. Darwin kicked the Church out of biology and relegated Genesis to "once upon a time" and so on. When it comes to His authority over moral conduct, His mention has been flushed out of the legal codes that govern our conduct. 
• Jesus expanded God's concern from Israel to all mankind and made it personal. This completely revises the theory of morality in our Tradition.
• The God of Jesus was no longer interested in ritual sacrifice or rituals of any sort. He was interested in calling forth the best in each individual. Of course, many people just could not let the idea go without one last, big sacrifice.
• Those who now regard their personal relationship with God as their number one priority are now regarded as a quirky minority by the rest of us. God is no longer important.

When, for many, the New Testament overshadowed the old, the importance of Israel was also demoted in the grand scheme of things. It is sometimes missed that the God of the Old Testament is imagined to be the creator who holds special regard to Israel. In effect, the fact that Israel regarded itself as special among nations created the God of the Old Testament (see Truman Show for more about this idea). The New Testament imagines man (in general) to be in centre stage and, not surprisingly, God as the supernatural being who looks down upon the stage and cares about what happens to human beings, especially individual human beings. As our ideas about what is important in the Universe shift, so do our ideas about what, if anything, we mean by God. These days, we see ourselves as a tiny phenomenon appearing in a blink of an eye on the cosmic scale. It is not surprising that our image of God is undergoing a corresponding adjustment.

During the past 2000 years, there have been many twists and turns along the way, such as the ongoing attempt of the Catholic Church to substitute itself for God and the attempt by the Reformation to substitute worship of the Bible for worship of God, along with the slaughter of millions of innocent people in the last 3,500 years who found themselves praying to the wrong God. I have also skipped over the important influence of the Greeks and Romans, but this is not a history lesson.

The point here is that, out of everything that has happened on the planet, we select a certain thread of history as "ours".  "Christian" is not a bad name for the thread I was born into. You may pick a different name for your thread. The most significant event in my history was the arrival of Jesus. There are still a lot of people who cannot really accept that He was a human being like the rest of us. Although it has taken a long time to sink it, He signalled the beginning our our realization that, for better or for worse, we are on our own.

But THIS realization is also part of our tradition! Dawkins and Darwin are as much part of our tradition as Moses and Isaiah. Hiroshima is our Jericho  Our tortured attempts to answer the ultimate questions of life continues beyond the New Testament into the history of Europe and our painful attempts to confront our needs for justice, wisdom and purpose as the ideas of the "Book" became less and less relevant.

I sometimes fantasize that at some time in the far distant future, somebody will add a history of America to the sad tales of the Old Testament. This nation was born squarely in the centre of our tradition and had a chance to re-think all our values and assumptions from the ground up. In spite of this, its Constitution recognized no individual human rights whatsoever but did recognize the property rights of slave holders to their human farm machinery. Like Israel, the people of this nation see themselves as "exceptional". Like Israel, they inflict terrible harm on others for the crime of not being American. Americans themselves have paid a ghastly price for their inability to find the moral footing they had every right to expect in their Christian Traditions.

There is no "right" and "wrong" in history. There is only participation.  We can only make the attempt to grasp how we got here and what we can do to shape our future. If we refuse to see ourselves as fellow travellers along this particular journey, we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past instead of facing up to the unique circumstances we face. Our traditions should teach us that wrong choices can be lead to terrible consequences. Even if everybody has the best of intentions, catastrophe may lurk around the next corner.