A House of Cards
September 28, 2007
justjim asked Darque: “I would like to know where your enmity for religious faith comes from. What happened to you? Certainly it’s more than just a humanistic love of reason.”
I quickly discovered that this topic spawned enough material for a new article.
Don’t discount “Love of Reason” - Her evil bastard step-sister “Stupidity” is as dark and chilling as “Reason” is bright and warm. “Hatred of Stupidity” and “Love of Reason” are two sides to the same coin.
Stupidity is Purposeful Ignorance. Everyone is ignorant - remaining ignorant despite the bright light of Reason is stupidity.
Christianity is a house of cards, and the table on which this house is built is the concept of God. This table appears pretty stable - no challenger can rationally make a positive claim that God does not exist.
At first glance, this would suggest that God MUST be true - no challenge to God’s Existence can survive unscathed, so there MUST be some truth to this matter. It is at this point that a theistic religion is able to “hook” an individual and build on top of this theory. We’ve come to the conclusion that God must exist, and we start building on that conclusion. We ask questions, and we get answers. Where did we come from? God built us. After he created the Earth, he built Man of the Earth, then built Woman of of Man. Why do we suffer? Woman brought Sin into the world. How can I avoid suffering? Be Good! Why do I still suffer? Ask Job! God works in Mysterious Ways! Keep the Faith or what you think is suffering will seem like paradise compared to what you will face!
Pile on the stories! Spend days, weeks, months, years learning about God and his amazing abilities. Learn about the consequences for failure to believe. Learn about the rewards for the Faithful. Condemn, denounce, harass, and suppress those who deny or attempt to sway your belief - you know the penalties for disbelief, so anyone who attempts to sway you away from that belief must be evil and doesn’t deserve to enjoy God’s Gift.
But, let’s go back to the origin of this tale: We understand that there can be no positive claim against God’s existence, and we’ve concluded that God must exist because of that.
Is this really true?
What about a claim that there is a teapot in orbit around Pluto? Certainly we can say that WE’VE never sent a teapot to orbit Pluto, but does that mean there isn’t one?
How about the claim that there is an invisible, non-corporeal dragon living in my garage? Can we make a positive claim that this dragon does not exist?
Suddenly, we realize that just because we can’t disprove something does not mean that something actually exists. We can create any number of situations that cannot be refuted. We can create contradictory situations, neither of which can be refuted. Clearly, these situations cannot both be true…
But, we have a problem - our Faith puts up roadblocks - we’ve spent years studying about false prophets, and we know the punishment for listening to them. We’ve come to fear Satan’s influence, and we’ve associated anything that contradicts God as part of Satan. We’ve built an incredibly complex wall of interlocking stories and experiences. We’ve become a part of these stories, passing them down to our children, sharing them with our friends. We’ve created additional stories - we tell about the time that God protected us from a major accident by turning the light red at just the right time, or provided a good Samaritan to help us in our time of need.
All of us know about Satan’s influence, we are all guarding against it by jumping on the slightest hint of dissent from the common belief.
We learn to trust our Faith more than our Rationality. We circumcise our kids - mutilating sensitive organs - just because the group says that it normal. But, we also denounce the tribal ritual of inserting a plate in the lower lip, or stretching the neck with a dozen metal rings, or purposefully scarring children with hundreds of tiny cuts as a right of passage to adulthood. Piercing the ears is OK, but not the tongue, lip, eyebrow, nose, cheek…
We trust that our traditions more than our own perceptions. We condemn people who tell us our stories are incorrect.
We are living in a strange, 1984-esque world where reality is as we say it is, and not how we actually see it. We see that the emperor is naked, but we don’t dare say it aloud.
Unlike the parable of the naked emperor, though, the innocent little boy isn’t redeemed for saying the emperor is naked - the emperor has him stoned, and although the townspeople each agree with the boy, they kill him anyway, just to avoid the appearance of disagreeing with the groupthink.
What I have just described is the pure essence of stupidity. The willingness to not only accept Bullshit, but to call it a T-Bone Steak.
As an Atheist, I see myself in the little boy. I ask myself “Why?” and every answer comes back to “Because someone else said it was so”
I look at this house of cards, and even as it comes crashing down in front of my eyes, people keep trying to build it back up on the same shaky table of God’s Existence. I see several major religions and dozens of sects, each claiming to be the Right Way to a God that can’t be differentiated from a can of headlight fluid. I see people killing, dying, tormenting themselves and each other over a fiction they themselves are creating.
What am I to do? I am effectively powerless to show people my understanding - I’ll be branded a heretic, a blasphemer, a satanist. I’m completely frustrated.
