Shall I give you an example? Here’s one I’ve actually heard from atheists: “Christians don’t really believe in God, because the god idea is stupid. They only go to church because they’re afraid of death/need social reassurance/were brainwashed.” Another permutation of that is that since the god idea is stupid, the only people who believe in a god are the really stupid people.
It’s a somewhat popular sentiment because, face it, once you’ve seen the illogic of religion and become an atheist, it can be hard to understand how people can still fall for that baloney, and we struggle to make sense of their irrational decision. And then we come up with what seems a simple and obvious answer — nobody can seriously accept that zombie jesus/redemption by blood sacrifice crap, right? — that also has a kind of self-centered appeal (we must be the smart ones!) and it’s hard to resist.
But it doesn’t work, and it doesn’t help our case. Most religious people are completely sincere. They honestly believe in Jesus or Mohammed or Ganesha or whatever, and you’re not going to persuade them that those beings don’t exist if you take the easy and demeaning route of simply assuming they don’t believe already, and that your job is to tell them to stop lying. You know what taking that tack makes you sound like? Like Ken Ham. Exactly like Ken Ham.
Or like that Duck Dynasty pile of perambulating guano who announced that atheists don’t exist, because calendars. We need to be better than that.
But let’s focus on Ken Ham’s bad example for now. He has a long rant up in which he announces that atheists don’t exist, for a couple of reasons.
One is that the Bible says so.
The Bible clearly teaches there are no atheists:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened (Romans 1:18–21, emphasis added).
God’s Word clearly states that He has put the knowledge of God within each of us. We all know there is a God. There are no atheists! Also, the Bible asserts it is obvious from what we see around us that God created. The universe and life did not arise by natural processes as atheists believe and assert.
Argument from the Bible says so is no more effective against someone who sees the Bible as just another badly written book than is the argument from Twilight that vampires sparkle. You can yell at me that it is written all you want, I’m just going to have to tell you that your appreciation of the quality of your sources sucks.
But there at least two other arguments imbedded in there, too. One is that Nature is evidence of God, therefore if you believe in Nature, you have to also believe in God. This is an argument that does not follow; I believe in thunder, I have heard it and have empirical evidence of its existence, but that is not an argument that I have to therefore accept my lord and savior, Thor. He has not made the necessary connection between natural processes and a supernatural cause, and the entire history of science is about the gradual revelation of natural and material causes behind phenomena. Your arguments are getting blown apart step by step, every day — what reason should we have for accepting any part of your magical man belief?
But his worst argument is this one: like the atheist example I gave at the beginning, he assumes people are dishonest agents who are presenting false beliefs for wicked and petty reasons.
Their hostility against what they know to be true explains why atheists like Dawkins are so aggressive. They know God exists—the evidence is within them and all around them. But because of their sin nature, they don’t want God. They are at war with God. In fact, they want to be their own god, which is what the devil offered Adam and Eve in the Garden about 6,000 years ago: “For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5).
Our sin nature is such that we want to be our own god and not submit to the God who created us. Like rebellious little children, professed atheists cover their eyes, and put their hands over their ears, and are really crying out, “No, I refuse to believe. There is no God. I evolved. I determine what my meaning and purpose is. I refuse to believe God’s Word. I will not submit to God.”
I have no desire to be a god. I am satisfied to be my own human being, and my ideal world would be one where everyone had the opportunity to be themselves, and where no one had to submit to any oppressor, no matter how well-meaning or imaginary.
I also don’t think we’re the ones with closed eyes and ears. We’re not the ones saying one book has the whole story, and that we can close our eyes to the evidence of reality that shows where the book is wrong.
I suspect atheists sometimes throw out the “no one can believe in God/religion because it’s obviously so stupid” as an answer to the theists who claim that we know god exists and just refuse to admit it. It’s tempting because it reverses an illogical theist argument and gives them a dose of their own “I know what you really think” medicine. I don’t know if the atheist counterargument has ever worked, but it would be a bit satisfying emotionally to use it against someone really dogmatic and obtuse.
What I find the hardest to get my head around is the religious’ treatment of their own holy books. How can you believe that God exists, is in command of this and the next life, wrote a book and then never bother to read it?
If I believed my eternal salvation hinged upon being a good Christian, reading and rereading the bible would be my #1 priority. Then learn Hebrew or Greek maybe so I can read the older versions in addition to the dozens of modern translations. But so very few Christians seem to actually give a fuck about the bible when it comes to putting in the hours. If they get upset about people disrespecting their holy book, it always seems to be outrage in the abstract.
