Does it make sense to live your life on an unsupported premise, simply because you can’t disprove that premise with absolute certainty?

And is it reasonable and right to try to talk people out of their unsupported beliefs, even if you can’t disprove those beliefs with absolute certainty?

So today, I want to get at this argument in a different way.

There’s a point that a lot of atheists make about this argument, which is this: Believers don’t apply this sort of thinking in any other area of their lives. In most other areas of their lives, believers base their actions, not on what might be hypothetically possible, but on what is most likely to be plausible. Their car might start running on sugar water, the rocks in their backyard might have turned into candy, if they jump out the window there might be invisible fairies waiting to gently carry them down to earth… but they don’t act as if these things are true. But with religion, people will happily argue that it might hypothetically be true… and therefore, it’s reasonable for them to act as if it were true, and the rest of us have to take it seriously.

So here’s the argument I want to have with the invisible theist in my head.

Are you, therefore, going to jump out of a fourth- floor window, based on that slim but not 100%- dismissible fairy hypothesis?

Or are you, instead, going to go with the far more plausible hypothesis that you should probably take the stairs or the elevator, since if you jump out the window, the chances are excellent that you will plummet to a squishy death?

And if you don’t go with the fairy hypothesis just because “you can’t absolutely prove that it’s not true”… then why should you go with the God hypothesis?

Now. At this point, the invisible theist in my head is arguing, “But why do you care what other people believe?” (Unless they’re trying to argue that the God hypothesis is more plausible than the fairy hypothesis, because lots of other people believe it or something. In which, I direct them here, and then go watch Buffy reruns.)

But assuming that my invisible theist is in fact arguing, “But why do you care what other people believe?”… here is my answer.

If you saw someone getting ready to jump out a window because they believed that invisible fairies would carry them to the ground… wouldn’t you try to stop them?

People are jumping out of the religion window every day.

And they’re pushing other people out.

And there are the cases that are so woven into the fabric of our society we often don’t even notice it. The children who are traumatized by visions of the horrible tortures of Hell. The ministers and other religious leaders dispensing life advice with no training in counseling, based only on the dogma of their faith. The families who barely talk to each other, or don’t talk to each other at all, because of religious differences. The teenagers who are taught that God thinks sex is sinful and disgusting and they should therefore save it for the person they marry. The gay teenagers who are taught to hate themselves.

I could go on, and on, and on. I have.

That is an awful lot of misery and death to be inflicting, on the off-chance that there might be invisible fairies carrying you to the ground when you jump.

That’s what the atheist movement is doing. That’s why we care what other people believe. We care what other people believe because people act on their beliefs… and with many of those actions, people are hurting themselves, and each other. We see people jumping out of the religion window, and pushing other people out of it, on a daily basis.

Now, if you think we’re mistaken — if you think God really exists and there’s good evidence to support that theory — then by all means, convince me. Show me the money.

But if all you have is “My holy book says it” and “Lots of other people believe it” and “I feel it in my heart”… then I’m sorry, but what you have on your hands is invisible fairies who are going to carry you down to the ground if you jump out the window.

A different version of this piece was published on AlterNet. This is the slightly longer, full-length version. For space reasons, I had to keep the original list limited to 10. This list goes to 11.

The piece is a good idea. But something about it bugs me. Specifically, it bugs me how much time Harris spent dissing religion. Don’t get me wrong — I think religion deserves criticism. But here, I think it’s inappropriate. If you’re writing a piece saying, “Here’s who we are, and why the myths about us are incorrect,” IMO you shouldn’t go off on a “Here’s why the rest of you are losers” tangent. It’s not persuasive… and it’s seriously off-topic.

So I’m writing my own version. (Very much riffing off Harris’s, and with all due credit to him.)

Atheism means different things to different atheists. But for the overwhelming majority, it doesn’t mean being 100% certain that there’s no god. It means being certain enough. It means we’re as certain that Jehovah or Allah or Ganesh don’t exist, as we are that Zeus or Thor or the Flying Spaghetti Monster don’t exist. (I’ve read and spoken with hundreds of atheists… and have encountered exactly two 100 percenters.)

