Mike A asks some honest, meaningful questions in his take on my recent God blogs. Instead of battling on about the existence or provability issues, he asks about the implications of atheism, so I feel it’s worth giving some serious, honest replies, accounting for my beliefs (or non-beliefs) on these matters.
Q: Why do we all seem to have this “inner judgment” of right and wrong (even if we often differ on the details)?
A: Because we are deeply social creatures, whose societies have developed from the small groups of our deep hunter-gatherer past to the vast conurbations of contemporary life. And part of that development has been the development of a moral sensibility, which grows out of the need for reciprocity — basically, the fundamental idea summarised in many cultures (and religions) as “Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.”
I think this is a very basic human need and drive; if we didn’t practice reciprocity, based on mutual sympathy or empathy, our communities and social groups would fall apart. It’s the basis of all forms of affiliation. Some evolutionary psychologists will tell you that this formation is part of “group selection”, which helped humans survive and evolve further: the inner cohesion provided by mutual support and so forth makes our species stronger.
Of course there is also an opposing drive, which is the competitive one, and some would see this as the more basic driver or determinant of evolutionary progress. After all, evolutionarily speaking, the first level of competition (which drives the development of the species) takes place between individuals of the same species. That is, the more successful ones survive and get to reproduce, and the less successful ones don’t. Over time, this competition drives the evolution of the species, making it overall more successful, depending on environment and circumstances.
So the basic reciprocity that allows for social formation is often in conflict with the deep evolutionary competition between individuals, or at least in tension with it — but then isn’t that part of the human condition? That is, the tension between self and other; individual and group. This tension, I think, itself drives the development of morality: we have to arbitrate between selfishness and communality. We have rational minds capable of a great deal of careful reasoning and decision-making, and we work these things out communally, in the form of dialogue, interaction, discourse. Psychologists and sociologists will also tell you that the more social connectivity a human has (family, friends, teams, groups, community), the happier and more successful he or she is likely to be. This is scientifically measurable.
Q: And if we do differ on an important issue, is there any (rationally satisfying) way to resolve which of us is right?
A: No. Not if you want an absolutely final, no-possible-arguments resolution delivered by an incontrovertible superhuman authority. No God will descend one day to deliver an ultimate judgment and send one lot of us upstairs to heaven and another lot downstairs to hell.
There is only endless discourse; careful but hard-headed engagement with each other, study, learning, and thought, with a fair amount of honest self-examination thrown in too. For as long as humanity survives, we will have to keep working this out between ourselves, and trying to get better at running our lives and our societies.
This is not to promote a kind of bland relativism in which all views are equally acceptable and there is no scale of values. We have to decide what’s good and what’s not, and then work for what we deem right. This process of mutual engagement does produce results, does drive progress. The development of human rights and democracy, say, over the last three centuries, is an example of how this process works in human, historical terms.
Q: It is quite hard to exist for long without a belief system. If one chooses to define atheism as a non-belief-system, then I would argue that it pretty soon requires a belief system to lean on (like the evolutionary belief that all life developed as a consequence of entirely random processes).
A: Okay, there are two questions (or statements requiring answer) there. Like a politician, I will tackle the second one first.
It’s not quite right to call evolution a set of “entirely random processes”. Not all the processes (such as natural selection) are “random” in the way we understand that term. The division of which half of your genes (the basic units of selection) you get from which parent is, it would seem, indeed “random” (or at least arbitrary). That is the first throw of the evolutionary dice.
But which genes, and which combinations of genes, get to survive as they are passed on through the generations, over the very long time spans of evolution, will depend on environmental and other pressures. The genes that produce useful characteristics will get reproduced and developed further, while the less useful ones will die out.
So the process is in fact a very careful, very long-term, detailed one — it’s what Darwin called natural selection. With the usual caveats about anthropomorphising Mother Nature (where, arguably, all the religious trouble starts), let’s say by way of explanatory metaphor of agency that there is a long process by which She combines the basic elements of life, or the instructions for all the possibilities of life (the genes), again and again, offering endless opportunities for useful and beautiful adaptations to the world — ways to be and live in the world (which is itself evolving, so everything’s co-evolving, really). The sheer diversity and complexity of life, on all levels from the chemical to the mental, show the extraordinary variety of possible adaptations this process can produce.
Still want to call that “random”?
And, now, back to the other issue. Yes, we need belief systems of some kind. But what do you mean by a “belief system”? Let’s be clear. Are you talking about the past or the future? Do you mean something that tells you how things came to be (that is, God or evolution), or something that tells you what to do? In other words, do you want an ontology or an ethics? You may have to get back to me on this, but I think what I’ve said above offers both an ontology and an ethics.