I have heard both Reza Aslan and Greg Epstein make that argument that people don’t really believe. It’s just a language we use to communicate, or just a sense of community.
I was brought up in a fundamentalist world, and I have no doubt that people really believe this. My sister honestly and truly believed that the Star of Bethlehem stopped over her house one Christmas Day. My mother honestly believed she was doing the right thing by driving a “teenage witch” (she was Wicca, and 12, so I’m not sure that description fit that well) out of town.
My mother was a very intelligent woman who taught me critical thinking, for which I thank her. She just never expected me to turn it against the things she believed in, because she was sure those were so self-evident that questioning them was not possible. She was able to see through alternative medicine, phrenology, and, at times, astrology, but believed deeply in God and ghosts.
We really only think critically when we are able to turn it on our own beliefs, honestly, and see how they stand up. That goes for atheists, too.
Drat! No comment section at the Ham-site.
I’ve shut down a lot of christian gibberish with this line of reasoning.
(Of course it doesn’t work with christians who do read the bible and go to bible study. From them, you get some weird justifications for all sorts of evil biblical hooey. Like the bears that Jehovah sent to eat the children that made fun of Ezra for being bald. The bible is translated incorrectly; they weren’t “children,” they were “teens.” So Jehovah sent bears to eat a gang of unruly teenagers. As a normal sane person, I still find that story to be stupid, but the woman who told me that it was OK for the bears to eat mean teenagers was very surprised that I didn’t buy it.)
Also-
PZ, you know all the “cool” atheists. I’ve never met anyone who thinks this (note-I’m not presenting this as evidence of anything other than my personal lack of exposure to fools like this).
My evidence that Christians don’t really believe what they say they believe is that they continue to do things they call sinning, while claiming to believe that their god is privy to every action and thought. If you really believed this was true, how could you ever sin? Do they just momentarilly forget that god is watching? Or is it that their god isn’t omnipresent, watching all the time, like how he was surprised to learn that Adam and Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit and only figured it out when they showed shame at being naked?
The bible is an Inkblot that says whatever you want.
A common bible verse is; The fool in his heart says there is no god. You hear it often from xians.
And atheists say, And the wise and brave say it out loud and often.
(And in times past and some places today, end up murdered by theists.)
Perhaps I’m giving the atheist who make this claim too much credit, but it sounds like a misunderstanding of Terror Management Theory.
http://www.tmt.missouri.edu/
which has reasonably good experimental support (e.g., you can increase the religiosity of responses to certain questions by priming with text dealing with mortality). Luke Galen from Reasonable Doubts has also discussed this theory in detail.
It speaks to the underlying emotional need for these types of beliefs, but not the logical consistency or not of those beliefs.
IMHO, the logical consistency of beliefs depends more on the individual believer. That’s why Sophisticated Theology™ is important to a few people with a background in complex critical reasoning, but is unimportant to most believers, because they don’t rely on modal logic to determine whether a belief meets their emotional needs.
Books and other artifacts are really an infinitesimal part of what being a believer means to believers. From the standpoint that God works through his followers, limiting the scope of his grand design to the book that merely served as the foundation is myopic; God is constantly at work guiding the morality of their choices, orchestrating beautiful sunsets, and helping them find their car keys.
If you treat believers as being hostage to their texts then there is no room for them to be sincere, but they don’t see God as being a genie tied to his magic lamp.
Uh, Correction. That’s Elisha whom the boys made fun of, not Ezra.
My preferred approach is:
Christians don’t really believe in Brahman. I mean, there he is, right in the Upanishads, and only a fool would refuse to believe. Oh? Why should one god and one set of holy scriptures be considered any better or worse than any other? Please be specific and give details.
I have no doubt that Christians exist who are just going through the motions due to social pressure and just try not to think much about what they are supposed to believe but I would not presume them to be typical (much less every Christian).
Si Robertson may claim not to believe in Odin, but he contradicts himself every Wednesday.
Lately I read a definition of belief, by a believer, that was astonishingly true-hearted and right-minded. He said he hoped so much for an afterlife that he started to think it was true.
the biggest problems I have with the religious believer is when they are so interested in what I think or believe that they criticize me and try to change my mind without any evidence what so ever or just out right lies about the demonstrable nature of reality including history.
