Just Because You Don't Believe In an Anthropomorphic Deity Doesn't Mean You're Not Religious

Atheists challenge the religious right

"I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented," declares Dr. Dawkins, the famed Oxford professor who wrote "The Selfish Gene."



These offerings are so intolerant of religion of any kind - liberal, moderate, or fundamentalist - that some scientists and secularists have critiqued their peers for oversimplification and for a secular fundamentalism.

Seems to me they are confusing "no evidence for" with "proven false."



The way to approach arguments of a spiritual nature, where there is no objective evidence on any side of the equation, is to require all sides to use data that can be demonstrated. I've cut down more than one fundamentalist who insisted upon, "my holy book tells me..." as a method for building an argument by telling them they are begging the question. I may or may not believe what your holy book says on that particular point, but unless everyone believes it, it's not an acceptable method for constructing an argument. This is one of the reasons I am against allowing religions the use of any force. Furthermore, even if everybody does believe it, the truth does not necessarily adhere to democratic principles. There was a time when everybody believed the world was flat and at the center of the universe. Neither one of those beliefs happens to be true.



But neither is it an acceptable argument to argue against a proposition by saying, "Brand X religious fruitcakes believe in this, and therefore I have successfully discredited it by association with those religious fruitcakes." For one thing, overtly religious fruitcakes have no monopoly upon crazy beliefs, as anyone who has studied the adherents of either communism or fascism will tell you. For another, it's possible that upon this one point, the fruitcakes are correct, no matter how messed up they are otherwise.



Faith is what we believe in the absence of evidence. But when there is evidence, the belief can either be true or it can be false, or it can be in some middle ground between the two. Moslems believe that a man named Mohammed lived on this earth about fourteen centuries ago. No matter how crazy I may believe some of their other beliefs, I'd have to say that on that point, their religion is pretty darned accurate, as documented by any number of outsiders. The existence of the Christian Jesus, under considerable cloud of scientific doubt when I was young, has acquired sufficient collateral evidence to be considered highly likely. Neither one of these proves a thing regarding the rest of the doctrine of either of those two large world religions, but their respective founders appear to have been real people. Neither one of these facts means they were in any objective sense chosen by the higher powers of the universe. I may respect them and their heirs to varying degrees, but that is based upon my personal beliefs, and I don't hold any kind of monopoly over deciding what beliefs are and are not valid. If I am not willing to consider the possibility I am mistaken, evaluate the evidence available, and modify my beliefs where they conflict with that evidence, then I place myself in the the same camp as the Inquisition, those who created the Hindu Kush, and most followers of the various brands of Marxism as a religious nutcase. No deity, no altar, and no worship is necessary; the evidence is incompatible with what they would like to believe, and they have chosen to disregard the evidence. Of course, I happen to believe that if there is some force running the observable universe, then the evidence of what we have managed to observe must be compatible with their intentions and desires and what they want me to believe. This is faith. I am unaware of any evidence against this belief, but faith it remains. I am also unaware of any conclusive evidence in favor of it. When what the holy books or the high priests tells me conflicts with what observable reality, I choose to believe observable reality. When the choice is, as the saying goes, "What are you going to believe, me or your own lyin' eyes?", I'll choose "my eyes" every time. The high priests or those who wrote the holy books most likely misunderstood somehow.



But those who would have us believe that no religion can be correct would have us ignore a large number of undeniable good things and truths that many religions have contributed over time. I object to this sort of thing:

The SCA intends to lobby the new Congress to override a presidential veto on stem-cell research and to repeal land-use legislation and other laws seen as "privileging one religion over other religions or over those who don't follow religion."

every bit as much as I object to school teachers leading a prayer, of whatever religion. I happen to believe that sacrificing potential humans to research potential medical cures is no different in kind from the research performed by Doctor Mengele upon the Jews of Europe in concentration camps. Different in degree, yes. Different in kind, no. I can very much see the point of those who do not wish to have tax money extorted from them at the point of a metaphorical gun (What happens when you don't pay your taxes in full?) to pay for something they see as murder. Here's something else to consider: If you think this research is so worthy, why don't you put your own money where your mouth is? Why don't you convince others to do so voluntarily? There is no law that says the research cannot take place, merely that the federal government won't fund it, with taxes taken at the point of a metaphorical gun, if the life was destroyed after the federal government made its policy known. The State of California alone has allocated three billion dollars, though, through one of the regular mechanisms for such allocations. Methinks the real issue is much closer to rent-seeking ("The federal government has to fund me because I can't convince anyone else to do it, and I need this grant or I might have to go get a real job doing something other people see as economically useful!")



Not all religions worship things they call gods. Some worship the doctrine that there are no gods, and there is no more evidence in favor of that than there is of the opposite viewpoint. I have encountered many people who worship Marx, or the doctrine that there is no god (or are no gods), every bit as irrationally as the most fundamentalist Christian or Moslem.

Their "blasphemy challenge" calls on young nonbelievers to create videos in which they renounce belief in the "sky God of Christianity" and upload it on the site; in return they'll receive a free documentary DVD, "The God Who Wasn't There," which includes interviews with Dawkins, Harris, and others. RRS is publicizing its campaign on 25 popular teen websites.

