I watched a mini-drama unfold on a thread that was linked to my Deepak Chopra post a couple weeks ago. Some of the massage professionals on the site did not take kindly to the idea of skeptics telling people that they were wrong.The ‘arrogance’ card was pulled out (although I think telling people you have special insight into the supernatural, with no evidence to back that up, is far more arrogant than mentioning the lack of evidence), and my buddy Brian decided to go on the forum and explain some things from the skeptic position. He was particularly ill-received by a gentleman named Emmanuel Bistas, who derided both Brian and the originator of the thread for elitism and arrogance, and suggested they focus on things that were more important than Deepak Chopra. The precursor post to our activity in Vancouver spells out very clearly why we care about Dr. Chopra’s line of bull, and why it’s important to speak up about it.

And then I ran into the same plaintive cry that all people whose beliefs are supported by no evidence retreat to when someone challenges them:

“I am not saying I would not do all in my means natural and medicinal to care for my children but that is my decision and it is not up to me to make another feel or believe as I do it is up to each and every individual to find the path that is right for them.”

Ah yes, the “let people believe what they want to believe” card, also known as the “why can’t you just leave people alone?” card. The argument is that people are entitled to believe as they like, and we have no right to tell people their beliefs are wrong. I’ve heard the argument most frequently when it comes to discussions of religion. After successfully pointing out the fact that there is no rational case for belief in God, that the practice of religion often leads to horrible abuse, and that there are much better alternatives to belief in the supernatural, I inevitably hear something along the lines of “if it makes people happy, why take it away from them? Why can’t you just let people believe what they want?”

As I’ve said many times before about arguments like this, on the surface of things this seems like a reasonable response. If belief in the afterlife or a loving deity who answers prayers or a middle-eastern priest who cures lepers makes people happy, then there’s no harm in letting them continue to believe. In other words, why can’t you just leave people alone?

There’s a good answer to this question, and it’s a little glib:

They don’t leave me alone

Apologists for religious belief (and when I say religious, I mean any belief system that is based on faith in a supernatural being, not merely organized religious entities) like to paint this picture of poor beleaguered faithful people who just want to be left alone to practice their religion in the privacy of their own home. They are perfectly happy to let others believe what they want; why can’t I extend them the same courtesy?

The answer is that, just like the cake, the picture is a lie. The only way you could possibly believe that religious groups aren’t attempting to (and succeeding at) seize political power to enforce a faith-based agenda on everyone is if you’re not paying attention to anything happening in the world. Part of the reason I started this blog was to highlight specific incidences where religious groups have hijacked political systems to pass laws based on a Biblical/Qu’ranic justification of some issue or another. By my count, I have no fewer than 15 posts with specific examples (keep in mind this blog is only 4 months old), and I invite you to go back through the archives if you still think religious groups are content to leave well enough alone.

The fact is that while we have been wrapped in the blanket of complacency, soothing ourselves with meaningless jibberish like “everyone’s entitled to their opinion” and “who are we to say what is right and wrong“, religious groups have been taking the exact opposite position, forcing your laws to abide by their opinions and deciding for you what is right and wrong. This will not change unless someone speaks up in opposition and says “you do not speak for me, and I want to see the justification for your position.”

“But Crommunist,” you may be saying “most people aren’t religious fundamentalists. They aren’t trying to pass laws, they just want to live their own lives.” This is true, and most of my friends who are “religious” are that way very quietly, in name only. They don’t buy things like literal Biblical interpretation, or scripture-based laws, some probably even doubt the divinity of Jesus. I know this, because I was in the exact same position not too long ago. While I have sympathy for those friends who just want to be left alone, failing to speak up against those who want to relig-ify our country in the name of appeasement gives political cover to the hard-liners. Lack of dissent is assent – if you don’t speak up, you’re implicitly agreeing with them. If you do agree, then say so; if you don’t, you have a responsibility to say so too.