The other thing about religion and the religious argument I truly find irritating is given the astonishment that reality exists at all and I am here in it. Why their god and not any other? That way leads to some authority, often referring to some other fool long dead and gone who is claimed said or did something or other that completely elliptical.
This is mostly a problem with those 3 religions from the middle east and their believers who just can’t let others be or two of them at least.
I have an acquaintance who is a believer and a conservative who often adds a little remark trying to belittle me and my thinking because I guess it threatens him some way. I do not bite because it is not an appropriate place and I have no desire to upset him any more than he already is just by my unbelief.
believers believe at least in the god of belief.
That stuff where they keep “sinning” after truly believing is part of one of the more important things about christians and that is their guilt, never to be discounted in trying to understand the christian psyche .
uncle frogy
David Rutten #2
I did that. That’s how I became an atheist.
About, “Nobody really believes all that rot.” My partner always used to say this, and I would always protest that he was wrong; I had really believed. Then he finally accepted this, only to say that I had been brainwashed.
No. It goes deeper than that. In a strongly religious home, your parents don’t sit you down one fine day and start telling you that there is a god that you should be obeying, like they sit you down and start teaching you the shapes of the letters, or how to use the potty. It’s not something you can accept or reject intellectually or even out of “rebellion” (what they call a kid’s realization that he has the power to make decisions).
It is more insidiuous. You are learning language at a rate of dozens of words a day; among them are the words about God. Not spoken to you, just in your hearing; adults speaking to adults about another adult you never see, just like you never see your Mom’s horrible boss, but you know he’s there. It’s not a belief thing.
“God says, god gives, god is angry, god is happy, got got me this, god wants, thank you god!” they keep saying. Long before you ever thought about it, you “knew” all this stuff about god. Sunday School and home religious training take this for granted; they’re all about teaching you specific things that god did or god wants, not about convincing you he exists; you already know this.
This may be part of the reason it is so difficult to abandon that “knowledge”; it’s like teaching yourself to forget that chairs are for sitting on, or beds for lying on. I think it may be why people can leave their religion entirely and yet say, “But I do believe in God,” even though their God concept may not contain anything more coherent than “the ground of all being”. It’s not really belief, any more than sitting in a chair is belief.
“…. there is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast, it is all a sham….”
—Black Beauty, Chapter 13, last paragraph.
Susannah #17, I sort of know. I’m the third generation of atheists in my family (with the exception of one grandma) so I never experienced a de-conversion, but I can see that religious people around me are sincere in their beliefs, and that sincerity is the baffling bit, as what they actually believe has almost nothing to do with official church dogma. It’s always a very mushy, buddy-jesus, feel-good, sing-along bastardisation of what Christianity is really about, but their belief in THE BIBLE is still somehow front and centre. I actually gave my gran a bible for Christmas a few years back as it turns out she didn’t even own one. She at least had enough sense to be a bit ashamed about that, but I doubt she read a single verse since then.
Actually, the devil wasn’t lying there. God said it too:
Then the Lord God said, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. (Genesis 3:23-24). I guess Ken has never read Genesis, which must be a blow to Peter Gabriel.
The old Romans 1 argument really is one of the most obnoxious in the apologist’s playbook. So Paul knew the thoughts of everyone who lived and will ever live? What presumptuousness. But it’s there in the bible, so that’s good enough for believers.
I actually find the thought that people like Ken Ham or any other fundamentalist are simply lying about their beliefs to be comforting. The reality is far more disturbing: they really believe this stuff.
There’s a subtle difference between having sincere beliefs and having coherent ones that you’ve thought about carefully and comprehensively. If you don’t have coherent things to say sometimes or there seems to be something puzzling or inconsistent about a combination of beliefs you have, you’re like everybody else. Welcome to the club. It doesn’t mean you don’t sincerely believe “X and Y is true,” if that’s contradictory for example. It means you’re not correct about that, presumably because you don’t understand or have never considered what the problems are. And besides logical contradictions, there are more practical ones: they say certain things, but they act hypocritically and not in a ways that seem consistent with their stated beliefs. You might think that, if it’s such an important belief which has consequences for everything else in their worldview (that a particular god exists, to give an obvious example), that should be implying they have some kind of an obligation to think carefully and take it seriously as something that is supposedly comprehensible to them (if not to anyone else). It doesn’t suffice to say they’re being sincere but at the same time they won’t bother to think hard about any of it or try to clarify (to themselves at least) any apparent problems that pop up. That’s a cheap and lazy and irresponsible route to take, not something that merits any respect, so we shouldn’t be accommodating to that however sincere they may be.