Q: Our perception of our “fundamental need” is not necessarily completely congruent with our actual need (although, intellectually, it is wise to be slow to accept or dish out definitions). The point is that our “need” is not necessarily totally related to our belief system.
A: Agreed.
Q: You know that addressing your needs yourself is real. You imply that falling back on God is not real. Fair enough, but is this definitely a valid assumption? It is a little trite to observe that the fact that many millions have not experienced any reality of God is not logically a proof for His non-existence. But, if one has tried Christianity’s recipe to experience the reality of God, and it has not worked, then it is understandable that one rejects that recipe. But, logically speaking, what becomes of the assumption of God’s non-existence if others have experienced it? On the other hand, how are we to objectively verify assertions to that effect?
A: For millennia, humanity experienced the earth as flat (and believed it to be so). Did that make it true?
Objective verification is a matter of the maximum consensus based on empirical, third-person observability, backed by (or developed through) a good, workable theory that explains the most data in the leanest, neatest way. The theory or hypothesis God doesn’t do that, or not any longer. It raises more questions than it answers.
Q: I agree that you should never lean on something that you hold to be a fantasy — you should never take a “leap of faith” just for its’ own sake, or for what is essentially a narcotic effect. But, what if it were possible to have another shot at asking God to show that he is real? What if there was something that you weren’t told before? What if God IS real, and what if He has been waiting for you? Maybe I am pushing it too much, but read the parable of the prodigal son again, and ask yourself whether it is merely wishful thinking.
A: I wonder what it would mean (to me) to “have another shot at asking God to show that he is real”. Should I be praying to a being whom I don’t believe exists to demonstrate otherwise? How do I go about that? “Dear Lord, I know you don’t exist, but I’m asking you one last time to prove that you do …”? I’m happy to receive such a message from God at any time, but to keep asking apparently gets one nowhere.
And what would count as a final, definitive statement from God? A burning bush that speaks? A still small voice, murmuring from the whirlwind? You tell me. Where is God’s incontrovertible statement that he exists? Why doesn’t he put us out of our misery and give us a clear sign? If he hasn’t given us one in all the millennia so far, why should he now? Is he just toying with us, testing us? And, if so, is he God?
(In an earlier post, MikeA said: “The Bible is either true, or it is not. Why not consider its claims on their merits?” But that’s another argument for another time. Perhaps we’ll get to that; in the meantime, I’d relish a clear statement of precisely what its claims are, with chapter and verse.)
This and previous God pieces draw on material in the following books, in addition to those already mentioned; all are well worth reading for more:
The Happiness Hypothesis: Putting Ancient Wisdom to the Test of Modern Science by Jonathan Haidt (Arrow)
Philosophers Without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life edited by Louise M Anthony (Oxford)
The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution by Sean B Carroll (Quercus)
Yaaawn.
Why don’t we get back to discussing gay porn
I basically agree with all you have written here, but I feel like asking this:
Scientific method or positivism has not always been around. We have developed it over time. Is it not possible that in the future we may become aware of the gaps or weaknesses in this method? In the past, people had a different idea of what constituted knowledge. Perhaps in the future our empirical methods and understanding of science shall be shown to be problematic.
Perhaps the hypothesis God will be clearer if our methodology is different.
Then again maybe not, but I feel that we certainly have not reached the final clarity of understanding the universe.
All this fundamental ‘man must have a belief system’ is what gets me. That for me is the only fundamental question out of all of these.
Pretty much all of this goes back to the teapot theory. I have no need to disprove anything. It’s the old innocent until proved guilty thing. Unless we see atheism as a crime, it is the something (supreme being theory) which needs to be proved, not the nothing (absence of supreme being).
Other than that, the only thing that irritates me immensely is being told that atheists are the reason South African society has problems. Atheists. Not satanists, not hypocrites who claim Christianity but practice the religion of crime nor any other person claiming a different religion who does likewise.
It’s interesting to me that people who by and large preach a secular humanist rights-based ‘do as you would like done unto you’ are to blame for all the ills of society rather than a person who thinks that the commission of ‘sins’ can be okay because after all, someone died for us and so we are absolved.
Yeah, rehash but that’s just my thoughts on this one.
Kit
It does not matter if you believe in God – it matters if God believes in you.
Some of the most moral people in the world have been atheists.
Certainty is a tricky thing to pin down – more so than most Christians would like to acknowledge. In practice, most of what we “know” is founded either on what we feel to be true, or on the say-so of an authority that we trust (often, the cynic in me might say, this is better described as the “snake idea” salesman to whom we abdicate our brains). For example, much of the world has bought into the global warming hypothesis put out by Gore et al without really examining for themselves the logic of the arguments (but that is another debate – the point is the uncritical acceptance of a very “Hollywood” sales pitch).