Atheists aren’t saying, “We’re 100% convinced that there’s no god, nothing could persuade us otherwise.” Atheists are saying, “We’re not convinced. The arguments for God are weak and circular; the evidence falls apart under close examination. Show us better evidence or arguments, and we’ll reconsider. Until then, we’re assuming that God doesn’t exist.”

Further reading:
The Unexplained, the Unproven, and the Unlikely
The 100% Solution: On Uncertainty, And Why It Doesn’t Matter So Much

I could argue against this a hundred ways. I could argue that mature morality takes responsibility for its choices, instead of blindly following someone else’s rules… an argument many theologians also make. I could point out that even believers are selective about their religious teachings, deciding for themselves which make sense, and which are appalling or ridiculous. I could point out that religion isn’t a reliable foundation for morality… Exhibit A being gross ethical violations by religious leaders, from Jim Bakker to Osama Bin Laden. I could link to current research on the neurological/ evolutionary basis of morality.

But mostly I want to say this:

Look around you.

This myth is patently untrue on the face of it. Atheists aren’t killing, stealing, raping, cheating, at any greater rate than believers.

Look at countries in Europe, like France and England and Scandinavian countries, where non-believers are half or more of the population. They’re not disintegrating into crime and chaos. They’re doing pretty well, and they treat each other pretty well, with a strong sense of social responsibility.

And look at individual atheists. Oliver Sacks. Carl Sagan. Dave Barry. Andy Rooney. Ira Glass. Milan Kundera. Tom Lehrer. Barry Manilow. Katharine Hepburn. Richard Feynman. Barbara Ehrenreich. Ted Williams. Atheist cops, soldiers, firefighters. The person down the street from you who mows the lawn for the old lady next door. Are all these people cesspools of selfishness and immorality?

Unless you indulge in circular reasoning — unless you think anyone with different religious beliefs is immoral by definition — you have to acknowledge that atheists are as moral as anybody else.

Further reading:
Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness Against Thy Neighbor

Again, I could go on for days about why this is wrong. I could talk about how meaning doesn’t have to come from religious tradition… and how there’s plenty to hope for other than an afterlife.

But again, I mostly want to say:

Look around you.

Spend some time talking with atheists about something besides religion. Books, say. Music. Science. Their spouses or lovers. Their kids. Their friends. Careers. Hobbies. Political activism. Volunteer work. You’ll find lives every bit as rich, full, complex, connected, transcendent, satisfying, meaningful, and full of hope, as the lives of religious believers. We don’t need religion to have meaning and hope. We have hope, for our own lives and for the world. And we create our own meaning.

(Yes, many atheists get cranky when they argue with believers. Especially online. Surprise, surprise. Like no other marginalized group gets cranky engaging with the mainstream… and like losing it on the Internet is an atheist monopoly.)

Further reading:
Dancing Molecules: An Atheist Moment of Transcendence
For No Good Reason: Atheist Transcendence at the Black and White Tour
Atheism and Hope

Sometimes. What with us being human and all.

But all of us? Even most of us? As a defining trait?

And more than religious believers? Really? (I know, I wasn’t going to get snarky about religion here… but can you really look at the grotesque intolerance so many believers have inflicted, on atheists and one another, and still argue that atheists are the big meanies?)

Okay. Snarky mini-rant over. Here’s where I think this myth comes from.

Atheists see religion as just another hypothesis about how the world works. We decline to treat it with more respect than any other opinions, theories, philosophies. We decline to treat its writings with more respect than any other books, its leaders with more respect than any other political or community figures. We think this special treatment unfairly armors religion against legitimate criticism. Besides, we don’t see any reason for it.

But religion has long been treated with special deference, getting a free ride in the marketplace of ideas. And believers are accustomed to this… so accustomed that questions and criticism seems like the grossest disrespect. As commenter Lynet wrote in another blog: People are so used to whispering around religion that an everyday voice sounds like a shout.

(I think this myth also crops up because these conversations are often on the Internet… where, alas, many people are more disrespectful, intolerant, and mean than we are in person. The next time you think atheists are being unusually disrespectful, read the conversations on the political blogs. Or, for that matter, the celebrity gossip and sports blogs.)