People also say they believe “X and Y is true” (whether that’s right or not) but what they’re actually and sincerely believing is something else that isn’t being said — about X’ and Y’ or about other unrelated claims. They’re just saying the wrong thing, not making logical or factual mistakes, but if we’re going to be communicating we have to agree to some extent about what statements actually mean to everybody else in the conversation. People do it all: we are confused, mistaken, ignorant, insincere, hypocritical, careless with language, etc. Of course, it’s ludicrous to claim to have knowledge that somebody else is insincere because a book says so (for example). That doesn’t mean other allegations of insincerity or hypocrisy or whatever are unwarranted.
It can’t be a bad argument if it is ‘biblical’, eh Ken.
Me too! I was amazed how many Christians basically ignored the Bible except on Sundays [at best]. In high school I seriously studied/learned decent amounts of Koine Greek. Latin, and Hebrew –(this even helped me later in college!) The rest of the week or even right as church let out, they were oblivious and were offended if you cited the Bible to talk about their behavior [they often bullied me (I learned that I’m autistic* years later) –that was another reason I left Christianity. I remember crying many tears in church due to one woman’s bullying, so at least once the pastor called us into his office and she denied it straight to his face –she got worse after that too!] *BTW supposedly a good percentage of autistics are atheists or at least not believers in any organized religion. I wonder why.
Welcome to the church of Eru. “In the beginning, Eru, the One, who is called Iluvatar in the tongue of the Elves, created the Ainur out of his own thought,and they made a great music together.” From “the Silmarillion”, as revealed to the prophet J.R.R Tolkien. Or you may prefer the creation according to Mel Brooks : “in the beginning there was nothing. And God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was still nothing. But, now you could see it.”
@ 24
that people like that were very common in my church experience is one the reasons it was easy to simply stop attending but not stop thinking and questioning what I see and hear.
uncle frogy
skybluskyblue @ 24 —
Another late-diagnosed autistic/aspie here, and yeah, exactly. I have deeply-ingrained memories of escaping the church building on Sundays to be bullied by kids fresh from Sunday school, usually still clutching whatever drivel we’d done that day in one hand, or laying it down to shove me around while all the adults lingering were too oblivious to notice a thing, what with all those pressing, vital things that must be discussed after a sermon — like ‘did you see what she was wearing?’ and “I can’t believe he came to church after what he did last night, why didn’t lightning strike him on the spot?’ and “I see so-and-so didn’t come today, but you know if anyone needs the good word, it’s them.” Then if I ever said anything, well, it was kids being kids, and if I wouldn’t be the way I was, they wouldn’t have to treat me like they did.
I never had to deconvert because I could never manage to actually believe any of that nonsense to start with. It was horrifying when I was a child to look around and have to realize that this wasn’t yet another game of ‘pretend’ I was outside of because I just could not grasp the concept the way the other kids did. These were adults living the ‘pretend’ for real, the same adults who busted me for anything similar in my own little internal world that escaped, like I’d committed some horrible crime.
I’m probably not supposed to feel this way, and I do try be aware of it and all, but I am always disappointed when I come across spectrum people who are also religious/believers, especially the deeply fundie type.
I love how you present it as if they think the fact they were teenagers makes it acceptable. Classic case of missing the forest for the trees.
Whenever someone, knowing I’m an atheist, tries to talk to me about God, I ask them to define God. My spiel is basically: “Is God a vague, deist deity who fired up the universe and then faded into the background, never to be seen again? Or is God an old geezer with a long, white beard who helps you find your car keys, decides which high school football team wins the big game, and has an unhealthy obsession with sex? Or is God something in between?” I’ve noticed when talking to me that usually their god is closer to the deist end of the spectrum but when talking amongst themselves most Jews and Christians believe in the white bearded geezer.
have you ever considered maybe he’s projecting?
it’s not like that is an uncommon symptom among those who do this kind of “work”.
This “You really agree with me and are just lying” argument is scummy as fuck.
For one thing, how are you supposed to respond to it? Anyone could use this argument to “prove” that you believe anything, and since you can’t just crack your head open and show them your thoughts, they’ll just accuse you of lying if you say that you don’t believe what they’re asserting that you believe.
That alone should invalidate the argument; it’s unfalsifiable. The scenario in which the argument is correct and the scenario in which it isn’t correct are identical.