I can be picky and point out that you make a couple of fairly absolute pronouncements (like “no God will descend one day…”), but it is refreshing to see reason rather than rant. In particular, I appreciate your statement decrying the “kind of bland relativism” where “there is no scale of values”.
As an opinionated fundamentalist (“gasp”) Christian, I concede the “logic” of natural selection as far as it pertains to changes within a species. But I don’t buy the theory that this can lead to one species becoming another. Looking at genetics and breeding, it is true that much more may change than many Creationists would like to believe, but I can’t get my head round the statistical “weirdness” that accompanies this particular logical leap.
Being picky again, I dispute your flat earth comparison. The people did not “experience” a flat earth – they (truly) experienced a degree of flatness which they erroneously attributed to an entirely flat earth. But they did experience flatness. To deny the existence of God, one has to discredit entirely peoples’s experience of God as fake (deliberate deception, delusion or mind-altering drugs). One has to deny the existence of an unseen (spiritual) world.
Some would argue that God has given us a “sign” or two. Our existence (and this debate) could be a starting point. Then there is the life of Jesus, which steadfastly defies most rationalist categorizations. I agree that a God who toyed with us would not be God (he would be the devil), but the Bible paints another picture. The point is that He does not force anyone to believe, but I hold that He is always waiting for those who turn to him.
Shaun
If you don’t believe in God – why bother?
I think you should read Scott M Peck. He wrote that the atheist (or more accurately agnostic ) was on a higher plane of spiritual development than the fundamentalist – because the agnostict questioned.
Lyndall,
You seem to assume that we fundamentalists do not question. Or, that questioning is the highest virtue, or there is no actual valid answer to find.
And if there are no ultimate answers (how would one know that, anyhow), what is the merit in questioning?
If we keep questioning, we keep getting better answers. That’s why the world now has more democracies, and technology that helps us live longer and more healthily (like CAT scans and heart transplants). And we need to keep asking questions so we can improve democracy, improve the quality of life for humanity, and so on. There may be no “ultimate” answer, but some answers are better than others.
Lyndall: If I don’t believe in God, why bother … with what? Having this argument? Or living at all?
Shaun
Why bother with the argument! That is signs of an agnostic, not an atheist. An atheist would not bother.
Lyndall: This character “God” whom believer love so much is imposed to many social issues that include all of us (e.g. Nkosi sikelel ‘iAfrica [God bless Africa]). The assumption that we all share the same imaginary friend is immoral and wrong). Atheists can not afford to be ignorant abouts God’s impact in their communities. We need to remind believer that their imaginary friend(s) must be their personal business not impact everyone. We would love see more truth in the world rather than bigotry from religious bullies on personal agendas. I’m a actually a humanist but i call myself an atheist for emphasis to believers that i do not share their imaginary friends and beliefs. That’s why atheists bother.
“let’s say by way of explanatory metaphor of agency that there is a long process by which She (Mother Nature) combines the basic elements of life…”
How comes that from a “metaphor of agency” you get to the material, factual conclusion that natural selection is not random? There is no “Mother Nature” in charge of organizing anything.As a metaphore it sounds good, yet there is no divine will behind the process.
No, no “divine will”; that should be clear. So there is no intelligence designing us in advance, aiming at some final goal, but there is a constant process of adaptation to environment — which makes it look like there is “agency”. This issue is what Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate) refers to as a confusion between “proximate” and “ultimate” causes; the proximate cause is what has an immediate bearing on some change or state, while the “ultimate cause” is some kind of end-goal far in the future to which we are tending (and which retrospectively seems to justify change etc). The former is the style of nature; the latter is an ideological construct such as God or heaven. But our “ultimate” state, as we are today as products of evolution, can be undertstood, too, by reading backwards into the processes that gave us life and made us what we are; let’s just not imagine that there was the “goal” of what we are now was known or understood in advance by an anthropomorphized Mother Nature. OK?
Lyndall, your argument is equivalent to saying, “If your friend thinks the Eiffel tower is in London, and you claim to know it’s in Paris, arguing with them about it shows that you still have a sneaking suspicion that it *is* in London.”
It’s nonsense. Why would an atheist not care, that the people all around them, people making their political decisions for them, are taking instruction from the fanciful writings of bronze-age goat-herders? I find that scenario extremely worrying.
People are making decisions that affect my life based on absurdities, proven untruths, and, in some cases, out-right fraud. I’d like to advance the arguments that question the credibility of these un-named, un-proven, and yet (bizarrely) totally trusted, sources of authority.
Furthermore, despite the laughable claims by some members of the majority religious of persecution by atheists, it is necessary to counter false claims about atheism (“They believe in nothing.”; “If they had their way, murder would be legal.”; etc.)
There are a lot of reasons for atheists to speak up loudly in the public debate. Insecurity about the existence of god is not a big one.