Further reading:
Does The Emperor Have Clothes? Religion and the Destructive Force of Asking Questions

And again: Sure, some of us. Sometimes. What with us being human.

But first, see above, re: what atheists are like when we’re not debating believers on the ‘Net. We’re mostly pretty happy, and grateful for what we have.

And second:

Demanding justice is not whining.

And progressives, of all people, should not be calling it that.

Very few people are arguing that anti-atheist bigotry is as serious as, say, racism or sexism. But atheists have legitimate grievances. And many of our biggest grievances aren’t about how believers treat atheists. They’re about how believers treat one another.

A common weapon against any social movement is trivialization. Women demanding equal rights are being hysterical; people of color are being emotional; LGBT people are being selfishly sybaritic. And atheists are being whiny.

It’s a “Shut up, that’s why” argument. It’s not meant to address atheism. It’s meant to silence it.

Further reading:
Atheists and Anger

Yes, atheism is everywhere now. In bookstores, on the news, in the blogosphere.

Just like gay people were in the early ’90s. African-Americans in the late ’60s. Women in the early ’70s.

There’s a point in any major social movement when it reaches critical mass. It gathers adherents and sympathizers, who become more visible and vocal… a process that’s self- perpetuating. The movement picks up steam. It can no longer be ignored.

At which point the mass media has a collective “WTF?” freakout. Who are these atheists (gays, African-Americans, women), and where did they come from all of a sudden? Like we haven’t been here all along.

Does that make atheism trivial? A fad, something people do to be cool?

Of course not. No more than being queer is.

Coming out as atheist is often a big deal. It can mean losing friends, being cut off from family. It can mean getting threatened by neighbors or kicked out of school, losing job opportunities or custody of your kids. And it often means a major upheaval in how you see yourself and your life. People don’t do this to be trendy. People do it to be true to themselves.

Further reading:
Godless is the New Black: Is Atheism Just a Trend?

Uh… no.

Atheists aren’t angry with God, any more than we’re angry with Zeus, unicorns, or the Tooth Fairy. We don’t believe in God. You can’t be angry with something that you don’t believe exists.

It’s true that many atheists are angry about fraud, oppression, and brutality committed in the name of religion. (Many believers are, too.) And it’s even true that, for some atheists (although certainly not all of us), the journey out of religion started, at least in part, with anger. The realization that religious leaders were lying to them; the growing awareness that religion doesn’t offer what it promises; the sense that if God really existed he’d be a sadistic bastard… any or all of this can be the first crack in the foundation of religious belief, the first glimmer of understanding that religion is the emperor’s new clothes.

But it’s completely backwards to say that these people rejected religion because they were angry with it. It’s the other way around. They were angry with religion because they were rejecting it. Religion isn’t like a jerk boyfriend or lousy boss that you walk away from when they tick you off. People don’t reject religion because they’re mad at it. People reject religion because they become convinced that it isn’t supported by the evidence and doesn’t make sense.

As to the myth that atheist reject God and religion because we’re angry about its rules and restrictions… see #2 above, the myth that atheists have no morality. It’s just flat-out not true. Atheists have no more problem with the restrictions of morality than believers. We just want that morality to have a rational basis.

Further reading:
Atheists and Anger

First, this isn’t true. Many atheists have read serious theology. I was a religion major in college: okay, 25 years ago, but a lot of it stuck. And I’ve read more since becoming an atheist blogger. As have other atheist writers.

But second, and more to the point:

So what?

Most atheists don’t give a rat’s ass about religion as it’s practiced by a handful of theologians. We care about religion as it’s widely practiced in the real world. And that includes many versions of religion that are outdated, simplistic, stupid, and ugly… and richly deserving of criticism.

Further reading:
In Defense of Atheist Blogging
Hypocrisy and the “Modern Theology” Argument

I don’t know why this keeps getting trotted out. It’s not like the so-called “new atheist” movement is running around saying, “Stalin was keen!” But I see it a lot, so I’m going to address it.

Here’s the problem. The Stalin argument basically goes, “Stalin was responsible for the murders of tens of millions of people. Stalin was an atheist. Therefore, all those murders can be laid at the feet of atheism.”

By that logic, you could argue that Nixon was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Vietnam; Nixon was a Quaker; therefore, all those deaths can be laid at the feet of Quakerism.