I see the various sects and major religions justifying the escalation of their conflicts by invoking the name of an entity who can’t even be demonstrated to exist. Yet this question doesn’t even enter the minds of the combatants and their leaders - the furthest they are even able to question God is “Does His plan include our success?” and the only answer consistent with their beliefs is “Yes”.
This is where my enmity for religious faith comes from. It is ignited of the purposeful ignorance of Religion, and fueled by every action brought about by that stupidity.
Comments
9 Responses to “A House of Cards”
Got something to say?
-
Atheist Blogroll
Good idea, Rivalarrival. My answer on the other post to this question made me wonder: JustJim assumed that I must have some personal reason to have such animosity towards religion, but I just don’t. I’ve found that all the academic reasons for being atheist - including these you’ve listed here, from Russell’s Teapot to the Emperor’s New Clothes - are more than enough to conclude that there is no god. And if there is no god, then the church - all churches, regardless of denomination, as well as synagogues and mosques and all the rest - are systems built upon one crucial and fundamental lie. That they’re adorned with cruelty and lies later on is another good reason, I think, but even those are secondary to that one initial false premise of god.
So I don’t need a personal story to have animosity towards both their fictional god and the corrupt institutions built to honor him. I wasn’t child-raped by a priest, I didn’t have my family murdered by a religious zealot, I wasn’t raised in a fundamentalist backwoods cult - I didn’t have anything of the sort.
But what about the rest of you? While I don’t think I’m the only one who’s come to this conclusion objectively, there might be a few with very personal reasons for their atheism. Take this opportunity to share with us, if you feel comfortable doing so, and we’ll take the opportunity to show that we atheists can be a caring and compassionate crowd.
Nice post. Thank you.
Was it Voltaire that said if God did not exsist it would be neccesary to invent him.
Do you deny the possibility of something greater then the collective mind of man, even though Plato in his allegory of the cave clearly shows the limit of man’s perception?
No, it’s impossible to deny that there’s something bigger and better than us, Students of the Seven Seals. What I deny is that the mere possibility is worth worshiping. What I deny is that that possibility is enough to merit religion.
SotSS,
Darque’s response hits the nail on the head. The dragon in my garage and the orbital teapot are possibilities as well. If you feel the mere possibility of God is sufficient to worship him, why do you not also worship the Dragon or the Teapot?
Dogma.
My personal reason?
Both of my parents were fundamentalists, I didn’t believe a word of their crock (after around the age of 8-10…). This meant that every slight and injury they visited on me in the name of god was unacceptable and cruel, and based on a lie.
But I wouldn’t say that’s the only reason to hate religion. I think it is sufficient to condemn religion for:
Ruining the advancement of science for centuries, and thus causing shorter more painful lives for millions (billions?) of people, up to and including the present day.
Declaring senseless wars in the name of a lie, again causing millions of deaths and backsliding of advancement of the human race.
Declaring witch-hunts and other such interventions to hunt out people that believed different lies or didn’t believe the lies at all. Again, ruinous.
And so on.
But what you asked about was my personal reason.
I was raised to believe I was inferior.
I was raised to believe that my sufferings (I am far from healthy, and life was certainly not pleasant) were to atone for some imagined slight I had given god.
I was raised to hate people for being homosexual, atheist, deviant, ah, you know the rest.
If that’s not good enough, fuck you.
That’s horrible, Alpha Orionis - what people do to indoctrinate children is just awful. They hide their sinister lessons in kid’s songs, in nursery rhymes, in holidays, in family rituals - never do they tell the poor kid just what the options are, or what the negative aspects of religion are, although as you can testify, sooner or later they might realize just what the childhood indoctrination is all about.
I’ve marveled that these people say and do so much, allegedly, for the children - much of it that has nothing to do with kids at all, from censorship to monitored purchases. Then there’s the age limits on driving, owning firearms, smoking, getting tattoos, drinking, voting. Most telling, we don’t convict children of virtually any crimes (except in the most unusual circumstances). The courts consider children to be unable to form the necessary intent to commit a crime. They can’t be convicted of burglary or assault or rape, because intent is a crucial element of any crime - you have to mean it, and legally speaking, kids aren’t mature enough to logically form an intent worth punishing. They can’t be trusted with anything dangerous, anything explosive or corrosive or lethal.
And yet religion is crammed down their throats long before they form the objectivity and critical thinking skills necessary to evaluate their “faith.” I look forward to the day when bringing a child to church is as socially unacceptable as giving that kid a scotch on the rocks and a Camel cigarette.
Until then, we’re there for you, Alpha Orionis. You’re better off for having realized - especially so early on - that religion is a choice, not something parents irrevocable bestow upon a child. Good for you - you beat their system of childhood indoctrination, and you’re a better person for it.