But this type of excuse doesn’t confine itself to religion. The people on the massage forum weren’t explicitly talking about religion, they were talking about medicine – specifically, energy medicine. A modality for which there is no evidence, which has been tested and found not to work, but is still practiced anyway. It’s all well and good to talk about “leaving people alone”, but when you are in a position of trust (as you are if you are a medical practitioner), and you abuse that position to “treat” people with modalities that are completely ineffective, you are violating that trust. It is wildly unethical to mislead someone into thinking they are receiving treatment when all you are doing is giving them a placebo (remember: if you have to believe in it in order for it to work, it’s a placebo). Informed consent is the cornerstone of the ethical practice of any profession, but particularly one in which the recipient is in such a compromised position. Lying to people, and a lie of omission is still a lie, is not “leaving them alone”, it’s deceit.

We have a duty to each other to be honest and forthright in all of our dealings. Part of that process is to look at reality to see if our beliefs are supported by fact. If there is no fact for or against, then we have to go by logic and reason. Once logic and reason have exhausted their usefulness, then I suppose all opinions are equally valid. However, that’s not the case for quack medicine, and it’s certainly not the case for religion. I refuse to stand by with my thumb in my ass while people spout absolute lies and fabrications that don’t hold up to the evidence, especially when they’re getting rich while doing so. If you still think that it’s the inherent right of people to believe what they want even when it’s contradicted by evidence, ask yourself if you think it’s the inherent right of people to be able to defraud each other for profit.

I grow very tired of hearing people tell me that atheism is the same as religion. “I believe there is a God, and you believe there isn’t. We both BELIEVE something – it’s the same!” This is the problem when one makes assertions based on “common sense” (a.k.a. not thinking before you speak), and is somewhat reminiscent of the “science is religion”  fallacy that I’ve talked about previously. There is a difference, and not simply a semantic one between the statement “I believe there is no God” and “I don’t believe there is a God”. The first is indeed a statement of belief – a belief in non-Godness. The second is a statement of lack of belief – a failure to believe in the existence of God.

To illustrate this difference, I am going to resurrect the oft-disturbed ghost of Bertrand Russell and his celestial teapot. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this thought experiment, Russell invites you to imagine that there is a teapot floating out in space, somewhere between the Earth and Mars, in an elliptical orbit around the sun. He further states that, even with the most powerful telescopes, it is impossible to detect the teapot – it is going too fast, there’s no light shining on it, it’s too small; the important thing is that it is impossible to detect by any means. But since you cannot detect it, you cannot prove that it isn’t there. He then invites you to consider the proposition that since you can’t prove it’s not there, you are required to believe and behave as though it is.

Of course reasonable people will dismiss this teapot out of hand. The idea that there could somehow be a teapot – a manufactured item of human origin – floating out in space is patently ridiculous. How would it have gotten there? “No, no, no” you are happy to say “even though we can’t prove there is no teapot, I’m perfectly willing to accept the position that in the absence of any confirming evidence of a teapot, it isn’t there in all likelihood.”

“But no!” says Russell “the teapot is THERE! How else do you explain why the lawn is wet in the morning? It’s because water from the teapot pours over the atmosphere and gets on the lawn!”

“Bushwah!” you retort. “We know where dew comes from – condensation of water vapour when the air cools overnight. And besides, any water that would come from space would evaporate instantly one it hit the outer atmosphere, and would never reach the ground.”

“Folly!” Russell comes back. “Why else would tea be so popular all over the world, if not for the fact that there is a subconscious recognition in all cultures of the existence of a teapot out there somewhere.”

“Fiddlesticks and balderdash!” say you. “We also know why tea is so popular – part of it has to do with the expansion of an empire that drank tea for historical, agricultural and climate reasons. Part of it has to do with the fact that tea is tasty. Besides, not every culture in the world drinks tea!”

But Russell keeps coming at you with facile explanations of real-life phenomena, invoking the intervention of an invisible teapot. He goes further and describes the colour and shape of the teapot (it’s white with blue flowers, medium-sized, and has a small chip on the handle), despite the fact that it is, by its nature, impossible to see. He even goes so far as to say the teapot demands that we wear used tea bags on our ears, and get together once every week to sing “I’m a little teapot, short and stout”, lest we tempt its ceramic wrath.