It makes no sense.

A sensible version of the Stalin argument has to look, not at every death and imprisonment and such that Stalin caused, but at the ones explicitly done in the name of atheism, to suppress religion.

I’m not a Russian historian, and I don’t know what that number is. I do know it isn’t zero. I’m not arguing that atheists are immune from human evils, including brutal megalomania.

But that number isn’t sixty million, either.

The essence of the Stalin argument — apart from “guilt by association” — is that atheism inherently causes great evil. And that’s just silly. There aren’t many openly non-theistic world leaders — what with the rabid stigma against us — but there have been some. Helen Clark, New Zealand Prime Minister, 1999 – 2008: open agnostic. Robert (Bob) James Lee Hawke, Australian Prime Minister, 1983 – 1991: open agnostic. Bill Hayden, Governor-General of Australia, 1989 – 1996: open atheist. And Winston Churchill called himself agnostic.

England under Churchill. Australia and New Zealand in the last two decades. Not exactly Stalinist dictatorships.

And who knows how many other world leaders were/are non-believers, but couldn’t/can’t be open about it?

Yes, some megalomaniacal tyrants have been atheists. Many have been believers. And both atheists and believers have been decent, functioning world leaders. The Stalin argument proves nothing. It’s a red herring, and a scare tactic.

Further reading:
Red Crimes

It’s true that believers can be good scientists. No atheist I know would argue otherwise.

But there’s a reason atheists care about science, and use it so much in our arguments. And it’s not because science is our religion, or that we follow it without question. It’s not even because we think science has disproven religion (although it has dispatched many specific religious beliefs).

Atheists care about science because science provides an alternate method for understanding reality. Science isn’t primarily a set of theories and facts: science is primarily a method, one that sorts good information from bad, useful theories from mistaken or useless ones. Science is a method for perceiving the world that relies, not on authority and intuition, but on rigorous examination of evidence, and a willingness to question any theory. When it comes to understanding the world, science offers an alternative to religion: not merely different answers, but a different way of asking questions.

Science doesn’t disprove religion. It simply makes it unnecessary.

Which is why it’s relevant to atheism… and why atheists care about it so much.

Further reading:
What Does Science Have To Do With Atheism?

And again, I say: Some do. What with them being human. Thinking you’re better than the people you disagree with is unfortunate… but it’s hardly unique to atheists.

But more to the point:

There’s a huge difference between thinking you’re better than people you disagree with… and thinking that, on one particular issue, you’re correct, and people who disagree are mistaken.

Religion has been armored against criticism for so long, people are shocked when they hear it at all. And because religion is so personal, many believers can’t distinguish between criticism of their ideas… and insults to the core of their being.

They hear atheists saying, “You’re stupid and I’m superior”… when atheists are actually saying, “I don’t agree with you.” Or, “You haven’t made your case.” “There’s a flaw in your thinking.” “What evidence do you have to support that?” “Your evidence and arguments are weak — do you have anything better?

Thinking you’re right, and trying to convince people you’re right… that’s not arrogance. That’s the marketplace of ideas. As long as you’re willing to consider that you might be wrong — and you get that being right about X doesn’t make you right about Y and Z — thinking you’re right isn’t arrogance. It’s no more arrogant to think you’re right about religion than to think you’re right about public policies, or scientific theories.

This is just another “Shut up, that’s why” argument. It’s an attempt to make atheists look bad simply for making our case.

Further reading:
Defending the Blasphemy Challenge
“Evangelical” Atheism, Or, Is It Okay to Try to Change People’s Minds?

*

If you want to criticize atheists, individually or as a movement, please do. We’re not perfect, and the current incarnation of our movement is fairly young, with all the flaws of a young social movement.

But don’t spread lies about us. Don’t fearmonger about us. Don’t assume that you know who we are without listening to what we have to say.

And don’t criticize us in ways that are just meant to shut us up.

Thanks.

But — for reasons I’ll explain in a moment — I’m going to argue against it anyway. I don’t care about it nearly as much as I do about other religious beliefs… but I care enough to spend a blog post on it.