I know this sounds corny, but I actually applauded when I read your response.
If I were a more religious person, I’d say your soul had been saved - not literally, from any imaginary devil or god, but metaphorically, from the clutches of fundamentalism and religion. Now your “soul” is yours to do with as you see fit.
** “God” does not exist **
There’s no need to agree with theists or deists or agnostics that gods’ non-existence can not be established. Can the negation of an existential claim be proved? Sure. Yaweh, God, and Allah simply do not exist because they can not exist.
Above there’s a good encapsulation of a totally unnecessary concession — a very big concession:
“Christianity is a house of cards, and the table on which this house is built is the concept of God. This table appears pretty stable - no challenger can rationally make a positive claim that God does not exist.”
First a Zen response: there is no table upon which a house of cards could be built.
Now, a Western rationalist response: Whose “concept of God” are we talking about? There is no unique one. That is, “the” must be dropped. “The concept of God” does not exist. Point 1: there are many concepts of god/gods/spirits/divine forces.
Which brings us to point 2: It’s up to your local god boosters to specify just what concept of god they’re playing with.
Some concepts are simply inconsistent. For example is ‘the concept of god X’ just like the concept of the round-square? “The” round-square does not exist because its (supposed) concept is incoherent.
Point 3: “God” as specified can not (logically) exist. Obviously, most theists or deists won’t immediately offer up lucid concepts of god. Though the panto-divinity: all powerful, all knowing, all merciful, will often make his (her, its) appearance. This conjunction of attributes is easy to undermine. Epicurus did so 300 years BCE — that is, three hundred years before the alleged Jesus was born! He demonstrated that the three supposedly defining characteristics of a god (theos) are mutually inconsistent. Just google ‘problem of evil’.
[Too bad XP-man didn't get a decent education in philosophy. God the father obviously wasn't willing to have his boy born in Athens, talk about unintelligent design.]
Xianity has spent 2,000 years propping up a failed pantocrator so there’s even a name for this branch of theological special pleading, theodicy. Just google ‘theodicy’.
Dealing with those mystically inclined, the ‘I-feel-god-in-my-heart’ crowd, and in general all irrationalist believers requires a different approach. I know that my god/goddess/demon exists — but he/she/it can not be described, or is beyond human understanding.
The philosopher Wittgenstein, in one of his seemingly cryptic utterances said, “A nothing would be as good as a something about which nothing could be said.”
Spelled out: you claim that something exists, but no property (like, being blue) could ever be ascribed to it. This is the famous Western “via negativa,” negative path to god - neti, neti, neti to Hindu mystics. God is not blue, is not evil, is not good . . . .
Logically, however, a claim that something exists does not ascribe a property to it — or, as you ought to have learned in logic class — existence is not a predicate. (Non-existence is not a predicate either.) You seem to be saying something, but it is meaningless. You might as well be saying “bar-bar” or saying nothing at all. The Viennese novelist, Robert Musil wrote “The Man without Qualities.” The man who can’t be there. A nothing.
Nobody can talk about nothing. Who’s doing the talking here? (Nobody?) And what’s being said? (Nothing?) Zen Buddhism figured all this out long ago — hence, koans if you’re lucky or a slap in the face when persistently obtuse.
Give me your concept, believers, but don’t try to hand me a putative something which is nothing.
bipolar2
Bipolar:
When I say “No challenger can rationally make a positive claim that god does not exist” I mean that any such claim can be explained away from within the system. Like the parable of the Dragon in the Garage - any test to demonstrate the concept in question will fail because of the alleged nature of the concept in question.
The article expounds on the point of the Dragon in the Garage: Just because a person can conceive of an inviolable concept does not mean said concept exists. Just because a group of people have adopted an arbitrarily complex inviolable system does not mean said system actually exists.
Yes, we’re all aware of the various beliefs/non-beliefs regarding the stereotypical God. I’ve made those same arguments a hundred times in a dozen different ways. My first post here at TJM focused on the differences in Strong Atheism, Weak Atheism, and Agnosticism. I chose a different tack with this article.
Can God create a Round Square? Can God create a rock so heavy he cannot lift it? Within the understanding of Christianity, yes, these things are possible - Within the Christian philosophy, God CAN create a rock so heavy he cannot lift it. And then, with the 1984 rules of DoubleThink firmly in place, God can non-paradoxically lift that rock. He can simultaneously be able to lift and not be able to lift the rock he created.
This is the mindset of the proselytizer. He has adopted a completely irrational concept as fact, and is applying that mindset to his daily life. Suspending disbelief to enjoy fiction is one thing, living your life within that fiction is something else entirely.
The article explores how this elaborate fiction might have developed by utilizing some of the basic rules of that fiction.