This is less of an argument and more of a rhetorical flourish with a side of psychological warfare. It completely sidesteps actual debate and exchange of ideas in favor of dogmatic assertion and smug cold reading. Why bother trying to actually address the reasons that a person gives for not thinking the same way as you do, or even bother acknowledging that anyone disagrees with you at all? You can just wave around the authority of a magic book that claims that everyone secretly knows that you’re right, and suddenly all of your ideological opponents disappear.
I’ve seen other cults and dogmatic ideological movements do shit like this too. Scientologists have the concept of “entheta”, which discourages anyone in the cult from viewing material critical of it, communists had the idea of “false consciousness” tricking the proletariat, and some muslims claim that everyone is born muslim and becomes non-muslim because of their evil parents brainwashing them. It’s just another tactic that zealots use to draw everyone else into their weird little world, like how some christians think that all other religions are run by demons.
As I said, this argument is deliberately built to be almost impossible to directly refute, but here are a few good criticisms of it;
– As I said before, the assertion is unfalsifiable. Whether someone actually had no religious faith, or if they did but were lying, there would be no reliable way of telling the difference.
– The other side of the above is that christians have precisely zero actual evidence that their assertion is true. They don’t have any way reading people’s minds, and most of their attempts to provide evidence that everyone is secretly a christian amount to horrible arguments like the “why do you hate something that doesn’t exist” line, or similar. Pretty much all of those arguments mistake the disdain that atheists have for christians and their religion for disdain for the christian god.
– Like most of the claims made about “sinners”, this argument comes across exactly like what a con artist would claim to sucker more people in. It makes sense to me that, if someone who made up a religion and was under the delusion that they were a god’s prophet, they would try to pull as many under-handed rhetorical ploys as they could to stop people from questioning all the bullshit they’re being given.
It’s kind of depressing to see atheists doing something similar to christians, but at the same time I almost feel like this is actually a rather fitting way of dealing with the jesus freaks. Like other people have said, it simply turns the argument around and tries to have christians see the argument from your perspective.
And another thing…Ham is using the “Dawkins is aggressive” nonsense again. I know that Dawkins is making a bad rep for himself on social media these days, but when he talks about belief and non-belief there’s no way that he is “aggressive”.
Grew up with no religious tradition but was surrounded by the usual church-y stuff. When I was still young, maybe late teens, I suddenly came to the realization that man created god, not the other way around. Duh. I assumed that everyone eventually understood that and actually felt a twinge of embarrassment that it had taken me so long, sort of like not realizing until you’re 12 that Santa is fake.
I went on with my life. It was many years later before I understood that, no, not everyone comes to the “man created god” conclusion. But I never insisted that everyone did, just naively thought that was the case.
My sympathies in this tragic tale are with Ezra. He probably just said: “Oh, go get eaten by bears” as the local equivalent of “Fuck off and die.” to some insolent youth, then finds old Nobbodaddy took him literally. Besides, I’ve never been wholly convinced the punishment was disproportionate… Well, yes, I did go bald early, as it happens, but I assure you that has no bearing whatever on my judgement in this matter!
I have also come across atheists who use this argument. Firstly, it shows that they don’t understand how brainwashing works. Secondly, while I agree that a large part of religious belief is due to a need for some sort of emotional support to counteract the fear of death and eternity, to assume they don’t really believe it completely underestimates humanitys capacity to convince ourselves that something we want to be true is, in fact, true. We’re very good at it.
And while I agree with the final paragraphs, I have to admit that there is a little child inside me who very much does want to be a god, or at least have some sort of magical power. Teleportation would be nice, a la Nightstalker, but without the blue skin and tail. Perhaps something like the move Jumper?
*movie
Susannah at 17
This, exactly. What people who have never been religious (or worse, grew up in a house that went to church on Sunday but nothing more) don’t realize is how fully incorporated into your world it is. “How can you believe something like that?” When multiple lines of evidence in your own life all support it and always have, that’s how. It’s not just the preacher on Sunday, it’s your parents when talking to you, it’s all the other adults when talking with each other, it’s in all the books you read, it’s in all the songs you listen to on the radio. It is, in short, the exact same thing we use for other ways of knowing things we can’t see, it’s just that we don’t realize all those lines of evidence are faulty. And when it’s been instilled from birth on, it’s just a fact of life.
carlie and Susannah, good points and well expressed. It’s hard to get one’s head round if you haven’t had that experience, and those of us who haven’t would probably do well to consider the context of other things that we have been matter-of-factly surrounded by since infancy.