Deism, for those who aren’t familiar, is the belief that the Universe was created by a god; but once said Universe was created, God no longer had anything to do with it. God has a plan, but that plan is proceeding without God’s intervention. He/she/it brought physical existence and the laws of physics and whatnot into being… and stopped there.

So for any practical purposes, deism is indistinguishable from atheism. An entirely non-interventionist god — one who doesn’t intervene even with any afterlife we might or might not have, much less with this life — is, in any useful day- to- day sense, utterly indistinguishable from no god at all.

But for that exact reason, I think deism is logically indefensible.

A belief in a deistic God doesn’t. Deism essentially says, “God exists… but saying that God exists implies absolutely nothing about the world. God exists, but his/ her/ its existence is completely indistinguishable from his/ her/ its nonexistence.” Totally untestable, totally unfalsifiable. With conventional religious beliefs, a world without God would be very different indeed from a world without God. With deism, there’s no difference at all.

But again — why do I care? If deism is essentially indistinguishable from atheism, why do I care about it enough to bother criticizing it?

I care for the same reason I care about progressive, non-bigoted, science- positive religion.

I care because it gives legitimacy to the idea that it’s okay to believe in undetectable supernatural entities, without any evidence to support that belief.

I care because it gives legitimacy to the idea that it’s okay to believe in undetectable supernatural entities, simply because you feel it intuitively.

I care because it gives legitimacy to the idea that it’s okay to believe in undetectable supernatural entities, simply because you want to: because you find the idea of a god comforting, and because you find the idea of there not being a god weird and upsetting.

It’s not just that deism gives legitimacy to the basic concept of God and religious belief. It’s that it gives legitimacy to these faulty forms of reasoning; the ones that keep getting used to defend the more obviously indefensible forms of religion. It gives legitimacy to unfalsifiable hypotheses, and prioritizing intuition over evidence, and wishful thinking.

And I’m not okay with that.

It seems like this happens with a lot of people. I get that. And I’m basically okay with it. I don’t expect every fervent believer, or even lukewarm believer, to immediately relinquish every scrap of their belief the first time they hear a good argument for atheism. People need to go through their process — I certainly did — and that’s fine. And if their process stops at deism, I don’t really care very much. People who believe in deism aren’t going to inflict much harm on themselves or others trying to appease their entirely non- interventionist God.

Ebonmuse at Daylight Atheism was recently blogging about this apologetic: he’s written about it well and thoroughly, more than once, and I don’t have a huge amount to add. But I do have a particular take on it, and I’d like to share it with the rest of the class.

Let’s take two people: Person A, and Person B.

It’s pretty well- documented that B is more likely to do bad things — to commit crimes, and make bad, even evil choices — than Person A. It’s not a guarantee, of course: Person A may wind up being a meth dealer or a mugger, or indeed a banker who bilks ordinary people out of their life savings in a mortgage scam; Person B may wind up being an epidemiologist or a social worker, or indeed a janitor who treats his neighbors and family well and volunteers at the rec center on weekends. But the odds are much more in favor of A than B. I think few people would argue with that.

Now.

Let’s get back to free will, and to God.

Does that mean that Person A doesn’t have free will?

And if not — if Person A has free will — then why on earth doesn’t God make everybody a Person A?

If relative comfort and security are not incompatible with free will, then why didn’t God create a world in which all of us have that? And if evil is really necessary for free will, then why didn’t God create a world in which all of us live in poverty, violence, and hopelessness?

According to this apologetic, we need to be presented with the choice to do evil in order for our choice of good to have meaning. And yet, if you believe in this particular version of God, then you have to accept that he has created a world in which people are presented with these choices in wildly different degrees. For many people, the choice to do good is relatively easy; for many, many others, that choice is far more difficult. Why the discrepancy? If all these people are equally free, despite having such wildly different opportunities and motivations to choose evil, then doesn’t that put a gigantic hole in the idea that the opportunity and motivation to choose evil is necessary for free will?

Does that make any kind of sense at all?

If evil is necessary for free will, then are these people actually doing harm by reducing evil and thus diminishing free will?

And if these people are actually doing good, then why doesn’t God do good in the same way?