Question: Why are they explicitly selecting christianity for this? Is their offer good for those who renounce belief in Islam or Judaism? In the pantheon worshipped by the Hellenistic peoples? Buddhism? Hinduism? Odin, Thor, and all that lot? How about if I forever renounce any belief in The Cult of John Platt or The Flying Spaghetti Monster? It does not appear to be the case. Why? I cannot be certain, of course, but it does appear to me that these people feel threatened by Christians, but not by any of the other sects I named. I am not a member of any of them, but fundamentalist Moslem scares me a lot more than fundamentalist Christian. The Christians, you see, have become Westernized or even Americanized. You might have to listen to them pray, and you might have to tolerate them voting to outlaw a few practices they see as morally reprehensible, along with others who aren't Christians, but simply happen to believe things like theft are immoral. Oh, wait, that's illegal now despite the fact that it's against one of the Christian commandments. Isn't that Unconstitutional? Hmm. I seem to recall murder being both illegal and against one of the Christian commandments as well. Bearing False Witness, aka perjury? We're getting in deep. Plainly, by this logic, we are already living in a Christian Theocracy, and the Supreme Court had better act quickly! Perhaps a military coup by those officers who have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution? But wait a minute! The Jews subscribe to these same beliefs! So do the Moslems! So are we victims of the World Zionist Conspiracy, have we all become dhimmi, or is there some other explanation?



Isn't it possible that the Christians, Moslems, Jews, and certain others simply agree that theft, murder, and perjury happen to be against the best interests of this civilization that we are all members of, and that it has therefore become illegal to commit those acts because they have legally voted, in either direct or indirect fashion, to make committing those acts contrary to law? I happen to agree that theft, murder and perjury should be discouraged, and to aid in the discouragement, subject to criminal penalties. Am I, then, a Christian nutcase, a Wahhabist screwball, or a Jewish supremacist? Does it really matter that a Christian casts their votes against theft out of belief in the Bible, the Wahhabist in the Koran and Haditha, or the Jew in the Torah? All of these approaches yield the same answer as mine. Is my decision, reached through my best understanding of scientific, logical, and psychological principles, somehow contaminated by agreement with Christian, Islamic, and Jewish doctrine? I happen to believe mine is the correct, rational approach that we can use to convince the overwhelming majority of rational humans, whether or not they believe in any deity. But to say these approaches are prohibited by the Constitution is to not only invalidate the ability of believers to participate in the political process, violating the principle of all persons being created equal under the law, but also the part of the first amendment that immediately follows the part that those arguing for hard line separation of church and state so love to quote - namely the part about restricting the free exercise of religion. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." It's all down there in black and white. If the first amendment is so sacred that it cannot admit of any compromise, we certainly cannot compromise the part that says those who subscribe to a religion are free to practice it - which includes the right to speak and act, and even, vote, in accordance with those religious principles. I seem to recall something in Section 1 of the 14th Amendment about "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." If we are going to start disenfranchising followers of organized religion on the basis of irrational belief, then we have to start disenfranchising Marxists (more than half of the population of the globe lived under Marxist principles in the 1970s. Not once has it resulted in a beneficial result), Conspiracy Theorists (Kennedy Assassination was a government plot, 9/11 was a government job), and those who deny principles enshrined as the very basis of economics. At the very least, every citizen would have to have their beliefs tested for adherence to verifiable truth prior to obtaining the right to vote, or freedom of speech to influence those who might be able to vote. Pardon me if I suspect that a higher proportion of Christians would be able to pass those tests than most other segments of the population. Might be more people who pass the tests in Utah than New York or California, so that (under the Section 2 of 14th Amendment) Utah becomes the state with the most electoral votes and the state with more representatives in Congress than any other. We'll never know until we actually try the experiment, will we?



Near the beginning of this article, I mentioned that there was a time when everybody believed not only that the Earth was flat, but that it was the center of the universe. Suppose we treated that as an immutable truth, and made it an offense worthy of disenfranchisement, banishment, or even worse, to disagree? How would those who (correctly!) believed that neither was the case have convinced the rest of us of the error of our ways? Actually, as most schoolchildren are aware, worse has happened. Until it became permissible for them to attempt to convince others who did not share their views upon these very basic truths, the rest of us could make no progress.



This is not to say that every nutcase idea is worthy of your time. Actually, most of them have been so thoroughly discredited that only fundamental ignorance or the hope of being able to coerce their opponents, either through direct force or operation of the law, keeps the adherents going. The right to be heard, as one Supreme Court Justice famously observed, does not include the right to be taken seriously. It does, however, include the right to make the attempt to convince others by logic, persuasion, or even common beliefs, that your interpretation is correct. You won't get very far by appealing to logic if the audience doesn't share your devotion to it, you won't get very far with persuasion if the audience doesn't share your basic interpretation, and you won't get very far with an appeal to common beliefs if there aren't any, but this does not deprive you of the opportunity to try. When some faction, be it the historic Inquisition, Islamist fundamentalists, global warming true believers, or atheists wants to be able to pre-empt debate by means of silencing their opposition, it points me to a weakness in their world view, a flaw in their argument, and a fundamental fear that whatever they have to say to the world cannot stand up under the stress of disagreement.