People who have never been religious are ill equipped to figure out why people might BE religious. I read a lot of these “maybe it’s this” guesses and they come off as rather ridiculous (if not completely without evidence).
It’s far better to actually ASK a religious person why they believe and take their word for it. Stop trying to find some sort of psychologically complicated (and made up on the spot) excuse for it, it really is EXACTLY as simple as they say. They believe because they believe. It’s an irrational entirely self-enclosed logical loop, but it is the truth of their reasoning. I know this because I used to be religious myself.
What I can also say is the religious “experience” varies from person to person. There is no “one trick” that’s going to get everyone to question the value of faith as a virtue (which, ultimately, is what you need to have happen, for them to consider that faith isn’t as beautiful as they had thought), and there’s a lot of individual stories. In my case, I started out as a more wishy washy hippy dippy sort of “spiritualist” when I was much much younger, then went to “fundamentalist christian”. (I have since learned this is the exact opposite of what most people experience.)
I’ve occasionally used the argument (not because it’s valid, but because it shuts down the person I tend to use it on) of :
Your god has a commandment against lying.
You are lying.
If you don’t believe in your god, why should I?
I think people who are religious are that way because it’s easier. They don’t have to question what they are told or develop their own ethos, and it provides a bit of escapism.
—-It’s far better to actually ASK a religious person why they believe and take their word for it.—-
If you ask my Aunt why she believes women are the weaker vessel, she’ll tell you it’s because women are naturally more delicate, inclined towards more gentle arts, more emotional, blah de blah blah blah.
I don’t doubt that she believes it. I just point out that it’s complete bullshit and therefore I cannot take her word for it because she’s wrong. It may be what she tells herself, but it’s not the underlying reason for her belief.
good example, that bad argumentativeness is not exclusive to religiosity. It is faulty to jump to the conclusion that everyone who disagrees with you, can only do so through lack of intelligence, i.e. stupidity. It is a fault of “projection”, thinking oneself can only think such a way through stupidity, to immediately assume everyone who thinks that way is, definitionally, stupid. As many have previously pointed out in this thread. it is also frequently so that the religiositous thinkers are victims themselves; not necessarily of their parents deliberately “brainwashing” them, but by the ubiquitous presence of theism-thinking in the society around us all. It is an inherent “feature” of our brainsacks to seek answers for previous unknowns. Part of the storytelling feature of the brain is its easy ability to manufacture explanations for mysterious events with more mysteries, like that invisible person manipulating all events with some mysterious power.
One must remember: the usual sarcastic statement of “not a bug, a feature”, can go both ways. That the feature of our brains to storytell is sometimes a “bug”. Like when one of our stories, was the first to get written down, on paper and compiled into something called a book (latin: bible). Another “feature” that is sometimes “bug”, is energy efficiency. Seeking the most efficient way to do something. This leads to the error of adopting a book as the easier method, rather than spending all that energy manufacturing a story in our head to explain mysterious phenomena. “Answers are right there in that book; Easy. Done, *sigh of relief*”, I imagine happening.
The problem (actual “bug” not a “feature”) is the rigidity with which brains hold onto these easier solutions, without questioning its validity, nor extrapolating from the stories to other questions. Such as our usual question of “If ~he~ could do this thing, they why did this same thing happen later with no similar intervention?” “If the whole world was flooded to such a depth, where did all the water come from and where did it go?”.
Harder to explain is our eagerness to “cherry pick”. To totally disregard contradictions and extract only bits and pieces that suit our current mood. I think some call it “confirmation bias”.
But what do I know? I’m correct and everyone who disagrees is incorrect. By definition. The book (over here in my invisible garage) tells me so, and I know it is correct, cuz I wrote it, cuz it is correct. [spiraling into .,.]
The “argument from existence” — the presuppositionalist position that one only needs to look at the universe to see the “hand of god” — used to be one that took me a while to work through with theists.
Until I decided that our existence was the product of universe-building aliens.
“You can’t prove that,” the theist shouts.
“Precisely my point,” I reply. Until one can disprove the idea of universe-building aliens, it is at least as attractive an option for the existence phenomenon as any other. In fact, it’s a better option than a supernatural explanation.
It’s lines like that which gave me so much trouble reading the bible, back in my Jesus Freak days. There’s just so much fucking nonsense.