And don’t argue “mysterious ways” or “we have no way of understanding what ‘good’ means to God.” If you say that God is still good despite behaving in ways that we would call despicably evil in humans, you’re essentially rendering the whole concept of good and evil meaningless.

It’s laughable. At best. Unremittingly wicked and grotesquely irresponsible at worst.

And if it’s laughable, irresponsible, and wicked for the policeman, then why isn’t it for God?

If evil is a necessary part of God’s plan to give us free will, then we should all have roughly the same exposure to evil, and roughly the same opportunity and motivation to commit it. We clearly don’t. And the fact that we don’t makes this apologetic a complete joke.

Today — inspired by a comment from Kim — I want to take on what I call “the argument from comfort.” Or what Ingrid, who at times is a bit more of a hard-ass than me, tends to refer to as “the argument from wishful thinking.”

It’s an argument that tends to drive atheists batty… since it’s not, in fact, an argument. It’s an emotional defense for hanging onto an argument that’s already been lost.

But more on that in a moment.

But maybe I’m being too hard-assed. If someone is defending their religion by saying how much comfort they get from it, blasting its horrors is certainly fair… but it may not be the most effective rhetorical gambit in the world. It’s likely to just put the believer on the defensive, and entrench them even further in their beliefs.

So that brings me to Argument #2: Atheism has its own comforts to offer.

Read some stories of deconversion. Many atheists do go through a dark night of the soul (or rather, a dark night of the soul-less) when they’re giving up their religion. I certainly did. But they generally come through on the other side. And they generally come through happier, feeling like a burden has been lifted.

And it offers the comfort of being able to see the world as it is, to the best of our abilities, without having to ignore or rationalize every experience that contradicts our faith.

And I will also point, as I have so many times in this blog, to the example of Europe. Many countries in Europe — France, England, Holland, the Scandinavian countries — have very high rates of atheism and agnosticism… and they’re not all walking around in the depths of despair. They’re doing pretty well, actually (or as well as anybody is doing in the current lousy economy). They seem to have found a way to find comfort in the world, even in the face of death and other hardships, without needing to believe in God or an afterlife.

But even so, I would still argue for hard-nosed realism over comforting self-deception.

I would argue it because the way you face the unsolvable problem of death makes a difference in how you live your life. If you live according to the assumption that the single most important thing you can do in this life is to please God so you can go to Heaven when you die… you’re going to live your life differently than if you think this life is the only life we have, and we therefore have to make the most of our opportunities and create as much joy as we can for ourselves and one another while we’re here.

And if a believer is making the argument from comfort… then they are essentially admitting that the premise they’re basing their comfort on is false.

Which brings me to Number Three. Or rather, it brings me back around to where I started.

And that’s this:

The argument from comfort is not an argument.

It is a last- ditch effort to hang on to an argument that the believer knows in their heart — and that they even know in their head — has already been lost.

I mean, if your big argument for religion is, “Sure, it doesn’t make sense, but wouldn’t it be nice if it were true? Doesn’t it make our lives easier to believe that it’s true?”… then you have essentially conceded the argument. It’s not an argument for why religion is correct. It’s not even trying to be an argument for why religion is correct. It’s an argument for why it’s okay to believe something that you know is almost certainly not true, but that you can’t imagine living without.

So, from a rhetorical point of view: If someone is making the argument from comfort? IMO, that’s the time to stop making arguments for why atheism is more plausible than religion. They already know that. They’ve admitted as much.

That’s the time to stop making arguments, and to start offering comfort.

Other pieces you may want to read:
Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing To Do With God
Dancing Molecules: An Atheist Moment of Transcendence
The Meaning of Death: Part One of Many
The Meaning of Death, Part 2 of Many: Motivation and Mid-Life Crises
The Meaning of Death, Part 3 of Many: Fear, Grief, and Actually Experiencing Your Emotions
Atheism, Bad Luck, and the Comfort of Reason
“Everything happens for a reason”: Atheism and Learning from Mistakes
The Sameness of Imagination, The Astonishingness of Reality: Thoughts on Science and Religion
For No Good Reason: Atheist Transcendence at the Black and White Tour
Atheism and Hope
The Human Animal: An Atheist’s View of People and Nature
A Safe Place to Land: Making Atheism Friendly for The Deconverting