Eventually you get so tired of this clown that you slug him in the face and walk away – not a very teapot-like thing to do, says Russell.

I have stretched the metaphor beyond its original context, and made obvious allegorical reference to belief in God. But this is precisely what any faith requires you to do. In the mildest form, it demands that you believe completely in the existence of something for which there is absolutely no evidence, and never can be. In its next form, it twists observable phenomena to fit a blind belief, despite far more reasonable alternative explanations for which there are mountains of evidence. Eventually, it makes wild assertions about this evidenceless entity’s characteristics, and what it wants from humans (but not other animals). Any attempt to introduce reason into the conversation will inevitably be met with “well you can’t prove it’s wrong, so therefore it must be right.”

I want to pause for a second here and talk about that statement. “You can’t prove it’s wrong” is a ludicrous standard to hold anything to. It’s literally impossible (not just really really hard, but actually impossible) to prove that something is or isn’t there. I can’t prove to you that I exist, that you’re reading these words, that your computer is in front of you. If you’re creative enough, you can explain away pretty much everything (except your own existence). All we can do is look at the evidence and test alternative explanations. You could be hallucinating this whole thing, but you haven’t had any psychotropic drugs and don’t have a history of vivid hallucinations (plus, how lame a hallucination is this?). It’s far more reasonable to conclude, until there is evidence to the contrary, that the world is as it seems. Once there is evidence to the contrary, then you evaluate it and change your ideas accordingly. The part that really grinds my gears is the “… so therefore” part. Just because I can’t prove you wrong, that doesn’t mean you’re right. Just because I can’t prove that the food in the fridge doesn’t disappear when the door is closed is not proof that gremlins eat it and poop it out again exactly as it was. It’s not proof of anything. You don’t just get to make shit up because there’s no way to prove you’re wrong.

But it turns out that Russell is very persuasive, and people start to believe in the celestial teapot. When you say “well I don’t believe in a magical flying teapot that nobody can see”, they begin to call you an “a-pot-ist” (or if they’re clever, an a-pot-ate). They tell you that you secretly do believe in the pot, you are just bitter and angry at it, or your life has been bad and you resent the teapot, or that your belief in the absence of the teapot is just as facile as their belief in it. None of those things are the case – you are simply being reasonable and saying that in the absence of any evidence whatsoever, you don’t think there’s a pot there. And you’re right to do so. You might even go so far as to say “there is no evidence that there is a pot, and since it’s highly unlikely that a pot could get into space on its own, there probably isn’t one there.”

Your friend calls himself teapot-agnostic. “We can’t know if it’s there or not,” he says “so I’m not taking a stand on either side.” You then ask him directly if he believes in the existence of the teapot. He says “I don’t know if it’s there or not, it’s impossible to know.” But you press him – does he think there might be a dragon in his back yard? “Well no,” he says “dragons aren’t real.” But they might be, you remind him. There’s no way to know for sure. “Fine,” he says “there might be a dragon in my back yard that I just can’t see.” Does he believe in anything, you ask? Does he, for example, believe that the money in his pocket is real? “It’s impossible to know,” he says “and I refuse to take a position.” Fine, you say. Give me all the money in your wallet, since you don’t know whether it exists or not. See how far his ‘not taking a stand on belief’ goes. Scratch the surface of a systematic agnostic, and you’ll find someone who is actually a non-believer but just isn’t ready to say so. I would invite so-called ‘agnostics’ everywhere to (WARNING: Pun ahead) shit or get off the teapot.

This is the case of skeptic atheism. It is the result of following the philosophy of if there is no evidence for something, then it might as well not exist. If evidence appears later, then it probably does exist, and that’s great. But if there’s something out there that has no effect on the observable universe, whose effects are completely invisible, and without the existence of whom absolutely nothing would change, it’s perfectly fine to say it doesn’t exist, and spend your time on the stuff that you can see. You don’t have to believe that the teapot isn’t there, you just don’t see any evidence that it is.