I *have* used the statement that Christians (99.9% anyway) don’t really believe in God, and despite PZ’s admonition I will continue to think so. Here’s my reasoning: Christians walk around all day, every day, supposedly believing that God is watching every little thing they think and do, that he is keeping a record, and that he will punish them with eternal damnation in Hell if they transgress. But let’s consider a slightly different scenario. Instead of God watching over their shoulder, there’s a guard with a .45 cal. pistol who will shoot them on the spot if they break any of the rules in the Bible. Will they behave differently in the second scenario? You bet your sweet ass they will. Because they really believe in .45 caliber pistols but they don’t ‘really’ believe in God.
I don’t see how that would have any persuasive power. For example:
The state has a law against driving over the speed limit.
I drive over the speed limit.
Therefore I don’t believe there’s a state government?
But God doesn’t punish people for sinning on the spot, and depending on your flavor of religion, he either will forgive it all later or already has (the “once saved always saved” argument, look it up if you want to waste days of your life reading about it).
slithey tove @42:
Ah, the ‘Argument from a false sense of intellectual superiority’.
You think 99.9% of Christians are thinking that all day, every day? If they were (a pretty wild assumption), how do you think they’re supposed to be acting differently? Are 99.9% of them murdering somebody all day, every day, thus breaking a commandment? Do they all also have to believe that or any lesser transgressions they might commit can’t be forgiven somehow?
I just want to agree here with carlie and Susannah — as best as I can recall, religious upbringing involves being steeped in religious culture, where everything about God is presented to young people as poems and songs (prayers) that one is supposed to chant or sing. And one is supposed to understand the verses as being unquestionably true. And I did, sometimes, have a strange sense of some thing which might have been (to my young self) a giant intelligence external to myself, which sort-of fit in with everything I was being taught.
Teachers and religious leaders often make religious pronouncements in a different, more portentous tone of voice, meant to impress upon young children the seriousness of what is being said.
Sure, it’s indoctrination, in the most basic sense: the continuous inculcation of doctrine. I don’t see that it’s appropriate to call this brainwashing, though — brainwashing is supposed to involve breaking down resistance from an unwilling subject. Brainwashing comes from deliberately manipulative agents; indoctrination comes from everyone in one’s social group who have themselves been indoctrinated by the previous generations.
All that having been said, I think it’s incomplete. I have some interest in adults who convert from atheism or secularism to some religion; I’m sure the usual suspects come to mind. When there’s no childhood indoctrination, what is going on? There does seem to be some connection with “personal experiences”. What is perceived externally by atheists or skeptics as some profoundly unusual but temporary mental condition — hallucination, seizure, or something else — is perceived internally as a true and meaningful interaction with the supernatural. And this is followed by a decision, probably unconscious, to continue interpreting the experience as supernatural even after it has ended.
(I recall at least one commenter on Pharyngula (Sb, before the system change) who had some sort of profound emotional experience in some underground location — maybe a catacomb? This person remained an atheist, but did also wonder what the hell had happened, there.)
@Dark Jaguar:
Most theists tend not to present an honest self reflection — you’re far too likely to get a response like “because it’s true” or “because God said so in the bible” or “because God told me it was true” or “because tradition”. Part of religious teaching includes this most basic presuppositionalism.
Some theists are at least honest enough to phrase things as “I had an profound personal experience (which I don’t expect to convince anyone else)”, but far too many don’t even get that far.
re @46:
supporting Carlie’s objections. Catholic (i.e. RCC) taught us, explicitly, verbatim, that every sin is forgivable, if requested. All one has to do is say “I’m sorry” to that person hiding in the other booth, then say your penance (the same prayer to be repeated N times). That’s why sinning is not proof of disbelief; rather proof of strong belief. “Actual consequences be durned, Jeebus will forgib me when I say ‘Sorry’, tomorrow.(and possible punishment is only applied after death, so what’s the harm, eh)”
Which I consider more justification for my assignment of the cause of belief as “the easy way”. Rather than have to consider the possible consequences of a proposed action: just do it, see what happens, ask forgiveness from the magical skyfairy afterwards. Maybe something good will happen and if one thinks too much to avoid the bad possibility, the good thing cannot possibly happen. so lets see: a 50:50 chance: either “good” or “bad” == 2 possibilities, so QED 50:50. (and that magicman in the sky will tweek the probabilities to 100:0 goodresult:badresult.) so gotta do it.
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tldr: to put it rudely: religiosity is not “stupid”, just lazy. As in: optimization to save all that thinking energy for more important stuff. (where important stuff == anything else than the current discussion)
Another thing that bothers me is that this argument is essentially a personal attack. It tries to disprove your beliefs by questioning your motivations rather than by addressing the argument itself. This goes for both sides.
With regards to that thing about rejecting god because of petty reasons, it always comes across as presumptuous to assume that a god would deserve to be adulated and obeyed simply because it created us. I can see gratefulness and respect, but not groveling and begging for forgiveness for every mistake you make.
Really, the reason I don’t believe in any specific religion is because every religion on earth claims to be the one true religion, and go on and on about how their religion is special, so that in the end no one religion seems correct. The reason that I don’t believe in a god generally is because it strikes me as anthropomorphism to insist that the controlling force that made the universe has to be an intelligent entity that did it out of love for humanity. Another point would be that as I grew up I realized that almost every supernatural phenomenon I heard about, from ghosts, to wizards, to dragons, and so on were fake, so why should I make an exception and assume that a god is real?
emergence is correct that the argument is insulting as well as faulty. It’s similar, in this respect, to blanket accusations of “white guilt”, “political correctness” and “white knighting”. All three are accusations that a person’s behavior or views aren’t sincere–they’re just mouthing them in order to assuage some other agenda.
now why is it that Donald Trump springs to mind…
the funny thing is… a lot of people ARE entirely disingenuous about their motives.
Here’s why religious indoctrination (and woo-y indoctrination, and racist indoctrination, and all the other indoctrinations) works:
When you’re a kid, 99% of the stuff your parents tell you is absolutely true.
People tend to not think about these “little” messages, statements of fact (the sky is blue, grass is green, the sun rises in the east every day) as establishing trust but they are. A parental figure informs you of a fact, toddler-aged you can immediately verify that this is true, and you come to trust that the parental figure and believe them when they tell you things that are not immediately verifiable (the stove is hot, running into traffic is bad, the kitty has claws). This trust is further enforced when those not-immediately verifiable information is later verified, which makes the kid that much more willing to accept unverifiable information (Jesus loves you, [group of people] are bad).
“Why did you believe your parents when they told you that there’s a god?” Because my parents told me that staying out in the sun too long will give me a sunburn and that my skinned knee would get better. The thousands of truths I got before I was five primed me to accept the whopping lies I also got.
Dark Jaguar:
There are several problems with this:
1. Psychologically, logically, “I believe because I believe” is actually pretty damn complicated and baffling to those of us not familiar with that form of thinking.
2. Most believers aren’t self-aware enough to distill their belief down into something so obviously dependent on circular logic.
3. Most believers will actually add on various reasons for their belief, including bad apologetics, appeals to emotion, and apocryphal “I used to be a filthy heathen” conversion stories.
4. Even when pressed on the specifics of what the believe, set aside why they believe it, they often try to make things a confusing muddle as much as possible and will change beliefs from a clear, firm solid into an opaque, flowing liquid the second the possibility of criticism rears its head.
5. Because of much interaction with believers along the lines of 3 and 4, most of us who did not grow up religious and get these bad arguments and excuses and questionable stories just really can’t believe what believers say about the nature of their belief. I don’t know what to believe about believers’ beliefs anymore, at least not just from asking them directly. (It’s why I usually rely on stats from surveys)
CR@48: “You think 99.9% of Christians are thinking that all day, every day?”
No, and that’s part of my point. If there were a guard with a gun behind them they would not ‘forget’. If God were what they say he is, or if they actually believed he was, they *would* be thinking about obedience all day.
I think somebody else above (or maybe in another post) hit it close… most Christians really are not thinking about it at all. Church is a social outlet, God is a nebulous concept that they grew up with and never much questioned, they don’t really know that much about the Bible (what? the gospels weren’t written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?), and if they think about it at all, they just *know* that God wouldn’t send them to Hell for their minor little infractions.
Anyway, that’s my experience from having grown up in a church-going family.
Esteleth @54:
Added to this, those thousands of truths, as well as religious belief are reinforced by other family members, friends, people in church, and people in school. Over and over again. In big ways and small. Religious indoctrination is insidious.
There’s a film, widely circulated in the corporate HR world as an orientation tool. Great film: A group of basketball players are passing a ball back and forth. Before you’re shown the film, you’re told to focus on the ball. At the end of the film, the HR rep asks “Did anyone see the gorilla?” Almost no one does. I saw the film, and I didn’t. But when you’re shown the film again, there’s obviously someone in a gorilla suit walking right through the group of basketball players. If you can get people to focus on the issue and lay out the facts, they will make the connection.